Unanswered Questions in AH.com

Thande

Donor
I agree. History is a lot like Statistics - when you've a huge weight of evidence and are really sure, you're still obligated to tack "but I actually have no idea" on at the end. When apparently contradictory information is coming at you from equally valid sources, the historian imposes his interpretation, and things look fine. As non-omniscients we just do the best we can. Which is to say, string a lot of probablies together and hope for the best. If five historical events each had (hypothetically) a 75% chance of occurring, the odds of all five happening is less that 25%. And that's the "most likely outcome."

I disagree. We're here to make decisions based on the information we have, and that information is of variable authority and depth. It's quite logical to treat one "side" that better supports its claims as Factual-Until-Proven-Guilty. The alternative is eternal unconsummated analysis. While vast swathes of history are grey areas, and nearly all of alternate history falls within them, that does not preclude answers which are definite enough for government work. To ignore evidence because it seems only to have a 60-40 chance of being accurate is to deny oneself a great deal of knowledge about the world. Essentially I'd argue that interpretation can be treated like a science, and that it will (by the law of averages) tend to give more valid results if practiced on a wide enough scale.

As the young people say nowadays, you win the internet.
 
I agree. History is a lot like Statistics - when you've a huge weight of evidence and are really sure, you're still obligated to tack "but I actually have no idea" on at the end. When apparently contradictory information is coming at you from equally valid sources, the historian imposes his interpretation, and things look fine. As non-omniscients we just do the best we can. Which is to say, string a lot of probablies together and hope for the best. If five historical events each had (hypothetically) a 75% chance of occurring, the odds of all five happening is less that 25%. And that's the "most likely outcome."

I disagree. We're here to make decisions based on the information we have, and that information is of variable authority and depth. It's quite logical to treat one "side" that better supports its claims as Factual-Until-Proven-Guilty. The alternative is eternal unconsummated analysis. While vast swathes of history are grey areas, and nearly all of alternate history falls within them, that does not preclude answers which are definite enough for government work. To ignore evidence because it seems only to have a 60-40 chance of being accurate is to deny oneself a great deal of knowledge about the world. Essentially I'd argue that interpretation can be treated like a science, and that it will (by the law of averages) tend to give more valid results if practiced on a wide enough scale.

Does that Dissociative Identity Disorder bother you much there, Admiral? I understand there are effective treatments for that these days. ;)
 
Ah yes, I forget these questions:

-whether England could become a great power without Norman invasion or not

-whether other Europeans (English, French, Dutch, Portuguese) would treat the Aztecs and Incas in the same way with the Spanish did in OTL or not

-whether Ottoman Empire was a direct continuation of Roman/Byzantine Empire or not
 
What if the human race had became more socially concious? Representive government was instated far earlier. Over authoritarian forms of state. Instead a social progressive form of democracy and freedom catapulted the populace. Egalatarian principles were put over capitalist ones. Libertarianism and socialism were widely accepted before the turn of the 20th century. Possibly America becoming a social-liberal communistic utopia with grass-roots democratic processes. A small representative government with a more united coexistence policy.
 
I would have thought that Alexander could have defeated the Romans, but for a dissenting view, here's an early piece of Alternate History. It was written by Livy in the first century.


[Alexander] would have crossed the sea with his Macedonian veterans, amounting to not more than 30,000 men and 4000 cavalry, mostly Thracian. This formed all his real strength. If he had brought over in addition Persian and Indians and other Orientals, he would have found them a hindrance rather than a help.

We must remember also that the Romans had a reserve to draw upon at home, but Alexander, warring on a foreign soil, would have found his army diminished by the wastage of war, as happened afterwards to Hannibal. His men were armed with round shields and long spears, the Romans had the large shield called the scutum, a better protection for the body, and the javelin, a much more effective weapon than the spear whether for hurling or thrusting. In both armies the soldiers fought in line rank by rank, but the Macedonian phalanx lacked mobility and formed a single unit; the Roman army was more elastic, made up of numerous divisions, which could easily act separately or in combination as required. Then with regard to fatigue duty, what soldier is better able to stand hard work than the Roman?

