WI Romans don't invade Gaul?

What if Caesar doen't invade Gaul, and, for some reason, the Romans chose just to stay around the Mediterrean Sea, holding Southern France and most of Spain, but leaving Northern Spain, most of present day France, Belgium, Austria and Switzerland independent.

I'm interested mainly in what happens in Gaul.

Would the Gaul tribes unite in some way??? How??? Would they form a sort of Confederacy, or would a tribe just impose itself over the rest? Might Druids play a part in this? Or would the Gauls stay as they had always been, till Rome enters in a crises or falls (when the'll sack what remains of the empire as Germanic tribes did)?
 
The Gauls were in a poorly way at the time, in many respects. Germnanic tribes (by Ceasar's reckoning, barbarians anyway) were invading from the northeast, the Helveti had declared a sacred spring, and the southern part of the realm was Romanising, drawing more and more nobles into its ambit. Sooner or later, someone is liable to rise to a position of power in the face of these problems. My guess is a tribal leader from the comparatively Romanised Central Gallic tribes, an Alt-Vercingetorix who faces Ariovistes and manages to get legitimacy from the druids (alternatively, a druidic leader might manage to create a legitimacy-making machine and create a puppet ruler, but I don't think that's likely). In the medium term that means this leader will either clash with Rome (in which case we basically get OTL slightly deferred) or ally with it. THat could get interesting. At that point it is in the Roman interest to uphold the tenuous central power of their client ruler in the face of the traditionally fractious and bloody-minded Gallic aristocracy. Since the only instance that can sanction such a power shift are druids, their position will be cemented and dissident groups curbstomped with Roman money, training and troops. In the long run it is likely that Rome will still take over Gaul, but the circumstances are likely to be very different if they can slip into established power structures, get a tame Romanised aristocracy the way they did in the south, and have a druid hierarchy preach their way.
 
To achieve this you need a very different Rome. So either the Roman Republic is weaker than in OTL (say Carthage wins one of the Punic Wars) or there is some event that persuades Rome from being as imperialistic. Maybe the Romans reach an agreement with the Numantians, or there is a Teutoburger Forest event in Gaul, or further Roman civil wars. In any case I still see it very difficult for Rome to not go after Gaul: As it has been already said, Gaul is too much weak and right near the Roman frontier.
 
I dunno about difficulty - Caeser was aiming his armies at Dacia when he was distracted by the migrations.... put them off, and there's much less reason for Rome to go North for a long time - potentially 50 + years
 
So we keep Caesar out of Gaul. The Germanic tribes were moving across the Rhine and into Gaul, and at some point there is probably going to be some kind of tipping point invasion, where the tribes of central Gaul feel quite threatened by the Germans. The Romans are distracted by some political infighting, and so the Gauls are on their own. They create a tribal alliance to fight off the Germans, and elect one of the tribal leaders as the "High King" or something of Gaul. The "High King" fights off the Germans and takes steps to make his title stick once the Germans are finished. The other tribal leaders don't like this, but by the time the Germans are defeated the Romans have settled their differences. The Romans see the "High King" as a low cost alternative to having to conquer the Gauls and defend Gaul against the Germans, so they support him. With Roman support the "High King" makes his title stick, and the Kingdom of Gaul, a Roman client kingdom, is born.

Gaul was a nice piece of real estate, but I think that the Romans would be just as happy letting it be semi-independent and not having to spend time and money administering it. With a Roman-inspired and trained army the Kingdom of Gaul manages to push the Germans back over the Rhine and expand into Germania. They develop their own unique military culture, which puts a much greater emphasis on permanently fortified towns as the cornerstone of territorial defense. This reliance on fortification serves the Gauls well, as they push into Germania via the acquisition and fortification of trading towns. Gaul develops a kind of pseudo-feudalism that is an out-growth of its tribal origins. The difference between the civil and military is never really clear, and Gaul remains a heavily militarized society, with a small military elite supported by a vast number of peasants.

With an independent Gaul that maybe does some expansion on its own, I think that its possible that they could develop the V-shaped iron plow. In OTL I believe Europe got the V-plow from the Chinese, though it would have been really useful in Europe, and could just as easily have been invented in Europe. If it is, then Gaul will get a big population boost, which will do all kinds of interesting things.
 
