"Io Mihailŭ, Împĕratul Românilor" - A Michael the Brave Romania Wank

[Zagan]

Family Tree of the House of Romania
(version 3)​

Note: The Family Tree will be upgraded as the story progresses. New versions will be usually available once or twice a century.

Legend:
Double Border: Present in the Succession Line during all or part of their lives;
Red Border: Emperor / Empress Reignant of Romania (and other realms);
Multiple Connections: Multiple (less important) Issue grouped together in one box for simplicity;
Blue Background: Males;
Pink Background: Females;
Grey Background: Multiple Issue, some males, other females.
.

 

[Zagan]

The Century of Peace
European Colonialism​

Warning: Within this chapter there is some discussion of the crimes perpetrated against the conquered peoples by the Colonial Powers.


EDIT: I had to change small parts of this chapter for the sake of self-consistency.



Introduction

The profound social, political, technological and philosophical changes which had swept through Europe during the first half of the 17th century heralded the advent of the European Golden Era, an unprecedented period of complete European domination on the World stage.

Long gone were the times when the Europeans fought for their survival against the seemingly neverending onslaught of their many enemies! After the end of the Second European War, the Century of Peace provided the European Powers the perfect opportunity to expand all over the World at an amazing rate.

The colonies provided the Europeans with:
- Space for their rapidly expanding populations (in North Africa, Middle East, North America, Südreich, La Plata, etc);
- Products unavailable in Europe like spices, coffee, cocoa, tea, furs, oils, minerals (from India, the East Indies, the Caribbean, etc);
- Slaves for the plantations and mines (from Africa and the conquered Muslim lands).

The extraordinary success enjoyed by the European Powers began to ask for an explanation. Unable to understand the actual reasons of the European exceptionalism, which are debated by historians to this day, the European philosophers of that time came forth with two conflicting theories:
1. The inherent superiority of the European Race over the lesser races (Britain, Germany, Scandinavia);
2. The Divine Grace bestowed upon the Christians by God Himself (Spain, France, Italy, Romania).

In some instances, this difference in philosophy would be paralleled by a marked difference in the behaviour of the conquerers towards the conquered and enslaved. A good example might be the rather mild and paternalistic attitude exhibited by the Germanic Powers [1] versus the harrowing ethnocidal excesses of the Latin Powers.

[1] With the important exception of Australia, where the German Colonial Establishment considered the native inhabitants to be part of a different species and treated them worse than wild animals.



1. Spain

The Empire of the Americas

From Mexico to the Southern Ocean, all the American Mainland and Islands belonged to Spain, who was still the largest Power in terms of total land area. In order to preempt any possible encroachment by hostile powers, Spain spent the Century of Peace taking actual possession of all the coast and the most important islands in its huge domain.

Resource extraction was increasingly supplemented by various plantations in the tropical and equatorial areas and settler colonization of La Plata, Chile and Mexico Provinces. Besides Spaniards who made up the absolute majority of settlers, significant numbers of Catholics from from non-Catholic countries were welcomed by the Spanish Crown: British (Irish), Germans (mainly Austrians and Bavarians), Croats and Hungarians. A few generation later, all of them became assimilated into the Spanish majority.

The Lesser Antilles were leased to Britain for 99 years (1648 - 1747). The expiration of the lease and the unwillingness of Spain to renew it was one of the catalists of the Third European War (EW3).

The northward expansion on the Pacific Coast of North America was marred by low-scale intermittent conflict with Scandinavia and later Britain. The situation in North America remained fluid until the end of EW3.

Patagonia was the cause of a short war in 1701 with Germany which claimed the territory south of parallel 40ºS and attempted to seize it by force. After several months of mostly inconclusive fighting in the Pampas and on the High Seas, the Great Powers Council brokered a peace settlement between Spain and Germany.

All of Patagonia remained Spanish territory, with Germany gaining only Tierra del Fuego (Feuerland) and adjacent islands with the border being settled on the middle of the Strait of Magellan (which became an international water way, freely navigable by the ships of all European Countries).


The Philippines

After losing all the East Indies colonies and outposts to Britain and all the Pacific Islands to Germany in the Second European War, the Philippines remained isolated and pretty useless and lost most of their former importance.

