They did have a large military, the city-state of Muscat which controlled Oman, Zanzibar, and its assorted empire did A LOT for its size
It's indeed a stretch, but they're going to have to try harder then.
They did have a large military, the city-state of Muscat which controlled Oman, Zanzibar, and its assorted empire did A LOT for its size
My gander was that if they westernised early on or had a stronger military they could've been a viable colonial state that becomes a much stronger power than OTL.
Galveston, TX; but then this discussion is pre-1900 and therefore the events which stifled the growth of Galveston are but a few years later.
Cairo. And no, I'm not talking about the one in Egypt.
I'm talking about the one in Illinois.
By any sort of sense this should have been an incredibly powerful and influential city, coming at the fork of the freaking Ohio and Mississippi Rivers. It goes against all historical geopolitcal sense.
And yet, it never became anything. It boggles the mind.
Yeah, what exactly happened to France's population growth in the late 1800s? America had tons of Germans, Italians, Irish, and Russians immigrate but no French.
- Vienna.
- Baghdad (if Muslim) or Ctesiphon (if pre-Islam).
Late Medieval/Renaissance Italy. Two trading powers in Venice and Genoa. Protected by mountains from the north and great strategic position in the Med for both military matters and trade.
Doh! Ninja'd.
having lived on Galveston (and I spent a lot of time in that county for much of my life) the problem Galveston had, in addition of course to being wiped out by a hurricane, is that it lacks sufficient room to grow much larger as a port. It was going to be eclipsed eventually as Houston has better links to the interior, and more room for facilities, and the ship channel wasn't that expensive relatively speaking.
So after Spindletop I think that ultimately it was going to be overshadowed by Houston anyway
London and Paris are both about the size of Los Angeles. Berlin is closer to the size of Philadelphia, less than half as big, basically. Considering Germany's bigger than Britain or France, I feel like they got screwed by the wars.
Saint Louis has the advantage of being on high ground and thus rarely floods. Cairo doesn't have that advantage. Its position on the junction of the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers helps a lot too. River steamers were really important on the Missouri, they could get all they way to North Dakota and Montana during the high water season, and that mattered a lot in the late 19th Century as a lot of cargo and passengers used them before the railroads expanded into that region. With the Corps of Engineers projects in the 20th Century river barge traffic is still very important and again Saint Louis benefits from that Missouri / Mississippi junction.
Its all about the flood years on the Mississippi. Also Saint Louis had a lot of political power in the 19th and early 20th Century (was pro North in the Civil War, which helped a lot)
But you would think that position advantage on the Ohio/Mississippi junction would have helped Cairo rate more than glorified small town status now
Or do you mean population wise? Because London is far larger than Paris population wise. It's the size of New York.