Slavic Age of Exploration?

Starting in 1400, is there a plausible way the Slavic pople of the Baltic Sea are (Poles and Baltics) could have had an Age of Exploration, such that their languages would be as widespread as English or Spanish OTL?
 
No.

Geography is against them here; unlike Spain, England, France, Portugal, and the Dutch who have (more or less) unrestricted direct access to the Atlantic, any ships coming out of the Eastern Baltic have to pass through the Danish Sounds. Somehow, considering that the Danes were a real political and military power during this period, I doubt they'd be very keen on letting large numbers of Balts through to the New World without extracting A) their toll and B) A larger piece of the territories explored for themselves. There's also the problem that the Poles and Baltic people don't have much of a naval tradition, nor a natural need to design the kinds of vessels suitable for long trans-oceanic voyages.
 
The logical expansion of the Poles and Balts is to the South, into the "Wild Fields", and not across the Atlantic. Something like Courland's colonies in Tobago is a sideshow, and something which would take some serious effort to maintain,, although a Polish-speaking Caribbean island isn't too hard to imagine, assuming the PLC devotes some serious effort to maintaining it, considering how often the islands were swapped in peace treaties.

The best you can do for the Slavs in question is to have them replace the Russians and the Russian language in terms of importance, which is quite possible if you have a Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth wank.
 
The issue is securing access to at least the North Sea. Perhaps a Polish-Danish Commonwealth rather than a Polish-Lithuanian would open the way--the PLC dwarfed Denmark in population, so such a union might eventually result in a Polonized Denmark. From there, Poland-Denmark could sail around Norway and colonize northern Russia, or sail west to the New World. However, her dependence on the straits would always put her at a disadvantage, unless she also conquers Sweden and Norway.

Hmmm. This was the time of the Kalmar Union, after all...

You'd need a PoD a bit before 1400, but suppose Louis I of Hungary for some reason married one of his daughters off to Olaf II of Denmark, who then gets crowned King of Poland (in addition to his Danish and Norwegian titles). He subdues both Sweden and the Teutonic Knights, essentially turning the Baltic into a lake controlled by this new Polish-Scandinavian superstate.

Now you have a *Polish (mostly) state with an extremely long Atlantic coastline.

Issues:

How does this Danish connection impact the relations between Poland and the Teutonic Knights? What's Lithuania up to while all this is going on?
 
Well, Russians explored and conquered all the way to the Pacific Ocean.

Poles and Balts (and please not that none of Lithuania, Latvia or Estonia are slavs) would have to go through the Sound to get to the wider ocean. So, just like the Italians didn't get out of the Med, they won't get out of the Baltic. Unless you have some really weird TL where Poland conquers all of Scandinavia. Say.
 
It only greatly feasible if you move back the PoD by a lot. I think earlier Slavic dominance in trade and exploration is possible, but it would have to be near the turn of the millennium to have the most impact.
 
Starting in 1400, is there a plausible way the Slavic pople of the Baltic Sea are (Poles and Baltics) could have had an Age of Exploration, such that their languages would be as widespread as English or Spanish OTL?
A PLC that has a less dismal naval history (or perhaps one that just outright absorbs Courland) could have assembled a "colonial empire" similar to Courland or the Knights of St. John. By that I mean small, highly vulnerable to blockade, and likely going to be sold off if it does not quickly and consistently produce profit.
 
There was something of a Russian age of exploration, it was just mostly river based. The conquest of Siberia had a lot of similarities with the conquests of the Americas, but on a smaller scale. Maybe if there's easily accessible gold in Siberia or some sort of crisis in western Russia you might be able to do a bigger focus on the exploration of the east, and then from Siberia across the ocean to Alaska and the Pacific Northwest?
 
Starting in 1400, is there a plausible way the Slavic pople of the Baltic Sea are (Poles and Baltics) could have had an Age of Exploration, such that their languages would be as widespread as English or Spanish OTL?

Starting in the 1400s, very very hard to the point of impossible. As part of the Russian Empire....ehhh, maybe more than OTL. Just have Polish people make up the majority of any Russian overseas settler attempts (provided they actually have any real overseas settler attempts). There was a great TL about the Russian Pacific on this site that ended up with a *Polish Oregon.

But the farther back you go in time the more likely it becomes. In the 10th c. the equilibrium between the Danes, Saxons, and western Baltic Slavs is very fine and with a bit of really fortuitous flaps of them butterfly wings, you could have the Elbe Slavs outright replace Denmark. They'd have to be Christian of course.