If Alexander had been worsted in one battle the war would have been over; what army could have broken the strength of Rome, when Caudium and Cannae failed to do so? Even if things had gone well with him at first, he would often have been tempted to wish that Persians and Indians and effeminate Asiatics were his foes, and would have confessed that his former wars had been waged against women, as Alexander of Epirus is reported to have said when after receiving his moral wound was comparing his own fortune with that of this very youth in his Asiatic campaigns.

[End of quote]

It's not accurate to characterize the Romans as an insignificant military power in Alexander's time. Not that many years later, they put up a good fight against Pyrrhus of Epirus, a very good Hellenistic general.
 
1) He would have gone after Carthage, not Rome. Also Magna Graecia, not Rome.

2) They were able to conquer it, not to hold it. Past a certain point Roman conquest turns into a Crisis of the Third Century-style endless civil war due to too many overmighty generals under-supervised.

3) No, the rise of Carthage would not be a direct replica of the rise of Rome. Rome started from a central position on the Tiber, Carthage would be starting from North Africa. The Carthaginian expansion would start from Spain and the Western Mediterranean and would proceed in a more indirect fashion than Roman expansion did.

4) Yes, it's not very likely for it to become the basis of Steampunk. Manufacturing those devices in large numbers without a corresponding market with it is more expensive than slavery, hence not financially worthwhile.

5) A Celtic tribe would/could, the Celts as a whole could not and would not because viewing entire linguistic groups as one large conglomerate is more of a modern idea that's rather limited in its overall appeal/impact.

6) No. The Eastern Roman Empire held together for 1,000 years and the existence of a Holy Roman Empire argues *a* Western Christian Roman Empire could have lasted as a paper-empire.

7) No. Too big a region to have a permanent union by that point, the growth of Islam and the arrival of the Vikings/Magyars would be fatal to any such grand mega-empire. The mega-empire was already impossible to sustain when two threats appeared in Classical times and it's a much bigger problem in feudal times.

8) Yes, it needs to as a first condition get rid of the electors and either co-opt or negate the relevancy of the Pope except as a powerless spiritual leader (something like a Western Shogunate would be quite splendid for that). Second, this needs to happen *early* before the balkanization spreads too much. Third, the centralized HRE is itself a Big Damn State and it would have confrontations with rival polities and runs the risk of Rome-style overstretch. Fourth, just because the HRE does it doesn't mean there is inevitable extermination of Islam west of the Zagros Mountains or a simultaneous rise of the ERE. If that's taken as a joint POD, sure. Taken on its own......not so much.


9) Conquered it, yes. Hold it? No, it offers nothing for them and while wrecking Europe is easy for them to do there's nothing to make a Western European analogue of the Golden Horde worthwhile. Nothing Medieval Europe of the time had could have stopped them beyond their own logistical overstretch.

10) The Vikings *did* "discover" the New World. Neither they nor the Ming had the ability to colonize it. Vikings were never numerous enough and the infrastructure for sustained Trans-Atlantic voyages were not there at the time, and the Ming Empire was (rightly as the rise of the Qing showed) too worried about nomads to the north to go ocean-sailing.

11) The Ottomans, yes. The Qing have the major problem of being non-Chinese ruling a pretty prickly culture that in any sense of modernization meaning the spread of liberalism is going to have to have some major, major changes. Ottoman reform is much simpler to do and a victory in 1877 is a major spur to keep it going. Turning the Qing into a modernized state is like centralizing the HRE: quite complicated and requires several things to go right that IOTL went wrong all at once.

12) To win the Napoleonic Wars, yes. To build a lasting empire......I do not think by the 19th Century any European power could establish lasting hegemony over the Continent.