Around 1670, Spain decided to sell it but neither Britain nor Germany wanted the other Power to have it and pressured Spain to refrain from selling, while the other European Powers were obviously not interested. In 1757, the Philippines were almost abandoned, save for the missionaries, and Spain finally sold the unprofitable colony to Germany, much to the British displeasure.


The African Colonies (Bissau, Guinea, Angola, Mozambique)

The only purpose of these Colonies was the aquisition of Slaves.

The rather remote Colony of Mozambique (which lost its strategic significance with the loss of the rest of the Spanish interests in the Indian Ocean) was sold to Germany in 1692 for a large amount of money. This action paved the way to the future conflict between Germany and Britain in Southern Africa.


Spanish North-West Africa (Mauretania)

After the Second European War (EW2), Spanish NW Africa consisted of Tangiers, Ceuta, Mellila, Oran and Algiers (Constantine, Tunis, Bizerte and Tripoli having been ceded to Italy).

The Spanish-Moroccan Wars of 1669-1673, 1688-1696 and 1717-1718 resulted in the complete destruction of the Moroccan State and its incorporation into Spanish NW Africa which was renamed Mauretania.

In NW Africa, the Spaniards were the most ruthless, destroying the Arab and Berber population almost completely through a combination of several gruosome but effective methods:
- widespread massacres of both the prisoners of war and civilians;
- deliberate famines and water shortages;
- transportation to America of most able-bodied men to work as slaves on plantations (because most of them died quickly, the turnover was very high);
- Forced Christianization followed by assimilation into the Spanish Nation.

In the span of less than a century, the demography of NW Africa was irreversibly changed and the whole area was merged with Spain Proper.



2. France

La Nouvelle France (New France)

Following a large increase in population due to state-sponsored immigration, New France started to expand northwards.

After several incidents between French and Scandiavian fur trappers, Scandinavia and France agreed in 1738 to a common border on the parallel 54ºN, granting New France a small access to King Christian Sea [2], which was until then an internal Scandinavian Sea.

The treaty solved one problem but created another, with France using its rather ambiguous wording to claim all the territory up to the Pacific coast where the Scandinavians had already established their presence.

[2] OTL Hudson Bay, New France's coastline being in the southern part of OTL James Bay.


The African Colonies (Senegal, French Guinea, Ivory Coast, French Congo)

Except some limited natural resource extraction, the main purpose of the African Colonies was the very lucrative slave trade. When France banned slavery in 1647, the Colonies lost most of their importance.



3. Britannia

British North America

The first Colony to pass the one million European inhabitants mark, British North America (BNA) became the most important British Colony due to its strategic position, massive size, great amount of productive land in a nice temperate location, natural resources, booming population [3] and economy.

[3] Mostly British but also smaller numbers of Germans, Scandinavians and Protestant French (Huguenots).

The westward expansion of BNA placed the British in conflict with the other powers. A tentative partition of North America (1738) between Britain, France, Scandinavia and Spain left noone fully satisfied and, although a full-scale war did not erupt, clear borders would not be agreed upon until after the end of EW3.

Shortly before the start of EW3, the situation in BNA became increasingly tense, the American colonists demanding equal taxation and representation with the British from the Home Islands.

After several rounds of fruitless negotiations between the representatives of the American colonists and the London Government, an armed insurrection against the British Authorities seemed imminent.

The start of EW3 pressured the British Government to acquiesce to the American's demands in order to concentrate on the war raging in the rest of the World. BNA became an integral part of Britannia with most of the British laws being extended to the new territory. With the benefit of hindsight we can now say that it wasn't the most sensible decision...


The Lesser Antilles (West Indies)

These Caribbean Islands were a British Colony in all but name, the 99 years lease being considered by Britain to be nothing more than a technicality. With Spain unwilling to extend the lease, Britain annexed them unilaterally in 1751, which was considered a great humiliation in Spain.

They were very lucrative, producing vast amounts of highly priced commodities like sugar, cocoa, coffee and tobacco [4].

