Surviving Byzantines Question

There's a difference between a colonial and imperial power. Byzantium acquiring more territory makes it an imperial power without making it a colonial power.

How much hydro-electricity does modern Greece and Turkey have? Italy got around not having much coal to an extent by investing in hydro power.

I saw yesterday morning an episode of Building It Bigger on Discovery Science I believe - spoke of the start of a major hydro power plants project plan, a big one, arch-styled, set in perhaps the Tigre or Euphrate.

Turkey have a good potential, it seems.
 
..... with Crimea itself ending in Russia

Sooner or later Russia will get Crimea since the peninsula controls the Northern Black Sea which is essential for Russian Empire.

IMO, Surviving Byzantine needs to have secure eastern border in order to manage its Eastern European holdings and compete with European Powers.

I thunk Byzantine will fall under Russian influence gradually when Russia becomes Great Power. So 1850 onward they will be ally to Russian Empire same as A-H to Germany Empire.
 
There's no guarantee of Russia becoming a great power though. Heck, there's no guarantee of there being a Russia at all. You may end up with a patchwork of states or something, with Byzantium taking Russia's role in geopolitics instead.
 
Avitus,

I have a small problem with your 1850 premise;I assume that Zenta is familiar to you and that it took place in 1697,and I am certain that Byzantium would be a much stronger state than Austria for several apparent and non-apparent reasons, I fail to see why they wouldn't conquer Anatolia earlier and march north(Georgia with substantial Greek population) and east-south east towards Messopotamia the areas there where at that time vulnerable and certainly not in the position to oppose Byzantium.Bulgaria would be conquered because
because is a breadbasket.

Now I followed the economic and resource discussion and I think that everyone is looking at the wrong corners for resources and not where they are:I have the declaration of Gaston Thorn on the entry of Greece as 10th member of then EEC now EU who said that "Greece is entering European Union with three advantages:its merchant navy, its wealth in metals,and the
business acumen of the Greeks."

Greece,with the exception of British deposits of coal and oil(until now) is the richest country in Europe in mineral deposits.
If the Amphipolis industrial complex had been instituted Greece alone could produce 60 tons of gold and 300 hundred tons of silver from five places,Ghalkidiki,Thrace and island of Thassos,and from Paggaeon mt and Kilkis.To make the story short ,Greece has 'inter alia' strategic metals that don't exist in any other country of European Union such as boxite,nickel,chrome,white rocks(magnesites) add to that uranium and mixed sulphours and you have one of the richest countries in Europe where you must add(early twentieth century discoveries) natural gass and oil under the sea in western Greece,South of Crete and Cyprus,considered the richest in Europe(excluding Russia although I have no indication yet how rich the undersea Eastern Mediterranean is(Canadian researchers raise the stake to trillions of dollars)...
I could give the exact type of mainland Greek factories that the Byzantines would construct for the process of metals and their by-products...
Magnesites would give them a clear advantage in Steel production,furnaces,special cement and pharmaceutical industries as well as paper industries etc.
 
Last edited:
There's no guarantee of Russia becoming a great power though. Heck, there's no guarantee of there being a Russia at all. You may end up with a patchwork of states or something, with Byzantium taking Russia's role in geopolitics instead.

I doubt it. Russia will become where it is.
Mongols will make their conquest, which will allow Muscovity to consolidate power and centralize authority and create Russian state. Once that occur Russia would acsend to Great Power sooner or later. Russia has too much resource to undermine its potential.

Byzantium can't influence much for Russian development, since they are physically separated. Byzantium has other business to worry than projecting power to central Russia.
 
Except that a lot of Russia's national identity was formed on the basis of being the "Third Rome," the successor to Byzantium. Without that, there's no guarantee that Muscovy will be able to legitimize their conquests. Novogorod may still be a strong contender, and the Byzantines may be able to hang on to the Crimea.
 
For a basis, we're assuming modern day Greece, Cyprus, the western half of Turkey and additional lands in the Balkans, maybe southern Albania, Macedonia, and parts of Bulgaria as the surviving Byzantines.

The Byzantines will have the advantages of having a state that has survived and developed over the past 500 years. Population is probably better educated, and there is large elite class with experience in governance, military, and economics.

I also believe that this group fo Byzantines will be more open to western influence than the Ottomans were so western printing, armament, and other technologies will enter the empire and spread much earlier and quicker.

However, we don't know how moribund the empire will be. Long standing polities have entrenched interests that make reform harder. It will also have ongoing wars and raids by the Turks for a long period of time, forcing money to go into defense rather than economic investment and innovation. IOTL, the last few centuries of the Byzantines saw tremendous internal conflict between modernizers who wanted to reconcile with the West for survival, and a very spiritual, mystical Orthodox "nationalism" that was very anti-Western and saw the Latin world as polluting and alien (better the sultan's turban than the cardinal's hat as the saying went). A similar conflict will likely be ongoing in Byzantium during this time.

So I think a lot depends on specific events in this 800 year gap. All sorts of nations rose from nothing to become great powers and declined in this time period.

The most we can see is that a state that comprises Greece, Cyprus, western Turkey and some additional lands have a lot of potential. How well that becomes developed depends on how the internal Byzantine culture develops and how the record of bad and good rulers turns out in the end.

