Four global empires

This is a timeline in which I divided the world between four empires.

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Empire   Capital  Language        Writing   Religion              Work                Government
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Rome     Paris    "Modern Latin"  Latin     Reformed-Catholicism  Left Free Market    Enlightened monarchy plus referendums
Russia   Moscow   Russian         Cyrillic  Anything              Reformed-Socialism  Representative democracy
China    Beijing  Mongolian       Hangul    Buddhism,Taoism       Other               Oligarchic council
Ottoman  Teheran  Modern Arabic   Arabic    Reformed-Islamism     Extreme-Capitalism  Enlightened monarchy


Minor areas
Dakota - Unexplored area in North America. Some tribal villages are in this place.
Acre - Unexplored area in South America, in Amazonia. Nobody knows what there is in this place.
Unexplored Africa - Includes the Sahara and inner areas that are unexplored. Some people live there.
Many Pacific Islands - Distant islands in the Pacific that are ignored by the empires.

Incan Empire - An empire that is isolated in South America and the Roman plans of invading it were never executed.
Nippon Empire - Japan survived many Mongol invasions and it is still in Tokugawa era.

Non-unified India - They had trade with India, but it was not annexed.
Ireland - The island was forgotten by the Romans. Some Germanic tribes invaded the island years later.
Sweden - Romans and Russians failed to invade this country and it was ignored later.

Suez - The free water channel and the free Jerusalem. The capital is Telaviv.
Panama - The other water channel.

History
Until 300 AD, the Romans managed to conquer Germany, Denmark, Poland and Britain entirely. From 300 to 500, the barbarian invasions started. The main cities were protected and the smaller cities fell. The empire stopped to expand, because the military force was used in campaigns to protect the cities against barbarian armies. A feudal society appeared in some places as a way to protect against barbarians. All lords were chosen by the emperor and they were replaced periodically.

In 520 AD, the Roman capital was moved to Paris. From 500 to 800, the empire fought many battles against barbarians. The Romans lost Denmark, Poland and Britain. Despite a large damage, the empire survived. After 800 AD, many areas were later reconquered and the Germanic barbarians were romanized.

After 700 AD, the Romans lost the North of Africa to the Arabians and managed to prevent the invasion of Iberian Peninsula. The Eastern Empire (Byzantine) was able to keep the European areas, but lost many areas in Africa and Asia.

In 900 AD, the Germanic problem is solved. The Romans started a campaign to recover the lost territories. They recovered and Morocco, Tunisia, Britain and Denmark, but failed in Poland and Egypt.

In 1054 AD, the Great Schism happened and a war between Rome and the Byzantine Empire happened. After some years, they had to make peace and then make alliance against the Arabs. The Arabs were their main enemies.

After 1100 AD, many Crusades were sent to Jerusalem, but failed. Rome fought many wars against the Arabs during 1100 AD to 1300 AD.

After 1300 AD, the Black Death Plague was a terrible problem. They fought a hundred-years war against the Arabs until 1450. The Romans managed to recover Serbia, but the Byzantine Empire fell in 1441 and the trade with the East came to be controlled by the Turks and Arabs, which are Roman enemies.

After the war, the Renaissance and Protestantism started. New models such as the heliocentrism were proposed. Many people were accused of heresy and the church was accused of corruption. Many conflicts happened between catholics and protestants.

In 1480, the emperor forbade the inquisition, because it could fragment the empire.

Later, the emperor agreed to send sailors to the Ocean in the West to explore the borders of the world. They also wanted to find new goods in other places to trade and exchange for spices. They found the Americas and annexed them, but instead of being colonies, the areas became part of the empire. The local people were romanized. They found gold and good areas to cultivate tropical goods. The Mercantilism was not adopted.

After 1650, during the Enlightenment, the Catholic Church was reformed and the church allowed more freedom. The Catholicism was also changed. Most protestants agreed with the reforms. The remaining Protestantism was forbidden.

In 1750, the Ottoman Empire and the Russian empire had expanded. The Mongol Empire had survived. In 1644, the Manchu defeated the Mongolians and renamed the empire to "Chinese empire". Since the Mongolian language had been widespread, Mongolian was adopted as the official language. They chose the Hangul alphabet from Korea.

After 1750, the Industrial Revolution started in Rome and it was spread to Russia and Ottoman.