[4] Until 1688 when following the advice of the British Church (it was belatedly realized that tobacco was the Devil's herb!), Britannia outlawed smoking and destroyed all tobacco plantations.


The East Indies

Including the famous Spice Islands and the strategic Malacca Strait, the East Indies were a very profitable Colony, albeit plagued by rebelions and unrest. The British-held areas and Protectorates were slowly expanding until most of the Archipelago was under direct or indirect British rule on the eve of EW3.


British India (including Ceylon)

British India was an extremely profitable colony, explaining the British desire to subjugate all the Indian Subcontinent.

The unrelenting British encroachment in India was slowed down and finally stopped by three factors: the resurgence of the Mughal Empire in the first half of the 18th century, the German, Romanian and Persian meddling and the start of EW3.



The African Colonies (Gambia, Sierra Leone, Gold Coast)

Like the other European Sub-Saharan Colonies, the British African Colonies' main economic activity was the Slave Trade.


Cape Colony (Capeland)

Unlike the other African Colonies, the milder climate of the Cape Colony and the relative lack of dangerous diseases attracted a large number of colonists who began to expand into the African wilderness. By the eve of EW3, the British colonists from Capeland had already met with the German military from Mosambik who were expanding in the opposite direction. Several clashes led to a small number of casualties on both sides.



4. Germany

Südreich (The South Realm)

The Südreich (South Realm in German) was the single German Colony including all the German lands in the Southern Hemisphere:
- Australia (Neubrandenburg, Neuhessen, Neuholland, Neuseeland, Neubremen, Neudanzig, Neuhamburg);
- Neupommern (OTL Tasmania);
- Neupreussen (OTL New Zealand);
- Neuguinea (New Guinea, including adjacent islands);
- Südsee Inseln (The Islands of the South Sea = Pacific Ocean);
- Antarktika (everything south of 40º S and not part of the other continents);
- Madagaskar (Madagascar, including other Indian Ocean Islands);
- Mosambik (Mozambique, including parts of South Africa and Swaziland);
- Feuerland (Tierra del Fuego, including adjacent islands).

Australia and Neupommern (New Pomerania) were Settler Colonies, needed for the excess German population. On the Australian Mainland, the interior proved difficult to settle because of the harsh arid climate.

It is here where the Germans commited their single greatest crime: the dehumanization and virtual extermination of the Australian Natives. The German Scientist Martin Vögel classified them as another human species, Homo Australis, purportedly distinct from Homo Sapiens. The reason for this seems to have been their lack of agriculture and state structures.

Later, from just another (lower) human species, the Natives were degraded to mere animals by the local Colonial Authorities. Lacking the protection of the Church (not humans meant no baptism) and with their lands coveted by the settlers, the Natives were displaced, murdered and, in some instances, even hunted like animals. The persecution only ended in the 20th Century, but even today the racists are calling them Affe (Ape).

Neupreussen (New Prussia) was conquered in stages, starting with its northernmost cape. By the start of EW3, the conquest was mostly complete with only small areas under the control of Maori insurgents. The local Maori population was to be slowly germanized like everywhere else except Australia and Neupommern.

Organized resistance in Neuguinea (New Guinea) faltered quickly but parts of the interior remained unexplored until the 20th century.

The South Sea Islands included most Pacific Islands except those near its edges and Hawaii (still undiscovered by Europeans at the start of EW3).

Antarktika was continously expanded to include more and more lands as they were discovered, peaking with the late 18th century discovery of Mainland Antarctica itself.

Madagaskar, while claimed by the Germans, was not fully occupied until the early 19th century. By the start of EW3, only the northern part of Madagaskar was under German control, with an excellent port at its northern tip.

The Mascarene Islands were settled beginning in the 1640's. The Dodo, a strange bird from the Great Mascarene Island (Grossmaskarene, OTL Mauritius) was saved from almost sure extinction by the dedication of the German naturalists from the Zoological Gardens in Prague.

Mosambik was probably bought from the Spaniards not for its value (the Germans were not interested in the Slave Trade and abolished slavery altogether in 1715) but for its strategic position near British Capeland which they wanted to conquer when the opportunity arised. By the start of EW3, the Germans and the British had already a common (and highly contested) border in Southern Africa.

