Surviving "lost" European Nations

If Russia is weaker in this TL, then PLC might last past 1791. Perhaps a more successful Sweden in alliance with the Commonwealth?
Russia actually extended PLC's life by several decades, without Russian intervention it would have been divided between Prussia and HRE circa 1740.
 
Russia actually extended PLC's life by several decades, without Russian intervention it would have been divided between Prussia and HRE circa 1740.
While this is true, but Russia also contributed a lot to weakening of the Commonwealth and with weaker Russia it would be stronger.
 
While this is true, but Russia also contributed a lot to weakening of the Commonwealth and with weaker Russia it would be stronger.

And Sweden, which was historically an ally of the Commonwealth and had considered joining at one point, would have done anything to keep Russia from becoming a major power. So have the Great Northern War go badly for Russia (perhaps Peter I doesn't take the throne/is assassinated and Russia doesn't modernize, or Sweden has someone other than Charles XII on the throne) and Sweden remains a European Great Power for another century or so. Then the Commonwealth gains breathing room, and the HRE and Prussia suddenly find an interest in keeping the Commonwealth alive as a buffer between them and the Swedes.
 
The Permian geological era was named after an obscure kingdom of Permia. Is there any way Permia could have survived?

You mentioned Novgorod but not Kiev.

Is there any way Gibraltar, or a realm known as Gibraltar, could have survived, maybe as a microstate?
 
And Sweden, which was historically an ally of the Commonwealth and had considered joining at one point, would have done anything to keep Russia from becoming a major power.
Swedes were battling PLC for the better part of 17th century and (at least) share the credit for sending PLC to it's grave (in fact it never recovered after Swedish occupation in 1650s).

The Permian geological era was named after an obscure kingdom of Permia. Is there any way Permia could have survived?
If my memory serves me well, "Permians" was a name given to group of Ugro-Finnish tribes of hunters-gatherers by Russians after they assimilated the area (there was no "conquest" to speak of, Russians just drifted there).

You mentioned Novgorod but not Kiev.
Kiev is doomed in world with Mongols. In general, it is too close to Plains to survive without serious farming hinterland to North, which needs it to trade with Black Sea coast. IOTL it started to decline even before Mongols, as Greek trade went down.

The Golden Horde as OTL's Russia would be really interesting...
Well, it might, but I don't see the way for nomads to rule over farmers once guns appear on the scene. IOTL Russia mostly finished the Horde in per-gunpowder era, thanks to more reasons that I could care. However, would Mongolian overlordship survive until 1550, it would be dealt with anyway by Streltsy (shooters) troops by 1600. It wouldn't happen because Streltsy were terribly effective. It is just that Russian ruler could field 10 of them per one horseriding bow-wielding nomad.
 
If my memory serves me well, "Permians" was a name given to group of Ugro-Finnish tribes of hunters-gatherers by Russians after they assimilated the area (there was no "conquest" to speak of, Russians just drifted there).

"Parma" means "forrest" in local Ugro-Finnish languages. Locals were usual hunters who lived there. When Russians came they called all this region Parma (in Russian pronansuation - Perm') There have never been any kingdom or something.

P.S. CanadianGoose, why I don't see you at Russian Alternate History forum? It's a long time :D
 
The Golden Horde as OTL's Russia would be really interesting...

Or at least its final, rump version, the Crimea Khanate. I like the idea of a modern Mongol-influenced nation in Europe. But Muscovy was just too hungry for an empire.

The Kazar Khanate: was rent asunder by the Seljuks and the Kieven Rus, IIRC. And weren't they Rather Jewish?

Frisia/Friesland: how did they go from a fairly important nation to a downtrodden minority clinging to their islands?

The Earldoms of Orkney and Shetland - Norwegian possessions, but more or less autonomous, weren't they? Christian I sold them to Scotland in 1468 to provide a dowry for his daughter.

The Duchy of Benevento: the South's answer to San Marino?

Ben
 
If my memory serves me well, "Permians" was a name given to group of Ugro-Finnish tribes of hunters-gatherers by Russians after they assimilated the area (there was no "conquest" to speak of, Russians just drifted there).


Kiev is doomed in world with Mongols.

"Parma" means "forrest" in local Ugro-Finnish languages. Locals were usual hunters who lived there. When Russians came they called all this region Parma (in Russian pronansuation - Perm') There have never been any kingdom or something.

Thanks.

But...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permia

http://www.uraltourism.com/cherdyn.php

I don't know any more about these; do you?

:)
 
The Kingdom of Arles, in southern France...
I strongly agree:D
Plus:
Suebic Kingdom of Galicia?
Kingdom of Majorca?
Republic of Ragusa?
Heptanese and Dodecanese steadily obtaining their independence?
And did anyone mention Corsica?
 
They don't even count, Byzantines reverted back to Greeks eventually. Their national identity isn't lost like the Burgundians'. Or the Aquitainians. Or the Provencal.

??? The Byzantines did not revert back to Greeks. They would cut you for saying that. They firmly rejected the pagan Greek past and had no other identity but as Romans. "Greek" is a modern nationalist construction that has nothing to do with the Byzantines. Actually, Byzantine has nothing to do with the Byzantines - that's just a name historians chose to apply to them to distinguish the later period from the earlier. There was no break in continuity. The Byzantines were the Roman Empire.
 