After 1800, they started their imperialism campaigns. The Russians failed to invade Mongolia and decided to invade Canada and parts of North America. The Romans invaded Western Africa and the Ottomans invaded the Eastern Africa. During the century, the Ottoman Empire conquered Persia and the Chinese empire conquered Indochina.

After 1900, they started a world war. The Ottoman Empire invaded India, then Russia and Rome declared war on Ottoman. They wanted the Suez channel, which belonged to Ottoman, and did not want India under Ottoman rule due to trade reasons. The Ottoman Empire was defeated. Short time later, Russia and Rome started a war between them. They wanted to conquest India and the rest of North America. While the war was happening, China conquered Malaysia, Australia and other islands.

After the war, the three empires were devastated because the weapon technology was too advanced. China had plans to invade India and Persia, but their war technology was less advanced. Due to the war damages and the Chinese threat, the three empires invited China and they agreed to sign a peace treaty. The map of the world was changed. The Balkan Peninsula became part of Rome, Constantinople became part of Russia and the capital of the Ottoman Empire was moved to Teheran.

The consequence of the war is the creation of the United Nations Organization (UNO) to keep the balance of the power. The members are the four largest empires of the world: Rome, Russia, Ottoman and China. The deal is to avoid war between them and prevent the growth of their empire; it means that they cannot invade countries that still have not been invaded, including India and Japan.

They also created the neutral area of Panama and neutral area of Sinai. These areas are independent small countries administrated by UNO. The use of the water channels is free. Jerusalem became also a free city to all religions that like it. They also agreed to respect most Human Rights. The religions became more free and the government less authoritarian.

During the century, Russia suffered a revolution and became democratic socialist. Any religion became allowed.

Rome almost became socialist. The emperor feared that the socialism of the workers or the capitalism of the bourgeoisie can change the government. Then, the emperor allied with the workers to do a revolution to remove the social classes and limit the excesses of the Capitalism. The Roman referendums do not choose people. They choose politics, administrative decisions, changes in the laws and other things. It was very limited in the beginning, but it is improving through new technologies.

The Ottoman Empire suffered a series of revolution: Reforms in Islamism to make it more free, Reforms in the laws to avoid tyranny and protect the rights of the women. Now, the second wife is only allowed if the first one agrees. Women have political rights, can use machines and can study. However, only men can be worker, but the salary is shared with their wife. Women must solve all tasks of the house, including repairs in appliances.

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Welcome to AH.com.

That is an interesting scenario you have there, but I suggest it needs some work.

Namely, your borders in the map are very disjointed and don't always seem to be thought out.

For example, the St. Laurence river makes a very poor border. Secondly, I have to question on how the Russians made it to the St. Laurence valley in the first place.

Why did the Romans move their capital to Paris?

How did the Ottomans come about? Your POD is in the 300's and yet they show up 1100 years later.

The protestant reformation was partly a product of the politics of the the very disjointed Holy Roman Empire, so it happening is pretty anachronistic as well.

As well, the Catholic Church was never opposed to the exploration of the world. The two principal powers that first explored from Europe was Catholic Portugal and Spain.

The Earth was known to be round since Ptolemy, an ancient Egyptians. The ancient greeks knew the Earth was round, as did the medieval Europeans. In fact, Columbus was WRONG in his assertions (the idea that he knew the earth was round and everyone else thought it was flat is a myth). He actually thought the Earth was smaller than it was and overestimated the size of Asia. If the Americas hadn't been where they were, he and his ships would have died at sea.

Why would the Chinese, who have pride in well over a thousand year plus more of culture, choose a language of the Barbarians, and then pick the Korean alphabet to write it. Chinese characters have survived for a reason.

There are a few more I can point out, but its a fun idea.

A timeline you might be interested in, that follows the Super Empires idea you have, is Tony Jones' Monarchy world.

http://www.clockworksky.net/monarchy_world/ah_mw_top.html

http://www.clockworksky.net/monarchy_world/ah_mw_world.html
 
The existence of an Anatolian based empire makes sense - but it's not going to be Ottoman, as pointed out. Moreover, why would a Turkic people have their capital in Tehran - and why would ANYONE with a capital in Tehran use Arabic as their Imperial language?

There is just no way the 'Russians' are going to conquer *Canada. The Baltic is a lake controlled by your 'Romans' and the Scandinavians. And going north around Scandinavia would be ... tough - OK for high value trade like furs, maybe, but a total bitch for regular trade, let alone conquest. The Romans, the Scandinavians and the Chinese are really the only possible powers available to conquer the Americas, in this scenario.

