WI: Norman Africa preserved?

With all the freedoms and privileges the Berbers would get, they could easily just end up taking over the state at some point (a Christian Berber kingdom in Early Modern North Africa?). It would definitely be something to watch in the long run.

To be honest, I imagine there would be some restrictions in exchange for their freedoms. Probably some of the noble rights wouldn't be relevant, and in case of Royal Elections (if they are a thing), unless you were a sworn vassal, you ain't getting a vote.

I don't know enough about the coast, but what's the draw? Can we plug the cost into the Saharan gold trade?

1) No Barbary pirates, but instead, coastal trade. The Maghreb is a substantial market, not colossal, but substantial. Plus, combine Berber and Italian engineering and you could make life in both Sicily and North Africa more productive and comfortable. Berber manipulation of wind and heat, Italian records of Roman Engineering, and in a 'Renaissance' you've got the potential for a very advanced urban civilisation.

2) Unrivaled access to both the Salt-Gold trade, which would still be better by sea, but also - access to sub-saharan markets.

@cmakk1012 - ah, righto. Cue Berbers calling for a Crusade into Egypt. Now THAT would be something different.
 
The one issue with the state is that it'll have enemies surrounding it. Some Berbers may convert but others will not, and the latter will carry on continual raiding if they're not stopped; in order to stop the raiding the state may have to conquer inland oases and the like. Moreover, Morocco and Egypt (if the latter isn't smacked by a crusade) may team up to kick the Christians out of their turf.

@cmakk1012 - ah, righto. Cue Berbers calling for a Crusade into Egypt. Now THAT would be something different.

That sounds semi-plausible if Egypt is really making aggressive moves towards Sicily. A more serious Egyptian crusade attempt than OTL is likely; I have no idea if it would succeed or not. Berber-ruled Egypt would be unique!
 
Once the camels reach the Sahel could this given any Latin-Berber state a big leg up on the riches on west Africa? Perhaps blocking Islamic expansion in the western part of the continent?
 
Once the camels reach the Sahel could this given any Latin-Berber state a big leg up on the riches on west Africa? Perhaps blocking Islamic expansion in the western part of the continent?

Islamic expansion was mainly done by traders OTL, with the Maghreb in Christian hands this wouldn't happen, and even if the Latina are limited to Tunis no Almohads and an earlier reconquest of Spain will increase the likelihood of Christianity spreading into Africa.
 
What will a Christian controlled Tunisia and Algiers do to the Transsaharan slave trade? I honestly don't see them needing the same number of slaves, could we see it being minimized so that we see the Sahel states shift away from slavery being their primary income?
 
Would that be trade or military focused expansion?

In either case what would the long term consequences of West Africa integrated into the "western" sphere be?
 
Would that be trade or military focused expansion?

In either case what would the long term consequences of West Africa integrated into the "western" sphere be?

Well I suspect that without the existing slave trade structures for the Europeans to integrate themselves into, we will not see the same Transatlantic solved trade. There will likely still be some, but it will be far more limited. The question are what are they replaced with, maybe ACatholic Africans are offered to settle in tropical America as free farmers.

We will likely also see a complete different view of race.
 
I don't know enough about the coast, but what's the draw? Can we plug the cost into the Saharan gold trade?

Tunis and Mahdia were already part of that trade, and had been at least since the heyday of Amalfi, which via African gold was for a time the only Christian state in the West minting gold coins.

People ITT have mentioned grain, but a lot has changed since Roman times. This POD is after the Banu Hilal and other Bedouin friends came in and wrecked the place; there's a lot less agriculture going on there compared to when Africa was the "granary of Rome."
 
Would that be trade or military focused expansion?

In either case what would the long term consequences of West Africa integrated into the "western" sphere be?

Why would West Africa be integrated into the Western Sphere when Morocco and Algeria are still solidly Muslim?

Demand for slaves would pick right back up assuming we still have colonisation of the New World.

People ITT have mentioned grain, but a lot has changed since Roman times. This POD is after the Banu Hilal and other Bedouin friends came in and wrecked the place; there's a lot less agriculture going on there compared to when Africa was the "granary of Rome."

That said, I think it's possible being in the Christian sphere could result in better land management. It's not a certainty, but you're likely to see better systems of farming and less nomadism helping preserve what's left. Or they'll just continue to overuse the land and keep desertification going.