13) To win the US Civil War? Yes. Success in the joint offensive of late 1862 with European intervention in favor of the South would be a victory for the CSA. To be a Great Power? As likely as a Central American Republic Great Power TL. The CSA is too overshadowed by the USA right north of its border to make it likely, and while it could be a pretty solid Middling Power if it gets an Italy Complex and acts like the Great Power it's very much not......

13) I believe the answer to this is "Yes" as the Normans simply consolidated what already existed in Anglo-Saxon England. The culture would be rather different and contemporary English would be more like Saxon or Frisian than English of TTL but otherwise the impacts would be relatively limited in the long term, given Britain's still got the right geographic nature/security concerns to deal with.

14) Well, the "Spanish Conquest" was in a lot of ways simply grants of labor offered to disgruntled Spanish nobles. In some ways given the power differential any European power of Spain/Portugal's size *could* do this, though geography in the short term means the first ones to do so will be the Atlantic Powers.

15) Yes, the Ottomans were one of several successors to the post-1204 ERE and the ERE itself was a rump state of the former Mega-Empire that encompassed Brittannia-Mesopotamia.
 
Surely the BIG unresolved question of AH is this one:

Why is it ALTERNATE history rather than ALTERNATIVE history? Alternate suggests the timelines are constantly swapping....
 
Surely the BIG unresolved question of AH is this one:

Why is it ALTERNATE history rather than ALTERNATIVE history? Alternate suggests the timelines are constantly swapping....
Alternate has two meanings, depending on the pronunciation used. You're thinking of the verb use, whereas I'm sure the adjective form is implied. Alternative means something else entirely and alternative history implies your seeking a different version of history, by that I mean revisionist history or conspiracy theories and the ilk.
 
Alternate has two meanings, depending on the pronunciation used. You're thinking of the verb use, whereas I'm sure the adjective form is implied. Alternative means something else entirely and alternative history implies your seeking a different version of history, by that I mean revisionist history or conspiracy theories and the ilk.

Doesn't the adjective usage mean "every second one"?
 
I have looking around the past threads and I noticed that here, in AH.com, we have so many questions that we either can't give a satisfying answer or can't come into agreement over the rightful answer...
So I decide to make this thread, in order to gather those unanswerable questions (and maybe we can finally get the answers)...so feel free to expand the list...

1. Had Alexander gone west instead of to the east, could he defeated the Roman legions?

2. Were the Romans willing and able to conquer Germania, and would the conquest prevent their decline and fall?

3. Could the Carthaginians build a Mediterranean Empire just like the Romans did in OTL?

4. Was it possible for "Hero's engine" to be developed by the Romans to become a fully-functional steam engine?

5. Could the Celts developed into a unified empire/kingdom in the absence of Rome and repelled the Germanic invasions?

6. Was there any relationship between Christianity and the Decline of Roman Empire?

7. Could the marriage between Charlemagne and Irene unified the Franks and Byzantines?

8. Could the Holy Roman Empire developed into centralized state?

9. Was it possible for the Mongols to conquered Central and Western Europe?

10. Was it possible for the Vikings or Ming Dynasty to discovered the New World and colonized it?

11. Was it possible for Qing Dynasty or Ottoman Empire to industrialized and modernized themselves?

12. Was it possible for Napoleon to won the Napoleonic War and built a lasting empire?

13. Was it possible for the Confederate States of America to won the American Civil War and became a great power on its own?

Is there anything that I missed?


1) Easily. Rome was a minor power at that time. OTOH, it is not self-evident that they would have fought. The Romans were't stupid. Most likely they'd have been a loyal ally for as long as Alexander lived, and so "come out the other side" of his career. There's have been huge butterflies though - it's probably a very different Rome - much more Hellenised.

2) Able maybe. Probably not willing in the long run. After all, Caledonia would have been easier and they never bothered with that.

Probably little effect on the Decline and Fall. When the going gets tough it is most likely abandoned as Dacia and other bits were.

3) If they wanted to, probably. But they were more of a mercantile state and might istead have been a kind of super-Venice.

4) No. A lot of advances in metallurgy would be needed for a proper steam engine.