From there on apply any logic you might apply to Denmark. Could Slavic *Denmark/Baltic Germany be a great colonial power? History indicates that maybe no, but it was a colonial power and could have done better.
 
Starting in 1400, is there a plausible way the Slavic pople of the Baltic Sea are (Poles and Baltics) could have had an Age of Exploration, such that their languages would be as widespread as English or Spanish OTL?
Lithuanians and Latvians are NOT Slavic peoples at all. Not ever. In any context.
 

ben0628

Banned
Novgorod was a mercantile republic with access to not only the Baltic, but also the Barents Sea. Perhaps they could try the Viking rout to North America
 
With a earlier POD, this could be possible if some Polabian Slavic state could've formed and Christianized early, along with conquering Hamburg. Of course control of the Danish straits would be great, too. But even in this case, Slavic exploration and colonization could have been somewhat like Germany (late colonizer, getting only the parts of the world no one is interested in).
 
With a earlier POD, this could be possible if some Polabian Slavic state could've formed and Christianized early, along with conquering Hamburg. Of course control of the Danish straits would be great, too. But even in this case, Slavic exploration and colonization could have been somewhat like Germany (late colonizer, getting only the parts of the world no one is interested in).

Not necessarily. If they're strong enough, it could be more like Dutch colonisation or even stronger (in terms of number of settlers), assuming the population density is like Germany's in OTL. They could possibly even discover the Americas via a Didrik Pining-type figure who actually visits the New World.

There was something of a Russian age of exploration, it was just mostly river based. The conquest of Siberia had a lot of similarities with the conquests of the Americas, but on a smaller scale. Maybe if there's easily accessible gold in Siberia or some sort of crisis in western Russia you might be able to do a bigger focus on the exploration of the east, and then from Siberia across the ocean to Alaska and the Pacific Northwest?

It's faster and easier to sail from a Baltic or Black Sea port to the West Coast of the Americas than it is to go from European Russia across Siberia to the Sea of Okhotsk where you hop on a ship there and sail to the West Coast. And Russia's ports on the Sea of Okhotsk were very poor before they conquered Outer Manchuria from China.
 
It's faster and easier to sail from a Baltic or Black Sea port to the West Coast of the Americas than it is to go from European Russia across Siberia to the Sea of Okhotsk where you hop on a ship there and sail to the West Coast. And Russia's ports on the Sea of Okhotsk were very poor before they conquered Outer Manchuria from China.
Except that, to do that reliably, you need to control either the Sound or the Bosphorus, neither of which is terribly likely. So, not really, no.

And even if they DID control the exit to the Med, they'd still have to get OUT of the Med, so they'd have to (build and) control the Suez canal or have free passage through the Straits of Gibraltar, AND go all the way around Africa.

So, really, really, no.
 
Except that, to do that reliably, you need to control either the Sound or the Bosphorus, neither of which is terribly likely. So, not really, no.

And even if they DID control the exit to the Med, they'd still have to get OUT of the Med, so they'd have to (build and) control the Suez canal or have free passage through the Straits of Gibraltar, AND go all the way around Africa.

So, really, really, no.

But is it necessarily more expensive to pay the Sound Dues than it is to travel all the way across Siberia (granted, you do have the River Routes, but there's plenty of land portages to make) and then travel a few thousand kilometers on sea (with what ships?) to the Pacific Northwest? Not to mention that Denmark was frequently allied with Russia. I'll give you that Gibraltar is an issue thanks to the Barbary pirates.

In any case, it's really no wonder Russia's sole contribution to the colonisation of the Americas was trading posts.
 
But is it necessarily more expensive to pay the Sound Dues than it is to travel all the way across Siberia (granted, you do have the River Routes, but there's plenty of land portages to make) and then travel a few thousand kilometers on sea (with what ships?) to the Pacific Northwest? Not to mention that Denmark was frequently allied with Russia. I'll give you that Gibraltar is an issue thanks to the Barbary pirates.

In any case, it's really no wonder Russia's sole contribution to the colonisation of the Americas was trading posts.
If Sound Dues were the problem, you'd be right.
It's 'right of passage to belligerent navies' that's the problem. Whether Denmark and/or Turkey are in an enemy camp, or just firmly neutral, Russia can't get warships out to protect her colonies. So those colonies will be lost. So why start?

Russia really, really, really wanted a port they controlled on the global sea that was usable 12 months a year.
It's pretty much a prerequisite for colonization on other continents in anything but the most trivial sense.
 
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