If we go with an average result between worst and best case scenarios, by 1900 we likely have a Byzantine Empire that is on par with or a bit better than Italy of the time period IOTL. It'd be a European great power that dominates the Eastern Mediterranean, but not a true world power like Britain, France, Germany, US, or Russia.
 
I doubt it. Russia will become where it is.
Mongols will make their conquest, which will allow Muscovity to consolidate power and centralize authority and create Russian state. Once that occur Russia would acsend to Great Power sooner or later. Russia has too much resource to undermine its potential.

Byzantium can't influence much for Russian development, since they are physically separated. Byzantium has other business to worry than projecting power to central Russia.

does Genghis Khan unite the Mongols in a world with a POD in the 1170s? How do we know that some other client state is the Golden Horde's favorite ITTL, which is what let it get so powerful? How do we know the Golden Horde doesn't beat back the Muscovites, leading eventually to a Russified Mongol dynasty that rules to this day?
 

Deleted member 67076

does Genghis Khan unite the Mongols in a world with a POD in the 1170s? How do we know that some other client state is the Golden Horde's favorite ITTL, which is what let it get so powerful? How do we know the Golden Horde doesn't beat back the Muscovites, leading eventually to a Russified Mongol dynasty that rules to this day?
I don't see how a POD in the Byzantine empire in the 1170s will prevent Genghis from uniting the Mongols.
 
I don't think it's particularly realistic for an enduring Eastern Roman state to hold on to much of Anatolia in the long term. The comparisons to other European states though is interesting to explore. One thing which would make the Byzantines different from Austria-Hungary is that the former is likely ore united in religion than the latter, for example. Also, I'm not seeing a situation for an analogous Hungary for Byzantium's Austria unless all of Serbia and Bulgaria are subdued, because Byzantine rule enduring in Anatolia over the Turks there simply is not realistic.
 
I don't think it's particularly realistic for an enduring Eastern Roman state to hold on to much of Anatolia in the long term. The comparisons to other European states though is interesting to explore. One thing which would make the Byzantines different from Austria-Hungary is that the former is likely ore united in religion than the latter, for example. Also, I'm not seeing a situation for an analogous Hungary for Byzantium's Austria unless all of Serbia and Bulgaria are subdued, because Byzantine rule enduring in Anatolia over the Turks there simply is not realistic.
At the time of the PoD, and for some time thereafter, Anatolia was majority Greek, so I fail to see why a small and likely shrinking Turkish minority hurts this. By WW1 IOTL Anatolia was 15% Greek, this following five hundred years of Ottoman control. By the PoD I specified most of Anatolia has never been controlled by the Turks, especially the Western and Northern parts, and those areas that have been lost to the Turks have only been lost for a century. Estimates vary as to when Turks overtook Greeks as the dominant culture, but it definitely wasn't before 1204, and my best guess has western Anatolia still majority Greek by the fall of Constantinople.

That said, the scenario does leave Bulgaria in Byzantine hands, so they could serve as a more difficult minority akin to those of Austria-Hungary, allthough they would be a smaller portion of the population than the Slavs in A-H.
 
At the time of the PoD, and for some time thereafter, Anatolia was majority Greek, so I fail to see why a small and likely shrinking Turkish minority hurts this. By WW1 IOTL Anatolia was 15% Greek, this following five hundred years of Ottoman control. By the PoD I specified most of Anatolia has never been controlled by the Turks, especially the Western and Northern parts, and those areas that have been lost to the Turks have only been lost for a century. Estimates vary as to when Turks overtook Greeks as the dominant culture, but it definitely wasn't before 1204, and my best guess has western Anatolia still majority Greek by the fall of Constantinople.

That said, the scenario does leave Bulgaria in Byzantine hands, so they could serve as a more difficult minority akin to those of Austria-Hungary, allthough they would be a smaller portion of the population than the Slavs in A-H.

But you'd still need that defensible border in Anatolia, which is hard to establish, and the westward migration of the Turks is inevitable with a POD as late as yours.
 
But you'd still need that defensible border in Anatolia, which is hard to establish, and the westward migration of the Turks is inevitable with a POD as late as yours.
The westward migration of Turks was over by the PoD, the empire having survived while retaining control of most of Anatolia. As for defensible borders, the Byzantines IOTL held Western Anatolia for two centuries without controlling the plateau, and there are mountain ranges seperating the north and west of Anatolia from the plateau, so it wouldn't be as indefensible as you seem to believe.

Now I did have Basileus444 making the case that controll of the plateau is too expensive in the long run without control of the Taurus Mountains, and that the first strategic objective of Byzantium in this situation would almost certainly be to reestablish the Taurus frontier. That sounds reasonable, Anatolia cannot be split between multiple powers does not considering OTL.
 
The westward migration of Turks was over by the PoD, the empire having survived while retaining control of most of Anatolia. As for defensible borders, the Byzantines IOTL held Western Anatolia for two centuries without controlling the plateau, and there are mountain ranges seperating the north and west of Anatolia from the plateau, so it wouldn't be as indefensible as you seem to believe.

Now I did have Basileus444 making the case that controll of the plateau is too expensive in the long run without control of the Taurus Mountains, and that the first strategic objective of Byzantium in this situation would almost certainly be to reestablish the Taurus frontier. That sounds reasonable, Anatolia cannot be split between multiple powers does not considering OTL.

The Turkish migrations endured well into the thirteenth century in our timeline. After that will come increasing pressure from the Mongols and later Timur or a similar figure.
 
Top