A totally Roman Europe

[RaptorWolf]

In this scenario, the Roman Empire added these lands to their borders:

• Scandinavia
• Scotland
• Ireland
• Russia (stopping at the Ural Mountains)
• Any remaining land claimed by Alexander the Great

If Rome did claim these lands, then what point--or points--of departure would be needed for Rome to keep these in the long term? How drastically would they change the history of the listed regions? Would this prolong the empire's lifespan? If not, when would it most likely fall?

 

[Lalli]

Heard about logistics? There is not way that Roman Empire can conquer all of these lands. Perhaps Scotland, Ireland and Germania are possible but even that would be hard.

 

[RaptorWolf]

Doesn't really answer any of the questions.

 

[Xel]

The premise is kind of fun but why are they being granted Alexandra's extremely short conquests? That seems rather off topic.

 

[RaptorWolf]

why are they being granted Alexandra's extremely short conquests? That seems rather off topic.

Reclamation.

 

[Xel]

Reclamation.

Romans weren't Greek and Alexander held the Achaemenid territories for like, a couple of years before dying stupidly and the whole thing fractured into largely useless pieces.

Anyway, I think the other person probably had the right of it, this is very hard to make work.

As it is, the best means I could imagine for it without borderline cheating would be to like... Take Rome out of Sothern Africa and leave it to Carthage and company, keeping them strong enough that like the East to the Parthians, forcing Roman to stay in Europe and if they wanted to keep conquering to have to travel Northward, while ensuring all the people and resources spent South & East are spent North instead.

 

[Nyegosh]

Logistics might be an issue here... As well as a lack of the carruca, the main reason Rome stopped at Germany. There would also need to be administrative reforms.

Not to say it would be impossible - the Chinese have managed to create states of a similar size, though in the case of China, it's core territory is a lot more compact...

Motivation is another aspect; the best comparison here would be Russia, whose primary expansion into Siberia was motivated by, well, not wanting to be raided by steppe nomads for all eternity. Rome was similar, always attempting to pacify various barbarians by expansion.

This gives us a rough timetable for this, as well as the prerequisite conditions: you want to keep Rome powerful until the Hunnic invasions and the start of the migration period. And by this, I mean, you need to keep the Roman bureaucracy and administration strong - it wasn't the mass migrations of various barbarians that ended Rome, but the increasing radio silence from Rome leading to the puppet barbarian lords to just do whatever they want. Now, after the Huns do their thing, it's absolutely critical to procure the carruca - seeing that it was first invented in China, and that the first Europeans to acquire it were the Slavs during the migration period, we can assume that the Huns introduced this technology.

This way you kill 2 birds with 1 stone - Rome now has the technology to properly utilize any further annexations in Europe, and Rome now has a strong motivation to expand further - restoring trade routes, and pacifying the region. If Rome remains strong at this point, it's very likely that some peoples will even *invite* the Romans to rule over them (similarly to how the ancient east Slavs invited the Varangians as a "neutral" party, as no tribe and kingdom managed to overpower the others).

The problem here: Europe has a far higher potential than the core of Rome. The soil is better and allows for a far higher population than the mountainous and arid Mediterranean basin. This Rome will quickly stop being Rome. Eventually, the elite will simply become mostly Germanics and Slavs (basically what happened with the Frankish Empire and the HRE). Latin will be quite an odd language...

Then, and only then, can any invasion of Persia be considered. And it's not going to happen from the Caucasus and Anatolia as usual, no - when you own most of Europe, you own the core of Russia. And when you own the core of Russia, you're automatically implored to cross the Urals and keep going for the same reason Rome would go out their way to annex most of Europe. The invasion of Persia will be from 2 directions: from Central Asia, and from the West.

A state of this ludicrous size and eventual population will probably not be very centralized - instead of an Eastern and Western empire you're probably going to get at least 5.

 

[Flavius Iulius Maiorianus]

The problem with any expansion into Europe is that Rome is not, first and foremost, a European empire. What I mean by that is it's main focus wasn't on most of mainland Europe itself, but rather on the Mediterranean. The reason the Roman border was at the Rhine instead of the Elbe was because the Rhine could be connected to the Mediterranean sea. Conquering Germania would increase the population, shorten the border, and provide defense in depth, since they can fall back to the Rhine if the Elbe is breached, but it would also require immense investment to pacify and develop.

Going back to your question, such conquests are physically impossible for a Mediterranean based empire, or even an empire based in Europe. It would be impossible to manage. This is what such a state would look like:

As you can imagine, overextension would be a massive problem. Roman conquest of Persia is literally impossible, and there's no reason to expand to the Urals. Such a venture would undoubtably fail and would provide no benefits. Indeed, it would be hard to defent and would be a massive drain on the treasury.