5) Unlikely. Strong central governments were not their forte. OTOH, if the Germanics overrun the whole Celtic region from Britain to the Balkans, they are spread much thinner on the ground, and may be assimilated.

6) Maybe a little. From the mid-3C onward, Rome was making increasingly heavy weather of things, and this may have led to a loss of faith in the traditional gods. It is significant that other non-traditional cults like Sol Invictus also came to prominence about then. IOW there was a spiritual "vacuum" for Christianity to move into, and the decline of Roman strength may have been a contributory cause of this.

7) No. Without control of the Mediterranean communicatiosn were just too tenuous for such a union to stick, while the cultural differences were such that neither party would have relished it.

8) Given better luck, there is no obvious reason why not. Maybe if Henry the Lion hadn't fallen out with Frederick Barbarossa.

9) Conquer it probably. Hold it for an extended period, probably not. Their lines of Communication were getting very stretched.

10) The Vikings might have settled parts of it, but were probably too few in number to subdue the entire continent. The Ming, maybe, but lines of communication would have been humungously long.

11) In theory maybe. In practice it would have upset a huge number of vested interests. In China maybe if the Taipings had won. The OE would require an Ataturk-type revolution.

12) He did win - lots of times. Trouble is there was always "just one more" conquest that seemed "absolutely necessary" to the interests of his Empire, and if that went on long enough he was bound to come a cropper some time. And by 1807 France was so overextended that it's hard to see how the Empire could have survived his death. Even OTL, a plotter like Malet could come within an ace of overthrowing it.

13) They could have won, given foreign help or less determination on the part of the North. But they are likely to become just a medium sized power, not a world Empire. They lacked the resources for that.
 
1. Had Alexander gone west instead of to the east, could he defeated the Roman legions?

2. Were the Romans willing and able to conquer Germania, and would the conquest prevent their decline and fall?

3. Could the Carthaginians build a Mediterranean Empire just like the Romans did in OTL?

4. Was it possible for "Hero's engine" to be developed by the Romans to become a fully-functional steam engine?

5. Could the Celts developed into a unified empire/kingdom in the absence of Rome and repelled the Germanic invasions?

6. Was there any relationship between Christianity and the Decline of Roman Empire?

7. Could the marriage between Charlemagne and Irene unified the Franks and Byzantines?

8. Could the Holy Roman Empire developed into centralized state?

9. Was it possible for the Mongols to conquered Central and Western Europe?

10. Was it possible for the Vikings or Ming Dynasty to discovered the New World and colonized it?

11. Was it possible for Qing Dynasty or Ottoman Empire to industrialized and modernized themselves?

12. Was it possible for Napoleon to won the Napoleonic War and built a lasting empire?

13. Was it possible for the Confederate States of America to won the American Civil War and became a great power on its own?

1) He would have gone for Carthage and Magna Graecia before ever considering Rome, but if he had gone after Rome I'm almost certain he would have succeeded, because bear in mind whilst Pyrrhus was an excellent general he didn't have Alexander's fearsome reputation and he was also prone to becoming distracted very easily. If you faced Alexander, he would keep destroying you until you surrendered or were defeated.

2) Possibly willing, possibly able with sufficient able, but no it would not have saved the Empire; the border would still have had hostile peoples on the other side who would have been displaced in the migrations that took place from the third century AD onwards.

3) Difficult to say; the relative ease with which Spain alone was conquered by the Barcids suggests that the ability to perform large scale conquest and pacification existed. The one disadvantage that the Carthaginians had was that the Greeks considered them their hereditary enemy, and would have reacted to any expansion in the eastern Mediterranean violently.

4) I severely doubt it, Rome already had the capacity to feed a city of a million individuals, many other huge regions and huge populations for the time. When things are already working well it becomes inconceivable for it to become even more efficient. Plus it relies on someone being able to spot the potential for a machine capable of producing independent motion.

5) I'm not sure about unified, it would have required a very lucky and charismatic individual, and those are never certain to appear. Vercingetorix might have managed it had the Romans not conquered him, as he was very much attempting to re-order things along Roman lines in order to fight them.