Feuerland (Tierra del Fuego) had been grabbed from the weaker Spanish Empire mainly to prevent the possible closure of the important Strait of Magellan. Besides the minimum necessary amenities for the unfortunate soldiers deployed there, it was not developed further.



5. Sarmatia

Struggling with internal issues inherent to a multinational state and external threats (Russia), Sarmatia was initially unwilling or unable to enter the Colonial Club. The only Sarmatian Colony, only acquired in 1743, was Sarmatian Guinea centred around the mouths of the Niger River.

The Black Sea Steppe, the Azov Steppe, Crimea, Transazovia and other remote regions could be considered colonies and functioned mostly as such despite being integral parts of the national territory.



6. Romania

Besides its relentless expansion in the Orient [5], Romania did not acquire any overseas colonies. The only exception was Socotra, captured in 1679 and held intermittently in the following decades.

[5] See the relevant chapter (a link will be added here to the article when posted).



7. Scandinavia

Although directly annexed to Scandinavia Proper, some of its European territories were colony-like in nature: Lapland, most of Finland (except the Baltic coast), Whiteland and Ingria. These territories were increasingly integrated with the core Scandinavian lands.


Western Lands (NE North America, including Greenland)
Eastern Lands (Northern Siberia, Northern Pacific, NW North America, including Alaska)

The main products of these vast lands were fur, pelts, animal oils and blubber. The Atlantic and King Christian Sea shores of North America were used as Settler Colonies, although the population was still small because the vast majority of the potential colonists were sent to Ingria, Finland and Whiteland.
The Natives were generally treated well and given the opportunity to become citizens if Christianized and properly Scandinavized.

The two colonies, although having land on the same continent (North America), were separated by a vast wilderness which remained virtually impassable until the late 18th century. Adding to their relative remoteness was the fact that the North-West Passage was not navigable, being permanently enclosed in ice.



8. Russia

Russian Siberia

Between European Russia in the west and the Okhotsk Sea in the east and between Scandinavian Siberia in the north and the nomadic khanates in the south, the vast Russian Siberian land was slowly colonized by intrepid Russian frontier men.

By the end of the 17th century, Russia started the conquest of the Turkestani, Mongol and Manchu Khanates. In the first part of the 18th century, Russia started to meddle in Chinese affairs. Its influence in China increased to the point that Russia became one of the main actors in the Great Chinese Civil War of 1779-1802.

Note: The outstanding territorial issues with Scandinavia and Sarmatia will be discussed in the relevant chapter.



9. Italy

Italian Africa

The only Italian Colony was Italian Africa, initially made up of Constantinia, Tunisia and Tripolitania.

Shortly after their country's unification and while still gripped in nationalistic fervour, the Italians decided to remove all the preexisting population from Italian Africa in order to settle it with the excess Italian population from the overpopulated peninsula.
Their method was frighteningly simple and effective. The native population (Arabs and Berbers) was slowly but continously pushed southwards by the Italian army, away from the life-bearing coast and into the lifeless Sahara Desert.
Because the Desert could support a much smaller population than the Coast, most of the displaced population perished, their ethnocide being mostly unnoticed by the "civilised" Europeans back home.
The demographic change was so effective that the whole area was able to be annexed directly to Italy as its "Fourth Shore" (Quarta Sponda).

By the middle of the 18th century the only Muslims living anywhere near the Mediterranian Coasts were the Egyptians. For the Christians, the Mediterranian Sea began to be seen once again as Mare Nostrum.



10. Other Countries

The Colonies of Greece and Armenia were adjacent and tightly integrated to their respective mother countries and part of the itself increasingly integrated Empire of the Orient, alongside Romania, Georgia, Slovakia and other lands and territories.

Note: More will be discussed in the chapters about the Empire of the Orient.



After the Third European War, the European Colonialism would enter a new phase with almost all of the remaining parts of the World coming in one way or another under the control of Europa Magna.


You can find a World Map with the Colonies in this earlier post.

