This isn't going to be relevant for quite awhile, but with the "First-Second-Third-etc Empire" way Rhomanina considers its history, it'd be pretty neat if any future revolutionaries or republicans call for a "Second Republic".
Fair points all but for trade keep in mind the industrial Revolution and the introduction of the potato brought a boom in the population of Europe. More people means more clothes are needed, more food needs to be eaten, and more luxuries are desired. Regardless of if the trade system develops more quickly it isn't going to mean much until you reach industrial level population density in Europe to create a market demand of the size I'm describing.
It's not likely to come that much earlier in the grand scheme of things even if it does. What's a few decades on the timescale of centuries?Yes a population boom and new tech were the main causes of the trade boom in OTL. Perhaps, new tech and an earlier industrial revolution ITTL will lead to a larger middle class and be enough to set off an explosion of trade earlier.
It's not likely to come that much earlier in the grand scheme of things even if it does. What's a few decades on the timescale of centuries?
Has Rhomaion in the East made any reforms or improvements ever since they lost to the Spanish at Ternate and TIdore?
I wonder if the population of Greek speaking Christians in Rhomania in the east will eclipse the population of the mainland in the future if they're able to conquer most of Island asia
Almost certainly the Christians will - at least if modern demographic trends are mimicked - Greek less so I expect. It really depends on how widely the language can spread as a lingua franca - for that it'd need to be competing with Malay linguistically, which I doubt it does yet. Heck, I doubt it is more widely spoken than Javanese, and that'd be no small feat either.
Though you had me realise, Indonesia grows a staggering amount of rice to my knowledge. I wonder if the Romans might ever start importing rice from the east once bulk shipping makes that practical
I'd laugh if the Romans treat rice, palm oil, and other agricultural goods as being the most important piece of the empire well into the 20th Century regardless of the significance of fossil fuel or gas reserves in the area.
Only really Java grew rice with anything resembling a surplus. The rest of the islands imported food from Java or lived on subsistence.
If the Rhomans are going to see rice as an important import they'll need to step up their presence down there, as the western third of Java is in the sway of Spain under the Sultanate of Sunda so exports from the island are split. The Rhomans also expressed more interest in spices than rice, much like the OTL Dutch. If history is anything to go by then Java's fertile farmland will get transitioned over to Coffee, Cotton, Indigo, and Sugar among other cash crops either slowly over time or quickly like in the massively destructive Cultivation System the Dutch implemented in the 19th century.
Dating back to when, though? The Indonesian Archipelago was vastly, vastly less populous until very recently, historically speaking. We're not talking about China or Japan here. There would have been a lot more scope to grow basic foodstuffs for export in 1600 than there was by 1950.
That said, I agree that it wouldn't be anywhere near the most profitable use of the land. Even with the Romans having interbred there and regarding the locals as fellow citizens instead of subjects, there's still a lot of scope to increase production of export crops without devastating the local people and ecology as IOTL.
Since at least the middle ages.
The geology of Java is volcanic and somewhat flat, unlike Sumatra, and has much arable land. The rest of Indonesia has significantly low population density because of food insecurity. Rice is still grown there but plantations for spices didn't exist until the colonial era. Spice production was the effort of gatherers in the jungle or some small planters, depending on the spice of course. This is the antithesis of landed agriculture, and the landscapes that make for good spices don't make for good rice growing without significant alteration to the ecosystem. Java's been the breadbasket of the East Indies and made its niche the plantation agriculture that would come much later, but applied to foodstuffs. Javan rice fed Indonesia in the colonial period and Javans even before then were the largest population group in Indonesia due to their plentiful food supply, which they in turn traded for spices alongside other goods they produced in plantations such as banana, palm, coconut, and cotton.
You can get a quick and dirty summary of some of that here where I've timestamped:
I could see Malay becoming a second language of the Rhomania in the West while Greek does the same in the East, with it being required to enter government service. Maybe some enterprising Orthodox priest converts Malay into the Greek alphabet the same way Vietnam switched to Latin script.
“Ultimate Ocean”, such an epically fitting name.
What are the demographics of Greek-speaking peoples anyway? I figure everyone from Greece to Bulgaria must speak it as a first language by now, but how's that spread to Anatolia and other territories?
Just a small nitpick though this time is undoubtedly ethnic cleansing and likely will reach the level of genocide once it’s all said and done the Roman actions in the Levant up to that point were not the “great crime” but were a series of actions referred to I think as “the sundering”.
