WI: A Peaceful 7th Century for Rome

On thing you might consider is taking some of the Germans /Slavs and flipping 75% of them to Anatolia / transferring significant people back from Anatolia to the Balkans(far from the Balkans where their compatriots live across the Border) or at least dispersing significant amounts of them. IN this way you do not repeat the Goth invasion (xxx amount moved peacefully and were settled then they invited their northern neibour Goths across the border).

Justinian 2 did this with Slavs from Balkans to Anatolia -- the mistake he made was enrolling their 30,000 into the army and letting them keep their own leaders

I've fought about the optimal way for Rome to solve all their problems, and I came to a similar conclusion as you did- but ended up discarding it. Not because it was a bad idea, but quite the opposite- Theodosius and the Romans don't have the same perception of events that we do, and are bound to do things differently.

So at least for now, the current arrangement will stay. Like many unstable things, though, circumstances tend to change.

Justinian II was a pompous fool.

(No offense to any Byzantophiles ;))

Justinian II was quite the character, certainly. Pre-mutilation, honestly, I don't think he is all that different than his namesake. He just didn't have the same resources and had a lot more internal dissent. After his return, though, I'd be much more inclined to agree with you.

Phocas seems to be getting dangerously insubordinate. If I were Theodosius I'd have him bumped off somehow lest he cause trouble down the line.

Theodosius would love to do just that;). I'll be getting into that next update.

........bump.......?

I haven't forgotten about this TL, but unfortunately I just haven't had time to update this week. It's hard for me to do so on the go. Come Monday, I'll have a bit of time every day once again, and I can resume.
 
I couldn't see the Arabs uniting under anything other than either

A) A religion

B) Outside influence (such as colonization) forcing them into one nation

(At least not to the point of threatening Rome or Persia. So I don't believe they could be a threat without Mohammed.


You know, the presence of large, powerful states on the border seems to universally lead to the formation of increasingly centralized states. It wasn't just the Arabs; look at the Germans, who formed new peoples (the "All Men" of the Allemani, for instance) in the presence of the Roman Empire. Look at the centralization of Lithuania in the middle ages.

Really, expecting the Arabs not to unite is the unlikely outcome...
 

Cryostorm

Monthly Donor
You know, the presence of large, powerful states on the border seems to universally lead to the formation of increasingly centralized states. It wasn't just the Arabs; look at the Germans, who formed new peoples (the "All Men" of the Allemani, for instance) in the presence of the Roman Empire. Look at the centralization of Lithuania in the middle ages.

Really, expecting the Arabs not to unite is the unlikely outcome...

While that might be true you probably see multiple Arabias since the coastal cities of the Hedjaz, Yemen, and Oman and the nomadic Bedouin were almost completely different societies that only shared a language and founding culture in the same way the Germans were one people at this time. It really was Islam that fully made Arabs one people and capable of creating an empire, and even then the divisions within Arabia eventually led to its collapse.
 
You know, the presence of large, powerful states on the border seems to universally lead to the formation of increasingly centralized states. It wasn't just the Arabs; look at the Germans, who formed new peoples (the "All Men" of the Allemani, for instance) in the presence of the Roman Empire. Look at the centralization of Lithuania in the middle ages.

Really, expecting the Arabs not to unite is the unlikely outcome...

On the flip side, it's not like the Romans and Persians were actively fighting the Arabs like they were the Germans. These sort of consistent attacks were what led to centralization.

Right now, the Arabs fit a niche as a dominant class of traders in both Mesopotamia and the Levant (They were able to exploit this niche IOTL to make their conquests there easier). It is against the interests of both the Persians and Romans to allow the Arabs to unite, and they provide funding to different Arab Confederations to fight each other and their superpower counterpart. It wasn't until most of this funding was cut off due to the last Persian-Roman War that any form of unity could develop.

I'd also like to point out that there are several groups that never united whilst living next to powerful Empires, or at least not for a while. Take the Turks, who, although they often formed powerful confederations, rarely had a centralized state, even though they lived next to the Sassanids. Or take the Germans, who never did unite under one state even though they ended up invading Rome. Or the Berbers. Or many others.

So while there are several factors driving towards Arab unity, there are several factors that work against it as well. In my opinion, it's overly deterministic to discount either option.

While that might be true you probably see multiple Arabias since the coastal cities of the Hedjaz, Yemen, and Oman and the nomadic Bedouin were almost completely different societies that only shared a language and founding culture in the same way the Germans were one people at this time. It really was Islam that fully made Arabs one people and capable of creating an empire, and even then the divisions within Arabia eventually led to its collapse.

And I'd like to point out that the Arabs were far from united early on. It was only with massive conquest, which legitimized a united Arab state, that a United Islamic Empire managed to survive. And even then, there was civil war after civil war.

Sorry about the lack of updates to this. I've tried to get back to writing this, but without any time to focus, it's been difficult. Fortunately, I'm working on another update now, and should have it finished tomorrow (when I actually have time to write, it's the first time in a while). If not tomorrow, then Monday. This is a really interesting discussion, regardless. Whether groups will unite or remain divided is something that is very difficult to answer with the absence of principals such as nationalism (well, there's some proto-nationalism, but a large part of that is in places like Rome that are already united) and self-determination.

How dangerous these groups would be is another question entirely. When you get down to it, the Arabs wouldn't normally be a life-threatening power for Rome and Persia, even united. They wouldn't even be on a peer level. There are simply not enough people. Now, the chaos IOTL caused by decades of war and occupation in Mesopotamia and the Levant, combined with a number of other factors, allowed the Arabs to overcome their innate disadvantages. But the idea here is to completely avoid this scenario.

So even if Islam is formed in any way similar to OTL, who's to say it will be successful in any capacity, and not fall apart after a generation or two? What is it about the Arabs that makes them natural conquerors, if anything?
 
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