 

[Zagan]

The Century of Peace
Religious Upheavals​

"From a Universal Church and a Universal Empire to National Churches and National States", Anaïs de Pònt, 1739, Tolosa (Toulouse), Occitan Autonomy, Kingdom of France -- Excerpts


There are three possible ways in which the Church can interact with the State: Independence, Supremacy and Subservience.

The Church is independent from the State when the official religion of the State is not Christianity, but rather Paganism, as it had been the case in the Roman Empire prior to A.D. 380 Salonika Edict, or Mohammedanism, as it had been the case in much of the Orient after the Mahommedan conquests and before the Christian Resurgence.

The Church may be tolerated, persecuted or even outlawed but, nevertheless, it is independent from the State which does not interfere either in its internal organization or in its doctrine.

The problem is that independence does come with a heavy cost. Without the support of the State, the Church lacks the power to curtail the spread of heretical ideas and it may thus fragment into several mutually incompatible and competing churches, much to the delight of the non-Christian authorities.

[...]

The Church has supremacy over the State when the State is weak due to feudal fragmentation or various other reasons. This had been the case in the Occident for over a millenium when the Popes in Rome ruled supreme over their half of the Christendom.

Of course that, even then, there were strong States with strong Rulers who did contest the Papal Power but the very presence of a multitude of other weak States compelled them to prefer an accomodation with the Papacy to a possible confrontation.

This situation is conductive to the preeminence of a single Church whose power trancends boundaries and acts as a unifying force in the midst of the worse possible political disunion.

Heresies are rare and successful heresies leading to the emergence of alternative Churches are even rarer. The supreme Church can easily gather the support of various States and their militaries and proceeds to either crush the rebellion completely as in the tragic case of our Cathars or at least inflict an unordinate amount of chaos and destruction upon the unfortunate people who dared to challange its rule as in the case of the Protestant Germans.

[...]

The Church is subservient to the State when there is only one State, as it had been the case during the Roman Empire, or when the Christendom is divided into a small number of large and powerful States, as it is the case in our times.

The State uses the Church for its own needs and protects it from any outside interference. This situation does, sooner or later, lead to a biunivocal relation between States and their Churches. There is always one and only one Church in each State and no Church in more than one State.

Indeed, when the Roman Empire was united, being the archetypal Universal State, there was a single Universal Church. The division of the Roman Empire into its two halves lead, centuries later, to the ineluctable division of the Universal Church into its two halves, the Catholic and the Orthodox Churches.

After the fall of the Orthodox Church under the heel of the Mahommedans, the Catholic Church took the mantle of the Universal Church. Centuries later, the role of the Popes as leaders and arbiters of the Christendom was challenged by the schism of the British Church, the Protestant Reformation and the resurgence of the Romanian Orthodox Church.

[...]

However, the singular event to which we can trace the unexpected dissolution of the Catholic Church is the raise of Nationalism with its all powerful centralized Nation States. From the moment our Continent became divided into nine Nation States adverse and wary of each other and of comparable power, the concept of an Universal Church became meaningless.

After the Unification of Italy, the last Great Power to enter their club, the days of the Catholic Church became numbered. No Great Power could be reasonably expected to tolerate a situation in which its Church, one of the most important pillars of the Nation, was controlled by another Great Power. It would have been unfathomable from a nationalistic, political and military point of view.

[...]

The present geopolitical situation with nine Great Powers, each of them Nation States possessing their own National Church is the most stable we can imagine and that is the main reason of the fall of the Catholic Church, the Christendom's last element of instability.

We can say that it is only natural the Christendom took this path in its continuous evolution because it is the path towards the most stable geopolitical system. Of course, we all know that all natural systems tend towards their most stable state and man-made systems are no exception to this rule.


Note: These are not my opinions, but those of Anaïs de Pònt, an Occitan writer from the 18th century of TTL, specialized in the History of Religion. Some or all of her assertions may be false.



Background

Despite several setbacks during the Protestant Reformation (1517-1611) and the German Unification Wars (1612-1625), the Roman Catholic Church was still the most powerful Christian Church in the whole Christendom before the Second European War (1641-1645).

At the end of the Second European War, the seeds for the downfall of the Roman Catholic Church were already planted.