Honestly Rhomania in this time period is going through a grim dark phase and I am horrified and intrigued on finding out what exactly Rome will do that qualifies as the “Great Crime”. A credit to @Basileus444 story telling and world building.
To me the great crime can’t be a series of actions or even an organized genocide over a period of years; I feel like it will be something done that is not realized right away as it happens behind the front lines of the war and is only discovered once the land is given back in a peace treaty.
On a lighter note, I was struck by inspiration this morning. A passing mention (or maybe a whole arc?) could be about a team of [INSERT ALIEN DEMONYM] xenoarchaeologists exploring a massive archive world. They are greeted by the hologram of the planet's caretaker AI who explains to them that it is a relic left to them by a glorious spacefaring precursor civilization eons ago. They were masters of the galaxy and harnessed the power of antimatter and black holes. They brought a new age of stability and prosperity to the galaxy and advanced the boundaries of science and technology. At their zenith, they gained insights of another realm and achieved enlightenment, unshackling themselves of connections to the physical world and transcended the Shroud. They guided a successor race to be the next caretakers of the galaxy, and finally revealed themselves to their successors, leaving them all their accumulated knowledge and technology.
I wonder whether the trade deficit European nations sustained when trading with China has been resolved? In OTL Great Britain and Spain fought many conflicts in the new world which disrupted silver production. Silver was prioritized for trade with China, which caused European economies to shrink.
ITTL, Mexico, the Shimazu and the Romans have a near monopoly on the silver market. Since they have consolidated their control over the Gangetic plain, perhaps GB will begin cultivating opium earlier to reduce the deficit with China?
P.s. do the Romans have a name for the Malay peninsula like how they named the Herakleian islands? Perhaps they went with Khrysē Khersónēsos from Ptolemy's Geography?
Do they really need an external stimulus? Perhaps a charismatic figure will simply convince them that the centralization of power brings rich spoils and new lands like how Temujin united the warring Mongol clans.
Funnily enough I was doing some reading on Alcoholism in Russia and it's depressing. Cheap Vodka has been used as a tool of social control by the Russian state since Ivan the Great. The Tsars put into place an alcohol monopoly in the country, taking away the previous ability of the peasants to distill their own vodka. They expanded the industry dramatically and flooded their own market with cheap alcohol. In doing so, they created a tremendously valuable revenue stream for the Russian State and ensured that their own peasantry would be too drunk to rebel. Additionally they created a cycle of addiction and dependence which kept the common Russian impoverished. Come the time of Catherine the Great this monopoly was so valuable that favoured court members were given Vodka plants to manage rather than grants of land. The communists were actually a prohibitionist party and smashed all the Vodka they could find until Stalin ruined it by reopening the plants and bringing the levels of addiction to a whole other level.
ITTL there is no unified Russia to impose a state monopoly on alcohol production. Russia is a broken state in competition and in many cases is nowhere near as authoritarian. This will have tremendous effects on Russian culture and government, as it would reduce poverty and increase political activity of the lower and merchant classes. I don't know how much, if at all, B444 would have anticipated this sort of thing but it's an interesting element of TTL's politics and culture regardless.
This isn't going to be relevant for quite awhile, but with the "First-Second-Third-etc Empire" way Rhomanina considers its history, it'd be pretty neat if any future revolutionaries or republicans call for a "Second Republic".
I'd suspect anyone with even a sniff of Republicanism will be lynched on the streets. TTL Republicanism is the complete antithesis of Roman DNA, it has too many connections with Venice and the Fourth Crusade.
Not to mention that the Empire had been an actual improvement on the Republic when the switch happened, though the trappings of the Republic was kept for quite some time and a few of which are still hanging on ITTL. The closest I can ever see Rhomania going is a kind of Prussian Constitutionalism with an even stronger executive. I could honestly see Rhome viewing actual democracies the same way the US views Communist nations.
I enjoy being validated.Also @Evilprodigy, I have to echo Frame’s comment about your contributions to discussions.
That sounds awesome.Given the Orthodox Church’s rule-of-thumb of translating the Bible and church texts into native languages, a Malay script with Greek letters is highly probable.
Something that just occured to me is that the update says that many remember days when China was ravaged by foreign barbarians. With how damaging this war was to the Koreans, wouldn't some people in China take notice that they're doing the thing they despise most, aka, having invaders destroy your home, to another group of people?
“I am not asking you to fight. I am asking you to die. But know that in the time it takes for the enemy to kill you, more will come to take your place. And you shall be remembered and revered as the saviors of China.”-Li Rusong