Interesting that the Dakota moved on to the Plains iTTL. That's an interesting coincidence.
 
The existence of an Anatolian based empire makes sense - but it's not going to be Ottoman, as pointed out. Moreover, why would a Turkic people have their capital in Tehran - and why would ANYONE with a capital in Tehran use Arabic as their Imperial language?

The Ottomans moved their capital to Constantinople once they conquered it, despite it being a Byzantine, not Turkish city

There is just no way the 'Russians' are going to conquer *Canada. The Baltic is a lake controlled by your 'Romans' and the Scandinavians. And going north around Scandinavia would be ... tough - OK for high value trade like furs, maybe, but a total bitch for regular trade, let alone conquest. The Romans, the Scandinavians and the Chinese are really the only possible powers available to conquer the Americas, in this scenario.

But once the Russians colonise Siberia, all they have to do is cross the Bering Sea to get to the Americas. Russia managed to colonise Alaska in OTL, so maybe they could have managed to grab more territory if they had modernised as fast as other European powers
 
But once the Russians colonise Siberia, all they have to do is cross the Bering Sea to get to the Americas. Russia managed to colonise Alaska in OTL, so maybe they could have managed to grab more territory if they had modernised as fast as other European powers

That's certainly possible, but given how east they got into North America from Siberia, it seems problematic at best, even if they were able to expand into Siberia much earlier and they focused their expansion eastward given they knew they couldn't expand much westward.

However, if that's the case I couldn't see them going very far inland into southern north America, certainly colonies and trading posts, but their climate and homeland is and was very different from that region, and given that you had the romans colonize in the roman historical way (that is to say they romanized their vassal kingdoms while flooding in roman speaking roman citizens), and they had such experiences in Northern Africa, it seems that by the time the Russians got out to Siberia from fighting the Mongols and the Arabs, they would have grabbed Alaska, sure, and maybe some coastal northern places like British Columbia and Yukon and Oregon and Washington, but their expansion into those mountains and across the rocky mountains would be problematic, especially if the Romans had Aztec legions to march northward, even accounting for obvious plagues in Americas deaths.

Two other comments/questions. 1) Why is the Roman Empire finding its capital anywhere but Rome itself? I'm correct in reading your time line that this is a continued Roman Empire and not some medieval successor state that conquered Rome's former borders from the remnants of Emperor Charlemagne's empire with the Kingdom of West Francia, then proceeded to further expand? So why Paris, and not Rome? Yes I understand Rome is not central to the empire, but Paris is hardly more central to it, and Rome being the capital certainly provides the pride of the empire.

2) Why cop out in such a world where Rome did as it did and say that the Irish were still done like they were in our time line and fucked over by norse-german-french people who in your time would theoretically be just as 'barbaric' as they would be, except they wouldn't be softened by Christian religion to have been taken over? The concept of an Irish High King (Or really High King of all Gaels) existed far far far before any norse invasions, and it certainly would make a lot more sense to me if you involved them in your history's Roman stuff explaining they got their independence via serving as a sort of Varangian Guard for the Romans/vassal/ally, and for god's sake gave them a different color? You currently have them the same color as the chinese-mongol-korean (given they speak Hangul, is Mongol-Korean better terming for their OTL equivalent?) barbarian protectorates, and initially before I saw they had their own color I thought you intended to do that on purpose.

I only mention 2) because realistically a Roman Empire that expanded over all of the Island of Britain would have fought the celts in Britain a LOT already, and had to have fought the Gaels in Western Scotland as well. After having already fought them, and given that the Irish had great warhounds and also had/have a ton of fertile lands for farming and for cattle raising/sheep raising, the Roman Empire would have just swallowed them up too unless there was some other kind of agreement/friendship between them.
 
The map, I believe, speaks for itself.

Brown: a European power. I based the map out of a Spanish Empire-wank.
Green: a Muslim power. Ottomans, Arabs or Persians who went full territorial.
Red: a Slavic power- obviously Russia.
Violet: an Asian power. China, perhaps, with more mercantilism.

Independent states are as such: Ethiopia, Switzerland, Iceland, Nicaragua, Gabon, Albania, Korea, Burma and Armenia.

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Thanks for the responses.

I filled the map before writing the history. The first version had a wall between the Roman Empire (Catholic) and the Byzantine-Ottoman Empire (Islamic).