1. The presence of several [1] Great Powers with a different religion (Britannia - the Church of England [2], Scandinavia - the Lutheran Church, Russia - the Russian Orthodox Church, Romania - the Romanian Orthodox Church [3], Germany - various German Protestant Churches [4])

[1] Five out of eight (Italy was not even unified much less a Great Power at that time).
[2] Renamed the British Church in 1661.
[3] Under Romanian law, all ethnic Romanians were members of the Romanian Orthodox Church. The ethnic minorities had the right to belong to any Christian Church.
[4] Merged into the United Church of Germany in 1647.

2. The outcome of the Second European War was decisively in the favour of the non-Catholic Powers.
On one hand, all the non-Catholic Powers were either victorious (Germany, Britannia, Romania and Scandinavia) or at least capable to secure a very advantageous peace (Russia).
On the other hand, all the Catholic Powers were either completely defeated (Iberia [5] and France) or, despite being on the victors' side, ended up actually losing small portions of their territory (Sarmatia).

[5] The (Castille centred) Iberian Empire actually collapsed during the Second European War, being engulfed in a civil war, and was replaced after the War with the (Portuguese centred) Spanish Empire.

3. Pope Benedict XIII incoherent actions ensured him the enmity of both sides of the conflict.
In January 1641, he opposed Italian Unification, excommunicated the revolutionaries and even ordered his small army to fight the Italian Nationalists.
A week later, after the Italian conquest of Rome, the same Pope annuled the excommunications, blessed the Italian army and militias and crowned King Alessandro with an ad-hoc Italian Crown.
When the Iberians expelled the Italian Nationalist troops from Rome in May 1641, the Pope welcomed back his previous masters. However, the Iberians could not trust him anymore and moved him to Seville. Pope Benedict XIII spent the rest of the war in Iberia, a prisoner in all but name.

4. When the Romanian Army led by Empress Iulia liberated Rome in November 1643, the Pope was in Iberian captivity.
The Italian revolutionaries pressured the Cardinals to depose Pope Benedict XIII. After tense negotiations, a compromise was reached. Pope Benedict XIII was declared unable to exercise his functions and a council of three Italian Cardinals was established to act in his name until the end of the war.
This state of affairs, although temporary, further delegitimized the Papacy.

5. After the war, Nationalist pressure in Italy, Spain and France, coupled with increased German meddling into the internal affaires of the Vatican, made a return to the earlier state all but impossible.



The dissolution of the Roman Catholic Church

In November 1644, at the end the Iberian Civil War, Pope Benedict XIII was freed by the Portuguese revolutionaries. In February 1645 he returned to Rome in the midst of the Italians who despised him.

The Peace Settlement assigned newly unified Italy in the German sphere of influence. From the very beginning, Spain and France alleged that the Papacy was under undue German influence as well.

Between 1644 and 1648, Germany was ruled by the Radical Nationalists who unleashed unprecedented terror and widespread abuse.
One of the measures of the iron-fisted Nationalist Government was the 1647 merger of all the Churches in Germany under the United German Church. Thus, eight million German Catholics (one third of the German population) lost their ancient connection with Rome and were compelled to become Protestants.

The resistance of the German Catholics was met with extreme measures: between 22,000 and 100,000 Catholics were killed and up to one million were deported to the Protestant States of the Empire.

But the real coup de grâce to German Catholicism was dealt by the same infamous Pope Benedict XIII. When asked to intervene in favour of the German Catholics, the Pope was cowed by the German Lord Protector of Italy and bluntly stated that each State has the sovereign right to settle its internal religious issues without any outside interference.

In 1648, it was perfectly clear to everyone that the Church was powerless in front of the State and the Pope was at best a figurehead and at worse a puppet of Protestant Germany!

In March 1649, Pope Benedict XIII died, possibly poisoned.

The Papal Conclave convened in May and, for 17 months, attempted in vain to elect a new Pope. Slowly, it became painfully clear that not the Cardinals but the Catholic Powers were the real Papal Electors.
The deadlock had multiple causes:
- Italy and Sarmatia, being under German influence, would not accept a Spanish or French Pope;
- Spain and France would not accept an Italian or Sarmatian Pope due to feared German influence;
- Neither Spain, nor France would trust a Pope from the other country.