I think the world might have been better off if World War I had been concluded, like previous wars, with a compromise, a minor redrawing of borders, instead of the complete dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman Empires. These superstates might have served as strong bulwarks against the twin tyrannies of Communism and National Socialism that arose to devastate Europe in the next World War.

Not to mention Islamic radicalism.
 
The Ottomans would certainly be able to deal with them better than OTL newer, inexperienced states. However, as the Ottoman state continues to modernize, I think it would still agitate the traditionalists in Arabia and elsewhere.

That's true, but most Islamists were conscious of the need to modernize, and doing it in the Ottoman context is a lot more palatable than doing it under Western occupation - at least the Ottomans could somewhat convincingly place the fig leaf of Sharia justification over their reforms.

Traditionalists/radicals/fundamentalists might still be agitated, but then they had been since Ottoman reform began, and yet it didn't spiral out of control. That doesn't mean it couldn't, but it seems a whole lot less likely.

Take an analogy: If Mississippi wasn't part of the USA, what would it be like? Likewise, the more backward parts of the Middle East were prevented from becoming Saudi Arabias by inclusion in a larger and more progressive entity.
 

It's a good deal more accurate to say that what you just posted is a modern invention. From what I've read, the Byzantines were pretty ambivalent about their identity. The idea that they didn't use 'Byzantine' is a particularly outrageous fraud - to take just one example, have a read of Procopius' Secret History. Steady use of 'Byzantine' and 'Byzantium' to refer to the city and it's inhabitants - which we have good evidence was indeed extended to refer to the state itself. Random example, with Procpius describing, I believe, the behaviour of the Blues:

Such, then, was the outrageous conduct of the Factionists at this time in Byzantium. Yet these things distressed the victims less than the wrongs committed by Justinian against the State, for in the case of those who have suffered the cruelest treatment at the hands of malefactors, the greatest part of the distress arising from a state of political disorder is removed by the constant expectation of punishment to be exacted by the laws and the Government.

What else do you think they called themselves? Constantinopolitans? I really don't know where this idea that the Byzantines were a bunch of macho-weirdos who wanted to out-Rome the Romans comes from.
 
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It's a good deal more accurate to say that what you just posted is a modern invention. From what I've read, the Byzantines were pretty ambivalent about their identity. The idea that they didn't use 'Byzantine' is a particularly outrageous fraud - to take just one example, have a read of Procopius' Secret History. Steady use of 'Byzantine' and 'Byzantium' to refer to the city and it's inhabitants - which we have good evidence was indeed extended to refer to the state itself. Random example, with Procpius describing, I believe, the behaviour of the Blues:



What else do you think they called themselves? Constantinopolitans? I really don't know where this idea that the Byzantines were a bunch of macho-weirdos who wanted to out-Rome the Romans comes from.

That is utterly untrue. First of all, Procopius didn't write in English, and what you posted is a translation. In the original, he used Constantinople. The Byzantines had an extremely firm identity as Romans, and nowhere in all of the literature of the time is "Byzantine" used to refer to the empire - there are a tiny number of poetic references to the city itself, and Byzantion is used to refer to the pre-Roman city.

I don't see how this has anything to do with machismo or out-Romaning the Romans. The Byzantines simply were the Romans, unselfconsciously, and because it's true.

As for what they called themselves, it was "Romans". I'm not sure where you're getting this - it's pretty famous that "Byzantine" was first used by Hieronymus Wolf, the historian with the best AH.com logon ID. The term hasn't even been used that much in historical writing until the 19th c.
 
It's a good deal more accurate to say that what you just posted is a modern invention. From what I've read, the Byzantines were pretty ambivalent about their identity. The idea that they didn't use 'Byzantine' is a particularly outrageous fraud - to take just one example, have a read of Procopius' Secret History. Steady use of 'Byzantine' and 'Byzantium' to refer to the city and it's inhabitants - which we have good evidence was indeed extended to refer to the state itself. Random example, with Procpius describing, I believe, the behaviour of the Blues:



What else do you think they called themselves? Constantinopolitans? I really don't know where this idea that the Byzantines were a bunch of macho-weirdos who wanted to out-Rome the Romans comes from.

Leaving aside the question as to whether Procopius should be called a "Byzantine" as opposed to a Late Roman this is by and large untrue, Byzantium is used for the city, for the Empire "Roman" is more common. And Mark Whittow finds an interesting example of a shipwrecked Byzantine who does not even say that, but simply says he is a Christian

Certainly the sources are translated as "Roman" not "Byzantine," and by sources I mean the Alexiad, Psellus, Choniates, Three Military Treatises, Book of the Eparch, Luke the Stylite, De Administrando Imperio, Famers Law and god know's what else I have long forgotten. And unless there is some bizarre conspiracy going on I suspect that is because they say Roman not Byzantine. Considering how little we have to go on and how every possibly inflection and interpretation in the original material is analysed to death this would seem the most bizarre thing for the historians.

Edit: Also, use of "Byzantine" in the sources need not indicate everyday usage - the Byzantines loved archaising, they considered the cliche the highest form of art (someone should tell Martin Amis about that). The Battle of Crecy was referred to as a fight between the "Britons" and the "Celts" for example.
 
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