WI: Ancient Greeks Settle Russia.

This gives me an idea. Has anyone ever used the idea of a surviving Byzantium incorporating what in OTL became Novorossiya?
 
This gives me an idea. Has anyone ever used the idea of a surviving Byzantium incorporating what in OTL became Novorossiya?

I only made a map of it :(

I hate to ruin this thread but Ancient Greeks DID settle in Russia and Ukraine as early as the sixth century B.C. Their descendants still live there to this day mainly in Mariupol, Ukraine. I knew a guy whose grandmother was one of the Russian Greeks.

If that is true we just need a pod that wil send more people there. Maybe an earthquake in one of the greek colonies in West Anatolia wich thrives the rest of them in the sea they navigate wrong and get there?
 
I hate to ruin this thread but Ancient Greeks DID settle in Russia and Ukraine as early as the sixth century B.C. Their descendants still live there to this day mainly in Mariupol, Ukraine. I knew a guy whose grandmother was one of the Russian Greeks.

Are you talking about the Pontic Greeks?
 
A civilisation consisting of Greek overlords and er...Scythian(?) peasants might be interesting, though, even if loses contact with the homeland, or more so even. Basically like the Variags and Kievan Rus, only much earlier.

The Variags of Khand?
 

DISSIDENT

Banned
The Black Sea and Crimea were pretty heavily colonized by Italian city-states during the High Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Genoa and a few others had thriving trading towns in what is now the Ukraine and Russia on the Black Sea. For a while, before the Muscovites booted the last Golden Horde Mongols, and for a little while after, it looked like what is now Russia would be shredded up for timber, furs and trade routes by Italian cities and the British. The Italian city-states of the Renaissance were in social and political terms somewhat similar to the Greek poleis, in part due to conscious emulation. If Genoa and co. can do it for a while, so can Athens, Sparta, Corinth, etc. The main difference is in technology and economic base, but considering the Greeks got as far as Bactria (way outside normal habitat for Hellenes of the time), not impossible or implausible.
 
?Didn't whe have someone try a TL based on this?

This would have interesting butterflies come the Volkswandering in the 3~4th centuries.
 
I get the very distinct impression that if you want to settle steppes and be successful, you need to be able to deal with the steppes nomads.

This is a tough proposition when nomads can sweep in on horseback, raid isolated farms/villages, and then sweep out into the steppes beyond pursuit.

I would think that the Byzantine Empire MIGHT have been able to do it with a centuries long effort - but it would have been tricky. What you'd have to do, I think is settle from the Black Sea to the forest to the north, probably along some river line. Then, when the steppes nomads raid your settled land, send a punitive expedition (probably a largish army of mounted cavalry), wipe out the nomads home bases, and retreat. Repeat a couple of times, and the nomads will learn not to attack WHEN THE EMPIRE IS STRONG. Of course, when the empire is distracted by civil war or war on two fronts, or both, then the nomads will sweep in and wipe out a century of settlement in a few years.

But if they seriously attempted it, they could set up one line. Once it was established, move to the next line, and continue. That way, when a province is reduced to howling wilderness, you can just repeat the whole process.

The other problem is that Greeks, whether Classical or Byzantine didn't have a good suite of dryland agriculture. IIRC, the early Greek settlements were all along rivers and such like, no?

Note that extensive settlement of the North American prairies was far more successful after the coming of the railways. You can't raise cash crops unless you have a way to get them to market - so much early settlement was along rivers (because water transportation is relatively cheap). But there is a strong limit to how far you can drive wagons to market.

Even that amount of settlement FOLLOWED the invention of firearms. Pre-firearms, a peasant might have had a 1% chance of killing a mounted steppes warrior? After firearms, it probably rises to 1:3 or even possibly 1:1, which exchange ratios mounted nomads simply can't afford.

Note that the plains of Russian were ruled for centuries by Mongols, who treated farmers somewhat like livestock and stopped predation on them by other steppes peoples.
 
Top