In August 1650, the French Cardinals quitted the Papal Conclave and returned to France.
In Avignon, they elected Cardinal Maurice and installed him as Pope of France. The French Catholics were no longer part of the Roman Church!

Without the French Cardinals, the rump Conclave quickly elected an Italian Cardinal, Antonio, as Pope. Outvoted, the Spanish Cardinals conferred with the Spanish Ambassador and decided to leave Rome as well. They elected Cardinal Domenico and installed him as the Spanish Pope in Seville. The Spanish Catholics were no longer part of the Roman Church!

In 1651, the Catholic World was split in three parts: The French Catholic Church (the only legal Church in France), the Spanish Catholic Church (the only legal Church in Spain) and the Roman Catholic Church (in Italy, Sarmatia and Romania [6]).

[6] Only for the ethnic minorities of Romania: the Croats, the Hungarians (partial), the Slovaks (partial), the Poles, the Germans (partial).


After the 1659 death of the Roman Pope, the three Catholic Churches recognized each other's autocephaly and their mutual communion on the model of the Orthodox Churches.
In 1664, Sarmatia decided to split from the Roman Church as well and thus the Sarmatian Catholic Church entered the Catholic Club as its fourth member.

The Catholic minorities from Britannia, Germany and Romania found themselves without any external support. Today, with the exception of Romania, all of them are extinct.


Note: Massive religious shifts occured in the Orient in the same time period, but these will be discussed in the relevant chapter.



Religious Make-up of Europe in the 18th Century

From the second half of the 17th Century, all nine European Great Powers had their own Independent National Church.

1. Spain
- Spanish Catholic Church (in communion with the other Catholic Churches) -- official, 100%.

2. France
- French Catholic Church (in communion with the other Catholic Churches) -- official, 96%;
- French Huguenots (Protestants) -- outlawed, 4%.

3. Britannia
- British Church (Protestant) -- official, 88%;
- Irish Catholics -- outlawed, 12%.

4. Germany
- United Church of Germany (Protestant) -- official, 73%;
- German Catholics -- outlawed, 16%;
- Other Protestants (Lutherans, Calvinists, Anabaptists, etc) -- outlawed, 11%.

5. Sarmatia
- Sarmatian Catholic Church (in communion with the other Catholic Churches) -- official, 69%;
- Ruthenian United (Catholic) -- legal, 20%;
- Russian Orthodoxes -- unknown, 5%;
- Protestants -- unknown, 2%;
- Muslims -- unknown, 4%.

6. Romania & the Orient (see the chapter about Romania)

7. Scandinavia
- Lutheran Church (Protestant) -- official, 97%;
- Scandinavian Catholics -- legal, 1%;
- Russian Orthodoxes -- legal, 1%;
- Pagans -- outlawed, 1%.

8. Russia
- Russian Orthodox Church -- official, 84%;
- Muslims -- legal, 10%;
- Pagans -- unknown, 5%;
- Jews -- legal, 1%.

9. Italy
- Roman Catholic Church -- official, 99%;
- Protestants -- legal, 1%.

 

[Zagan]

The Romanian Emperor thanks everyone who voted for @Zagan's story, "Io Mihailŭ, Împĕratul Românilor" - A Michael the Brave Romania Wank.

As a sign of his gratitude, the Emperor awards you a medal specially minted for this occasion by the Constantinople Mint (designed by artist Haralambie Tudose).

[IMAGE]

.

 

[Zagan]

Turtledove Awards

We are right in the middle of the Turtledove Awards poll period. A week had passed, another one to go and then it's over.

TTL is ranked second with 44 votes so far. All those that voted my TL have my gratitude. Thank you.

While there is no way to get the first place (number one has an advance of fifty votes!), there is a risk of losing the second place.

If you like TTL and, for whatever reasons, you did not vote yet, please do. You can find the poll here. Thank you again.



TTL News

The next chapter, Romanian and Oriental Politics, is on its way. Hopefully, it will be online before the closure of the polls.

The group of chapters with the supratitle The Century of Peace is aproaching its end. There will be only two or three more chapters until the next major war.