Rome won't be able to afford to leave a united and growing polity on it's doorstep - the security issues would demand they go and settle the Gaul Issue. there's no natural frontier like the Rhine and Danube seperating southern-east from north-west Gaul to forment an obvious border.

Besides, the Romans felt they had a mission to civilize the world, ordained by the gods (later, by God). And there was too much glory and profit to be earned by conquering Gaul, and then by administrering it, to leave it un-Romanized.

So the only way would be to remove Rome from the pictuer, as it were - maybe Cisalpine Gauls raid Rome right after a loss to Carthage in one of the Punics, leaving a fatally wounded city-state that isn't able to rise again and defeat her enemies. In that case, Carthage may stay Med-centric, being a sea-faring culture and further away from the proposed Gaullia. That I might buy.
 
Possibly a series of walls and fortresses surrounding the upper Italian Border with the Meditteranian and the Switz Alps.
 
Possibly a series of walls and fortresses surrounding the upper Italian Border with the Meditteranian and the Switz Alps.

Like the Rhine frontier perhaps? Instead of expanding up north, might Rome be far more agressive in the East? Parthia subjugaged?

The Alps of course would make for a far more formidable barrier than the Rhine or any other river system... sure Hannibal got through, but not easily.

The Senate wasn't so much against the invasion of Gaul per se, as they were against the ambition of Julius Caesar. And that ambition meant Caesar had to go Gaul to earn glory, as his rival (co-trimuvirate) Cato had done in the East. But even if not specifically Casear, then some nobleman would look to make their name as a conquering General, and Gaul was the obvious next step - the terrain of Dacia, Dalmatia, Pannonia, etc. is really too rough to be hospitable to the landed gentry of Rome to establish their farms on. It wasn't until Augustus that the territory was entered by Roman armies, and it was always marginal land.
 
You say Cato- he was a staunch republican, a political animal but certainly no conquering general. The guy your thinking about is Crassus (christ, i dont know how to quote, even after all this time). What about Egypt (the Nile Valleys), or the Euphrates?


The problem is that Gaul is far closer than the alternatives. Also, as already noted, they are having problems with Germanic intrusions in the North. The Gaullish lands are ripe for the picking.

If Caeser doesn't go, then another guy with an ego and ambition to satisfy will end up doing it instead.
 
Well, someone was going to have to deal with the increased migration that was moving towards even Roman Gaul which was already around. Then also Ceaser had to leave because he was going to be charged for crime he had commented while consul. Cato would have had it no other way. So if Ceaser didn't go to Gaul, he would of gone somewhere, may against Parthia, where Crassus was killed. Then Crassus or someone maybe Titus Labienus who was a heck of a general in his own right. Who knows if the situation got bad in Gaul maybe even Pompeii would of came back to crush the tribes. Anyway, the Romans would of sent a force into Gaul.
 
There's a fair case from a strategic point of view that expanding beyond the Mediterranean basin wasn't a good idea, becuase it complicated logistics and transportation. Go north either into Gaul or into Dacia and eventually you have to invent a warfare for frontier defence.

Garrisoning that frontier was more difficult the further it was from water transport, despite the quality of Roman roads. The roads were primarily for army movement, not for the movement of grain or stores. There were times that Roman generals in Gaul would appropriate entire villages to forced labor to ensure food supplies for their troops. Stick to the Med. basin and the same apparatus that kept Rome fed could feed and supply the troops.

Now, I doubt Caesar sees this, but it does mean that once the empire gets going (I'm assuming something of the sort was bound to come), the Emperors might eschew further expansion.

Also, wouldn't the mountains / hils of the Massif Central do something to aid the formation of a frontier defense?
 
How long would it take for Gaul to develop a culture where it could sustain and repel Roman incursions (doesnt matter if they lose eventually)?

They had that. Caesar's invasion wasn't an exercise in subduing poor benighted tribesmen, it was a real and serious war and he could well have lost it. What made Gaul manageable from a Roman perspective wasn't its military impotence but its political disunity and volatility. If the Gauls unify under a leader who is *not* a Roman client, things will soon get very unpleasant.
 
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