WI Romans proceed beyond the Sahara?

As far as I know, the Roman presence in Africa never extended beyond the North African coast line and some trading down from Berenice along the eastern coastline.

What if Rome had decided to subjugate central Africa? Or at least Morocco, Senegal, etc? Why didn't they OTL?
 
A lot of desert, a lot of areas without anything profitable even if not outright desert.

And long supply lines are not recommended when the natives are aggressive and tough to stomp on.
 
Roman expansion was driven by several imperatives, which often intertwined: trade, defence and lebensraum. None of these really had any relevance in West Africa, and it would have been expansion for its own sake, really

Best Regards
Grey Wolf
 
Roman expansion was driven by several imperatives, which often intertwined: trade, defence and lebensraum. None of these really had any relevance in West Africa, and it would have been expansion for its own sake, really

Best Regards
Grey Wolf

What do you mean by lebensraum, as it applies to the Romans?
 
Thanks guys.

Roman expansion was driven by several imperatives, which often intertwined: trade, defence and lebensraum. None of these really had any relevance in West Africa, and it would have been expansion for its own sake, really

Best Regards
Grey Wolf

What about down along the Nile into Nubia etc? Would allow better control of slave trade and trade with Arabia Felix, India and China?
 
maybe if the colonies of the Phoenicians on the West Africa(Senegale, Cote d Ivoire, around there) somehow survived, and made strong connections with Carthage and maybe Hannibal went to exile there instead of Anatolia so the Romans sent an expedition and took those colonies, thus gaining a base to conquer Sahara and even Sub-Saharan Africa
 

Winnabago

Banned
The main reason people didn’t expand deep into the Nile was the problem of cataracts, which prevented troops from getting supplied from Egypt.

However, a Roman governor of Egypt, Gaius Petronius, did invade Nubia, pushing all the way to Napata before making a trade settlement and getting out. Here is a map:
Nubia_today.png

Pretty obvious why they didn’t go any further than Napata, there was a big waterfall in front of their faces.

Wiki source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaius_Petronius
More detailed campaign: http://amenirdis.wordpress.com/category/meroe/
 
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The main reason people didn’t expand deep into the Nile was the problem of cataracts, which prevented troops from getting supplied from Egypt.

However, a Roman governor of Egypt, Gaius Petronius, did invade Nubia, pushing all the way to Napata before making a trade settlement and getting out. Here is a map:

File:Nubia_today.png

Pretty obvious why they didn’t go any further than Napata, there was a big waterfall in front of their faces.

Wiki source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaius_Petronius
More detailed campaign: http://amenirdis.wordpress.com/category/meroe/

Thanks for that :)

Few questions - Aren't the Cataracts passable during flood season? Or alternatively, the troops get out and march along the shore? Hell, maybe some cisten system can be devised allowing for longer lines across stretches of desert, similar to what the Nabateans did?
 

Winnabago

Banned
Well, if you want to march along the Red Sea, you might as well go by ship. And if you’re on a ship in the Red Sea, you should probably be invading Arabia Felix (“lucky Arabia”, as it was fertile), known to us as Yemen.

An invasion of this land was attempted, though due to a shitty Nabataean guide and diseases, the invasion was a failure.

Anyway, to invade up the Nile during the flood season would mean you would have to finish the campaign pretty quickly, which is presumably what they did until they ran out of time at Napata.

The best Roman Africa you could hope for would be a Roman province of Yemen and a Roman client state in Ethiopia.

That would mean a better Byzantine hold on the region, which would probably mean Romans in East Africa, and maybe no Islam to crush the East Romans’ hold.
 
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