6) Yes, because it changed the relationship of the Roman hierarchy to the people, it caused inner strife within the Empire as Christianity became imposed on people who wished to keep their previous beliefs, and it affected relationships with nearby peoples in an adverse way.

7) I don't think so, the logistics are just too huge to even comprehend. Having said that, at this point the Franks are not in a feudal system and are more centralised. Whilst unifying them fully would seem impossible some kind of alliance or union would probably not be out the question.

8) With a little more luck, I think so. Also a lot more willpower, because attempts to reform it later in its lifetime were clearly possible.

9) Central Europe sure, but they wouldn't hold it for long. Mongolian rule in Eastern Europe and in many parts of Asia didn't take very long to crumble at all, and the more stretched they are the more likely this is to occur sooner.

10) Vikings would have needed to know to travel further south, and any colony would have had scanty support from the homeland. If they made colonies south before climate change made the far north more inhospitable, it seems possible. As for the Ming, how on earth would they have regularly supplied the West coast of America from the other side of the pacific ocean at all regularly?

11) Ottoman Empire yes, had it been attempted earlier. By the time Westernization was attempted, the Janissary corps was too much of a block for it to properly succeed. As for the Qing, I doubt it. They were far too contemptuous of Europeans given China's history of discovery.

12) Yes, but not by attacking all the places that he did. Probably if he had stuck to Italy and Germany. He might have been able to make a Mediterranean Empire out of all of the various Islands.

13) Bar something shocking, I very much doubt it.
 
Surely the BIG unresolved question of AH is this one:

Why is it ALTERNATE history rather than ALTERNATIVE history? Alternate suggests the timelines are constantly swapping....

Alternate history means that it is something different that is accepted as fiction. Alternative history is real history that was tampered with and is trying to be passed off as legitimate. It's like reading a textbook on WW2 from both the US and the SU side-by-side. It all depends on whether you want the American version or the alternative to it, which is the communist version.
 
Since we have fallen to discussing the English Language, it is worth mentioning that part of our problem is that phrases such as “could” or “was it possible” have a range of meanings as applied to alternate history. If we believed in classical physics and could wind history back to its position before some event and then released it, history would simply and boringly take its OTL course. A religious person might want differences to occur because individuals have free will. I would argue that quantum events would rapidly generate large butterflies and make history very different after a surprisingly short time. Thus on my more philosophical days, I imagine that we are trying, naturally unsuccessfully, to write some of the histories that are predicted by the Many Worlds Interpretation. However, we would all tend to believe that what occurred OTL was more probable than most other outcomes. Thus the “could” will tend to imply some probability below 0.5 but above some rather arbitrary lower limit which we call ASB. Most of the argument will sound as if it is about the period concerned but will fail because the posters are assuming different lower limits.

snip ...
10. Was it possible for the Vikings or Ming Dynasty to discovered the New World and colonized it?
....snip
If enough well equipped Norse established a colony that lasted a few generations, the technological superiority of the Norse over their neighbours would favour a rapid Norse expansion over America. All we need is to get a large group of Norse to Vinland (probably Newfoundland). News of Vinland came back to Greenland and Iceland. If it had reached a Norwegian Jarl who was very unhappy with his king, he might just have decided to move to the newly discovered land. If he had so decided, he could probably have collected enough people and all the crops etc. necessary. He would have needed some luck with the voyage but, when he arrived, he would not only have had technological superiority over the indigenous inhabitants but might also by luck have carried a deadly biological weapon such as smallpox or measles or both. So how probable is such a chain of events? Clearly, not hugely likely as it did not happen but also not obviously requiring the help of Alien Space Bats.

Of course, we could all be living in simulations as suggested by Nick Bostom's Simulation Argument. In this case, we might have simulations of conditions after a successful Sealion because some PhD student has programmed those starting conditions into his simulation, which would justify all the questions that start “what if …?”.
 
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