But you won't be restoring North Africa to being Rome's breadbasket anytime soon. It'll just be slightly more green and more amenable to farming, and the parts of it which are useless sand would instead be more useful for grazing.
 
That said, I think it's possible being in the Christian sphere could result in better land management. It's not a certainty, but you're likely to see better systems of farming and less nomadism helping preserve what's left. Or they'll just continue to overuse the land and keep desertification going.

But you won't be restoring North Africa to being Rome's breadbasket anytime soon. It'll just be slightly more green and more amenable to farming, and the parts of it which are useless sand would instead be more useful for grazing.

I'm not convinced that it'd automatically be better land management - after all, Western practices IOTL did increase the rate of desertification in Sub Saharan Africa. What you might find is that the idea of Africa being the breadbasket of Rome leads to serious attempts to resurrect the idea - active control of water, agricultural cisterns, terracing, and the like. Largely a waste of money, but something that could be epic - building designed to accelerate snow-melt in the mountains into underground cisterns for release in the summer months.
 
All of this hinges on Sicily's existential threats being beaten back long enough for agricultural experimentation to yield results. If tribes raid the borderlands every few years agriculture will probably just get worse.
 

Deleted member 97083

I'm not convinced that it'd automatically be better land management - after all, Western practices IOTL did increase the rate of desertification in Sub Saharan Africa.
Western practices in the colonial era were far different than medieval or ancient practices, though.

All of this hinges on Sicily's existential threats being beaten back long enough for agricultural experimentation to yield results. If tribes raid the borderlands every few years agriculture will probably just get worse.
Also direct contact with Persia was lost; agricultural practices imported from the Near East, particularly in terms of water storage and transport, were important for Roman agriculture in North Africa. Whereas Sicily can't access that same expertise because it's behind a wall of religion and warring states.
 
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OTL the kingdom was only a few fortified coastal settlements and cities but it also only lasted twenty years. One could easily compare this to Venice control over Dalmatia and Greece which likewise waxed and waned.

This is true, and it's not that bad of a comparison - the Dalmatian cities were also "protectorates" with little Venetian administrative interference for a fair period of time. But the differences are also considerable. The Dalmatian city-states were, in a sense, part of the same realm as Venice; they were all Byzantine satellites, and indeed Venice's dominion there sprung from an imperial grant. They shared a religion as well as a culture and mode of living.

The issue here, to me, is that it's difficult to see real cultural interchange happening on the ground. There's no reason to think that there would be serious immigration from Europe, and while you might see mercantile enclaves set up in the client cities of the coast that's a more limited form of population mingling. (Even Alexandria had Italian merchant quarters, after all.) As for the interior, the best that the Sicilians can probably do is to play intermediary, supporting one tribe/confederation against another. That's a role they can fill pretty well, especially if they control the entrepôts of the coast and thus the flow of much of the region's wealth, but it's not a role which lends itself to the actual annexation, let alone settlement, of the inland regions which one would need possession of to reverse the "pastoralization" of the region which accelerated after the Bedouin migration.

My opinion is that if the Almohad conquests are somehow averted and "European Sicily" is preserved from other threats such that the Kingdom of Africa endures, it is most likely to take the form of a string of vassal city-states, perhaps ruled by ammirati (emirs) or gaiti (from gaitus, the Norman-Latinization of qaid), who over time might adopt Norman titles or perhaps even Christianize, but whose populations are going to be rather mixed, consisting of settled Berbers (probably Muslim), Arabized city-dwellers of both religions, pre-conquest Christian remnants, African Jews, and Italians (principally concerned with trade, I'd imagine). I suspect the establishment of this protectorate might paradoxically accelerate the de-Christianization of northern Africa, as Christians would conceivably relocate to the coastal cities where their religion was not only not persecuted but favored. This seems to be exactly what happened later on IOTL, when Christians in the later Middle Ages converged in a handful of cities in order to exist in communities of sufficient number to maintain their religious and communal life.

Beyond the immediate environs of these cities, the Berber and Arab Bedouin tribes are likely to remain Muslim, but ally provisionally with the Normans in order to gain the benefits of trade and keep that wealth from the hands of their local competitors. That will remain the best way to "secure the hinterland;" I can't see an actual occupation of any substantial part of the Maghreb as either tenable or desirable for the Sicilian state. There's really nothing to "crusade to" once you secure the coastline anyway.
 

