Why were ancient European states shaped differently?

If you look at a map of the Roman Empire, you can see it encircling the Mediterranean. Even the Byzantines and the Ottomans seemed to bend around the Mediterranean. Or if you look at the Phoenican thalassocracy or the Delian League, you see loose networks of cities, yet it's still a very fluid spread across the sea itself. Well, that's fair, it makes sense they'd want to stay near the sea. What about the land powers? Well, the Achaemenids at their height, on a map, look like a very fluid expanse from Persia into the west.

So why is it that modern states resemble solid blocks more than anything else? They look fractured along natural barriers and look a lot more concentrated than the sprawling empires. The only modern state with the imperial sort of shape seems to be the Soviet Union, but it's still not quite the same.

Is this a result of nationalism? A change in technology? The way the borders are negotiated? Or is the 'fluidness' just an artifact of the way modern maps draw ancient borders? Can fracturing into 'blocky' states be prevented, and if so, what might a Europe with more diffuse, fluid borders be like?
 
Modern states of modern origin tend to correspond to cultural and linguistic clusters: a combination of the modern idea of a Nation State and a historical artifact of how older states broke up (separatist movements by oppressed or under-served ethnic minorities in a larger state, resulting in a new smaller independent state in the areas where that minority is a majority).

Modern states of medieval origin tend to correspond to administrative subdivisions of classical or early medieval states or agglomerations thereof. Classical empires tended to be organized at the top level around sea trade (especially in the Mediterranean), and then by ethnic or geographical sub-divisions. One of the major features of the decline of the classical world was a collapse of long-distance trade, so large, sea-spanning empires were no longer viable and the smaller, land-centered subdivisions became the top-level states.
 

libbrit

Banned
Medieval states didnt really think of their borders in the same way-the King of France might have no problem being the king of an enclave in the midst of someone elses territory as long as he got his feudal dues. It was as the power of monarchs wanned, and the powers of ideas such as nationalism grew that the desire to consolidate borders within cultural or linguistically convenient areas grew up
 
The part of natural boundaries was already apparent in the case of Rome; the Rhine (or was it the Danube?) was their northern frontier.
 
The part of natural boundaries was already apparent in the case of Rome; the Rhine (or was it the Danube?) was their northern frontier.

The Rhine was their north eastern boundary, the Danube was also their main frontier in that region though to.
 
Differences in transport and agriculture lead to different geographic distributions; back when you could only farm properly in a few scattered river valleys you saw states organised around a fluid network directed towards capturing those points, when forest clearance and ploughs to break any soil came around you saw a near continuous blanket of people that organise into block like states based on linguistic grounds or interior lines of control.
 
One of the major features of the decline of the classical world was a collapse of long-distance trade, so large, sea-spanning empires were no longer viable and the smaller, land-centered subdivisions became the top-level states.
Well, that implies that stopping the collapse of the classical states is the easiest way to keep the Roman-type imperial nations around. A lot of timelines successfully do this. Still it's harder to merge nations than split them, and every attempt at a pan-whatever superstate or reviving the Roman Empire has failed horribly. The Byzantines look like the best bet for keeping imperial states around, but alone they'd be an anachronism once colonialism starts up. On the other hand, look at China, it's been able to recover from splitting up in the past.

Differences in transport and agriculture lead to different geographic distributions; back when you could only farm properly in a few scattered river valleys you saw states organised around a fluid network directed towards capturing those points, when forest clearance and ploughs to break any soil came around you saw a near continuous blanket of people that organise into block like states based on linguistic grounds or interior lines of control.
That means it's inevitable that blocky nation-states will appear at some point, which makes it into less of a matter of how to avoid them than if other types of society can hold their own against them.

I think they can: The Ottoman Empire lasted until WW1 as a fairly diverse state, even if it was diminished and behind the others, so classical-style empires can last. Siberia never suffered balkanisation either, presumably because of the terrain? Then there's Singapore and the United Arab Emirates, which are more like the Greek city-states. Or the quasi-tribal structures in parts of Asia and Africa.

They're odd cases, of course, and I can't see them actually dominating European geopolitics to the extent that Rome did. Nor can I see there a being modern equivalent of Phoenicans. But they could survive in some way.
 
There's also the Swedish Empire which developed around the Baltic Sea. I would suspect that this was at least partially due to the terrain in Sweden and Finland which, put it bluntly, sucks if you want to move something on the land. l think that the same thing might have affected some other similarly shaped countries.
 
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