The Romans and Russian started the colonization of North America in the Eastern coast and reached the inner areas slowly. Later they agreed to use the St. Laurence river and the lakes as border.
The Russians had an agreement with the Scandinavians to pass through the Baltic. The Scandinavians thought that it is better than fighting many times against the Russian invasions.

I wanted to merge the Mongol Empire and China and create China with the power of the Mongol Empire. The Mongol Empire survived from 1259 to 1644. They had problems to manage a huge area, stopped the expansion and lost some areas, including Turkey, Persia and Russia, but China continued under their control. During these centuries, the Mongolian language was spread.
Later, the Manchu took the Mongol Empire, adopted the most common language and chose Hangul, which is easier than the Chinese alphabet.

The beginning of the Ottoman Empire is not different from OTL. The difference starts after 1800. The Ottoman Empire became more imperialist and industrialized. Constantinople was in the border of the empire and it is not a good place to keep a capital. Arabic was chosen as the official language because it is the language of the Islamism. Both the Turks and the Persians are islamic.

The Romans were defeated many times when they tried to invade Ireland. The expansion stopped during the Middle Ages. When they expanded again, they were more interested in areas with weaker resistance in Africa and Americas.

In the ATL, the Protestantism started as a disagreement with the Catholic Church behaviour, including indulgences, inquisition and opposition to some ideas of the Renaissance. The Protestants said that the Church does not represent God in the Earth.

Serbia and Bulgaria are Slavic and Romania is descendant from Rome. Russia wanted Constantinople to be able to sail to the Mediterranean.

I will add to my todo list:
-A reason to move the capital to Paris.
-Fix the reason to sail to the West.
 
Thanks for the responses.

. . .

I wanted to merge the Mongol Empire and China and create China with the power of the Mongol Empire. The Mongol Empire survived from 1259 to 1644. They had problems to manage a huge area, stopped the expansion and lost some areas, including Turkey, Persia and Russia, but China continued under their control. During these centuries, the Mongolian language was spread.
Later, the Manchu took the Mongol Empire, adopted the most common language and chose Hangul, which is easier than the Chinese alphabet.

Ignoring the fact that it would have been virtually impossible for the "Mongol Empire," which would have been limited to the Yuan by the 14th century, to remain intact for that long, "Hangul" wouldn't work for several reasons. To begin with, even if the Mongols somehow managed to retain Korea, the Korean writing system would essentially have been butterflied, as its creation was possible due to an independent monarch (Sejong) along with a scholarly institution (Hall of Worthies), both of which would have been heavily curtailed under foreign influence. The script would also not have been referred to as "Hangul," as it was a neologism created in the early 20th century (the alphabet was not widely used until 1960-80 or so) for nationalistic reasons, and would have been referred to as "Eonmun," "Jeongeum" (from "Hunmin-Jeongeum"), or a similar equivalent instead.

If the Mongols somehow contained to retain its hold over China, most of the elite would have been assimilated into Chinese culture within 150-200 years or so, given the general cultural shifts that had occurred IOTL, eventually causing them to use Mandarin, or a similar equivalent, over the long run. However, if Mongolian did manage to remain as the "official" language, the classical Mongolian script would have been retained under the Mongol Empire, due to its widespread use IOTL, despite more efficient systems such as 'Phags-pa. After the Manchus (assuming that they still change their nomenclature from the "Jurchen") take over (1644 corresponds too closely with what occurred IOTL), they would probably have altered the script themselves, similar to what had occurred IOTL with the Manchu script. In fact, both Hangul and the Manchu alphabet were inspired by and derived from two Mongolian scripts, respectively, so it wouldn't have made sense for the Manchus to adopt Hangul if they could just as easily have invented one of their own.

"Hangul" also would not have suited "Mongolian" morphologically, as more vowels and consonants would have to be invented to fit the language, while unused ones would have become obsolete. In addition, while Hangul's "syllable blocks" were unique innovations (although it was inspired by the nature of Chinese characters) that conserved space, its biggest drawback is that every syllable requires a vowel, making it extremely difficult, if not impossible, to represent some consonant clusters. As a result, if this version of "Hangul" was somehow implemented, it would be "Korean" just as much as the classical Mongolian script is "Uyghur" or 'Phags-pa is "Tibetan," making it incorrect to refer to it as "Hangul," or a similar equivalent. Representing "Manchu" would have presented similar issues, while "Mandarin" would be more problematic, as it only has 2/3 consonant finals.
 
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