World Without the Mongols

I probably wouldn't exist, and the world would be a poorer place for it :p

Seriously though, a huge number of people in China are supposedly descended from Genghis Khan. If he never existed, those people would all be butterflied away and the genetic makeup of China would be very different.

Every modern person would be butterflied away.
 
Every modern person would be butterflied away.

Especially TR.

Even as the small butterfly guy, the changes to a world where the Mongols amount to nothing will be enormous by the 19th century. Or 18th. (Depends on what you define as "modern", in other words)

You might get similar people for a while after the changes are noticeable (by the end of the 13th century, really), or you might get a world as alien as Barsoom, except for it being all-humans.
 
Every modern person would be butterflied away.

I know. What I meant is that China, especially the north, might be very different from the China we know now from the cultural level all the way down to the genetic make up of the population. It might also change the migration patterns; with no Mongol conquest, fewer people are moving south, and the Grand Canal does not reach Beijing (if Beijing exists at all), so trade from the south doesn't follow the same pattern. This all in turn affects the cultural development of southern China, possibly leading to a south that is more divergent than it is today.
 
I didn't like that TL. It was a bit much in my opinion, plus the huge Italian wank in the middle and the huge German wank towards the end and a shocking lack of maps. Maybe if it was cleaned up a bit with all the retcons posted so as to not confuse me on every single post. I rather liked Novorossiya though.

Since OTL could be considered as a wank for the Spanish, French and Brits (at least their languages prove it, if nothing else), I wanted a somewhat different world - where German, Italian and Russian are stronger. I admit that I had to fudge a few things to make German and Italian colonies possible.

Since the version I've read is the one posted here: http://althistory.wikia.com/wiki/Chaos and I haven't paid too much attention to the end, what makes it a huge wank for Germany and earlier Italy?

I can recommend reading that one if you don't like my "retcons" (in quotes because I mostly didn't retcon things, but just added stuff about areas that weren't covered enough, like the Middle East and such.)

Well the huge troop movements from German Atlantis and the gigantic German Union is in my opinion a tad unrealistic. It makes for a fun read though. Also not to mention the whole Nuovo Roma Empire that makes astounding territorial gains and the Socialist Britain and France. Its just a tad much for me. Also the technology gets to sci-fi levels.

Yeah, the tricontinental Germany may be a bit too much... IOTL we have the Commonwealth, but we don't see Britain and the US reunite just because they speak the same language. Alfred Kleiber (the unificator of the three Germanies) is supposed to be an exceptional politician, but still.

New Rome has the advantage of several great kings / (adoptive) emperors. I even added some Florentine / Italian defeats to make it less of a wank. (How many wars did Britain lose since 1500, BTW?) And yes, I had the problem that at the end, I pushed too many conquests into too few decades.

Why are Socialist Britain and France a problem? I always thought it'd make more sense than a revolution in Czarist Russia with 2% factory workers.

And I like futurist tech, especially AIs. I wish there were more TLs covering them.
 
OTOH, Poland and Hungary may grow even closer to one another if Poland is more west-oriented. Perhaps a Polish-Hungarian Commonwealth, instead?

Could be indeed.

I believe I read that the national anthem of Yugoslavia was written in the 19th century, when a Czech poet noted that, in Prague, he could more often hear German than Czech.

Note that the German-speakers in Prague were divided into Catholic Austrians and Jews. What does that have to do with Yugoslavia, though? :confused:

Without additional water, only the salts would be left behind, turning the lands into vast salt flats.

There are some plants which can remove salt from the ground, I think, but I don't know about details.

And why in the world an other nomad bloodthirst nation would not rise in Central Asia? :confused:

Genghis united not only the Mongols, but also several other steppe people. I guess we'd see several khans managing to unite one or two people - enough to give Russia, China and Choresm some trouble, but not much more.

with no Mongol conquest, fewer people are moving south, and the Grand Canal does not reach Beijing (if Beijing exists at all).

Good point. Beijing is older, however, just the name changed a few times.
 
Note that the German-speakers in Prague were divided into Catholic Austrians and Jews. What does that have to do with Yugoslavia, though? :confused:

I'm just citing Wikipedia on this, but apparently the song written to express outrage at hearing so much German in Prague in the 19th century became Hey, Slavs, a Pan-Slavic anthem adopted by Tito in WWII.

Let's consider the effect on Japan of no Mongols. If Japan does not experience the failed Mongol invasions, could she be more open to the outside world without seeing it as a threat?
 
The Mongol conquest of central Asia, followed by the Islamicization of the Il-Khans, helped spread Islam north and East. Xinjiang might remain non-Islamic until much later than OTL.



(mea culpa, I haven't read the rest of the thread yet...)

the best news for Islam and for the world is that Baghdad will not be destroyed!

think about culture, the library/libraries, the scholars, the incredible accumulation of knowledge and ongoing studies and research, the incredible pull this would have in keeping the Middle East as a center of the world, with or without oil.
 
I read in one of the "What If?" books that the Mongols are the ones who really ruined the Islamic golden age. Without them, Mesopotamia might be a lot wealthier, and the Islamic world as a whole could partake more in the European Scientific Revolution, or even have it themselves. Did not the Mongols make the Euphrates run black with ink after burning Baghdad's libraries?


what he said :)
 
I'm just citing Wikipedia on this, but apparently the song written to express outrage at hearing so much German in Prague in the 19th century became Hey, Slavs, a Pan-Slavic anthem adopted by Tito in WWII.

Let's consider the effect on Japan of no Mongols. If Japan does not experience the failed Mongol invasions, could she be more open to the outside world without seeing it as a threat?



no inspiration for the Kamikaze, for starters, not that anything else in otl WW2 would be around for that to interact with
 
Don't forget the Cumans are still around occupying most of OTLs Ukraine, and they were pretty tough yeggs themselves. The demographic weight is still going to be in what OTL is southern Russia proper: they'll probably be able to push out the Cumans once they get proper organized gunpowder armies going, but that's still a few centuries away at this point. A unified Russia might be able to at least occupy right-bank-of-the-Dnieper ukraine before then, but would include powerful northern states such as Vladimir, Novgorod, Smolensk...

1. Volga Bulgaria might remain a viable state even though often a tributary to whoever occupies Zalesye.

2. The Cumans were more or less a spent force as an existential danger by 1200. However, they were rapidly becoming hugely important in intra-Rus politics as mercenaries and in-laws. About half of the Cuman leaders at Kalka were Christian, judging by the names, for example.

You may well get a Rus that's in practice decentralised but ideologically united (constant shifting of the Grand Princely title from one major figure to another, with the title still having meaning), with a ring of formidable Turcic vassals (Cumans), tributaries (Volga Bulgaria) and sub-nations (Cherniye Klobuki) limiting its eastern expansion. Russians may never even settle the Wild Fields until very late because of that.

Further, there may still be "Cumans" in Bulgaria, Georgia, Alania (may remain pretty prominent sans Batu et al.) and Hungary as per OTL, though the balance of how many and where exactly is hard to predict.

Rus' most obvious expansion is into the Baltics (Smolensk, Novgorod, Pskov, Polotsk/Vytebsk/Minsk, Grodno/Novogrudak, Galich-Volyn are all possible contenders there).
 
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I think Eastern Christianity in East Asia has a better chance to survive if the Mongols did not expand.

There is/was buddhism in the area, long before, albeit it may have faded much then... of course, somes peoples converted to islam later, the turco-mongol waves around and after Genghis Khan's ride was a factor..
 
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