Deleted member 97083

The issue here, to me, is that it's difficult to see real cultural interchange happening on the ground. There's no reason to think that there would be serious immigration from Europe, and while you might see mercantile enclaves set up in the client cities of the coast that's a more limited form of population mingling. (Even Alexandria had Italian merchant quarters, after all.)
Probably, although it is not completely impossible to envision settlement. Sancho the Populator, a king of Portugal who lived in the same time period, did invite thousands of French settlers into Portugal to create new villages. So it's not impossible for medieval realms to do such a thing.
 
Dalmatia seems like an excellent model for Sicilian Africa--ownership of the coastline, mixed settlement in the coastal cities, and the interior largely remains native. If Italians were encouraged to settle Africa, they'd probably just end up on the periphery of the coastal cities. If the local governors are smart they'll pit the interior tribes against each other; considering how religion was relatively superficial in the tribes some might convert to Christianity (but not all). Some adventurous king might try to conquer the inland oases but would probably be expelled in a few decades.

I suspect the situation is untenable in the long run, especially if a foreign Muslim power backs the Muslim tribes.
 
On the matter pf Tunisia being a "bread basket" I must agree with @Carp in saying that it was no longer the case. I am more up to date with Hohenstaufen Sicily than with the Normab period, but there are several records that point out on a dependance on the part of Ifriqya on Italian grains. For example Friederich II sometimes monopolised all grain exports by blocking the Sicilian pprts for a set period and artificially raising grain prices in Tunis, then shipping the grain with the royal fleet, making grrat proficts.

Especially under Manfred Tunis was a tributary of Palermo, which was, again, based more on the necessity of access to the plentiful and good quality Sicilian grain than on outright military inferiority.

A possible decrease in slave trade was noted, but I doubt it: Palermo was a famed slave market at the time, after all.

Finally, I think conversikn efforts will be halfhearted at best and only done when Papal pressure to do so becomes unbearable. The muslims of Sicily were never forcibly converted (at most deported to Apulia when they became too rebellious) by the Normans or Swabians. This was in part because they were needed by the Court as a counterpoint to the powerful Norman and Lombard barons, in part because of an actual fascinatiom with Islamic culture by some monarchs and especially because they payed a poll tax, similar to the Islamic Jizya.

The cities will no doubt become Christian and, if/when the situation allows, Catholic colonists might be brought in, like many Lombards came to Sicily after the Norman conquest, but I doubt it, because Ifriqya will never be as secure as Sicily, nor the "reconquista" effect will be as strong.
 
I do wonder if, in exchange for alliances and trade, that Berber tribes would be asked to allow the reconstruction (or fresh construction) of monasteries. That could be interesting, and more tolerable than Italian settlers. If the new monasteries become communal centres, all the better.
 
I do wonder if, in exchange for alliances and trade, that Berber tribes would be asked to allow the reconstruction (or fresh construction) of monasteries. That could be interesting, and more tolerable than Italian settlers. If the new monasteries become communal centres, all the better.
At the time monastries were very important drivers of economic activity and often used more modern agricultural practices than secular owned lands, because of the lack of legal limitations on the use of certain contracts (such as emphiteusis) that were appliable to feudal land.

Interestingly, the Monreale monastery, heavily sponosored by the later Norman kings had mostly muslim peasants tilling its fields and working in its orchards.

I think that the role of North African jews will be very important, as they will be likely seen as politically reliable (because disconnected from the Islamic political world) middlemen for the Norman court, probably more reliable than converted muslims (who played an important role im the top levels of the kingdom, but might not be trusted to directly treat with Muslim leaders).
 
Tunisian mission system, hoo boy :oops:

About slavery, it may thrive at first, but as society progresses that could change. What would the society of Sicilian Africa look like by the Early Modern era?
 
ell I suspect that without the existing slave trade structures for the Europeans to integrate themselves into, we will not see the same Transatlantic solved trade. There will likely still be some, but it will be far more limited. The question are what are they replaced with, maybe ACatholic Africans are offered to settle in tropical America as free farmers.

Wouldn't the east African slave trade still continue, this will not be blocked by TTL, as such the Portuguese of whoever else gets their first can tap into it. Sure it is much more out of the way, but it would still be a possibility.
 
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