 

[RaptorWolf]

So if a Roman Russia is not the proper butterfly to prevent the bloodiness of Russian history from being front and center (in other words, miles more excessive than the rest of European history), then what is?

 

[Viking25]

So if a Roman Russia is not the proper butterfly to prevent the bloodiness of Russian history from being front and center (in other words, miles more excessive than the rest of European history), then what is?

I honestly can't think of a way that one could treat Western Europe's history of colonialism, oppressment of ethnic and religious minorities is much worse than Russia(Certainly not these days, but from the part of the world that produced Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy it does strike me as rather hypocritical to call out other peoples histories). Or how being conquered by the Romans those famous paragons of civilized behaviour who never brutalised the people's conquered or persecuted dissenting groups(The Jews and Christians would like a word) would counter this trend if it exists.

 

[Nuraghe]

Logistics might be an issue here... As well as a lack of the carruca, the main reason Rome stopped at Germany. There would also need to be administrative reforms.

Not to say it would be impossible - the Chinese have managed to create states of a similar size, though in the case of China, it's core territory is a lot more compact...

Motivation is another aspect; the best comparison here would be Russia, whose primary expansion into Siberia was motivated by, well, not wanting to be raided by steppe nomads for all eternity. Rome was similar, always attempting to pacify various barbarians by expansion.

This gives us a rough timetable for this, as well as the prerequisite conditions: you want to keep Rome powerful until the Hunnic invasions and the start of the migration period. And by this, I mean, you need to keep the Roman bureaucracy and administration strong - it wasn't the mass migrations of various barbarians that ended Rome, but the increasing radio silence from Rome leading to the puppet barbarian lords to just do whatever they want. Now, after the Huns do their thing, it's absolutely critical to procure the carruca - seeing that it was first invented in China, and that the first Europeans to acquire it were the Slavs during the migration period, we can assume that the Huns introduced this technology.

This way you kill 2 birds with 1 stone - Rome now has the technology to properly utilize any further annexations in Europe, and Rome now has a strong motivation to expand further - restoring trade routes, and pacifying the region. If Rome remains strong at this point, it's very likely that some peoples will even *invite* the Romans to rule over them (similarly to how the ancient east Slavs invited the Varangians as a "neutral" party, as no tribe and kingdom managed to overpower the others).

The problem here: Europe has a far higher potential than the core of Rome. The soil is better and allows for a far higher population than the mountainous and arid Mediterranean basin. This Rome will quickly stop being Rome. Eventually, the elite will simply become mostly Germanics and Slavs (basically what happened with the Frankish Empire and the HRE). Latin will be quite an odd language...

Then, and only then, can any invasion of Persia be considered. And it's not going to happen from the Caucasus and Anatolia as usual, no - when you own most of Europe, you own the core of Russia. And when you own the core of Russia, you're automatically implored to cross the Urals and keep going for the same reason Rome would go out their way to annex most of Europe. The invasion of Persia will be from 2 directions: from Central Asia, and from the West.

A state of this ludicrous size and eventual population will probably not be very centralized - instead of an Eastern and Western empire you're probably going to get at least 5.

I agree with your comment, Rome was an empire based on trade and the conquest of territories easily reachable by sea / land transport quickly, their hub for centuries was the Mediterranean ( not surprisingly called " Mare Nostrum " ) certainly not Europe ( which as the Greeks considered barbaric and terrifying, for a Roman to end up in Londinuim was like being on the edge of the civilized world, outside there was only a nightmare full of barbarians, it wasn't a holiday prize as we will think today ) only after the Arab conquests that had to change priorities to adapt quickly, we must consider that Rome will not expand into territories not considered valid by its elite, the only territories that Op listed in which Rome had an interest in controlling was precisely the province of Germania ( regarded by both Augustus and Tiberius as pacified, prior to Arminius' revolt, is that it could easily be supplied by Mediterranean river transport via the Rhine and its tributaries ) I also consider the numerous attempts made after 9 AD to be important. to pacify and re-incorporate the region, they were stopped because in the end Rome did not want to spend too much money on continuous peacemaking campaigns in the region, but considering that contact with Rome over the centuries has produced the birth and development of peoples such as Franks, Goths, vandals etc , who wanted to be more integrated into the empires, we can safely say that there was a good dose of romanitas, the only two other vaguely interesting places for the Romans are obviously the Persian East ( but which would require defeating the Parthians first and then the Sassanids definitively, a very complicated thing, but maintaining it would greatly shift the center of gravity of the empire to the point of leading to its division well in advance ) and Scotland ( but it must be said Otl was abandoned after only 50 years from the its conquest, certainly it was also due to internal problems within the empire )