Before the political map of the TTL world changes again (after the next major war), I would like to propose a small competition.



TTL Competition

How good are your prediction abilities? Let's put them to the test!

Synopsis: TTL Romania will continue to grow in territory, population, political, military and economic power, etc (after all, TTL is a Wank) during the following centuries.

Note: TTL is already sketched, almost up to the present day, so I know the answer, at least approximatively.
TTL will continue to follow logically from the previous events, so you should rather estimate / extrapolate than guess.

Try to answer the following questions:

1. What will be the largest area of Romania Proper's National territory?

2. What will be the largest area of all Romanian controlled territory? (Empire of the Orient, Colonies, Protectorates, Dynastic Union States, etc)

A quick map would be nice. @fluttersky drew one some time ago and thus gave me this idea. (in case you cannot find it, it's inside the spoiler)

3. What will be the maximum population of Romania Proper?

4. What will be the maximum population of all Romanian controlled territory?

5. What will be the best global rank of Romania in terms of:
a) Area;
b) Population;
c) Economy;
d) Military Power;
e) Other statistics (please do name them).

The member whose answers will be the closest to my estimations will win a nice digital trophy.
Thank you in advance for your participation.

 

[Zagan]

The Century of Peace
Romanian Democracy​

Excerpts from "Democrația orĭ potența poporului" ("Democracy or the Power of the People"), by Bogdan Ifrim, Alba Iulia, 1881

Fourth Edition Note: In the Century of Peace, the word Democracy had not yet been irredeemably tainted and it still had its original Greek-derived meaning of power of the people.


The concept of Democracy had been alien to the Romanian People for most of its history, the only minor exceptions being the mountain villages where the free peasants used to elect their Elders.

At the beginning of the 17th century, all over the Civilized World, the common people had virtually no rights and little legal protection as they lived under oppressive systems ranging from Monarchical Absolutism to Aristocratic Despotism.

In the Romanian Lands, the Voivode shared his power not with the People but only with his Boyars, the old Romanian Nobility. That political system was ill-suited for a strong unified country for multiple reasons, the most obvious being the Army. Neither the serfs nor the impoverished and exploited remaining free peasants had any incentive to join the Great Army and fight for a Country and Ruler impervious to their tribulations.

The Voivodes were either unable or unwilling to change the status quo. As members of the Boyar Class themselves, most of them were opportunists, prioritizing their personal wealth and group interests to the well-being of the Country and its People. Those few who happened to be real patriots failed to enact long-lasting reforms because they were opposed by the Boyars, who would depose or assassinate them, and the surrounding Great Powers, who would invade in order to reassert their influence.

Before the Unification of Romania, Emperor Mihai I, then Voivode of Wallachia, was no exception. From a Boyar family himself, Voivode Mihai sided with his fellow Boyars and oppressed the very peasants that he would later free and empower.

Why did the Romanian Voivode change his mind so radically? Some people like to believe that God Himself had instructed him to do so in his Prophetic Dream. We, as historians, prefer to analyze the whole internal and international military and geopolitical situation and come to a different conclusion, that future Emperor Mihai I was a so far unmatched political and military genius who realized that the Romanians had a chance to achieve greatness, perhaps the only one in their entire history.

Emperor Mihai I's Dream did play a very important role though. The Emperor was sincere, he believed that the Dream was genuine, that God had entrusted him with a holy mission and that God would, presumably, look after him and deter any would be plotters or assassins. So he took a massive gamble and won! [...]

In the end, whether Emperor Mihai I realized that empowering his People was politically advantageous or he simply followed God's advice, the result was the same: the seeds of Romanian Democracy had been planted. [...]

It would be wrong, of course, to think that newly United Romania was anything resembling a modern Democracy! At first, the changes were only cosmetic but, even so, they were important as they paved the road to a future functioning Democracy.



Chronology

8 - 9 August 1601
- In a Prophetic Dream, Mihai received the Iron Crown of United Romania from large masses of commoners.

12 August 1601
- Mihai disolved the unrepresentative Transylvanian Diet and executed its members for treason (all of them foreign nobles).
- Mihai united the three Romanian Lands and crowned himself, "by the Grace of God and the Will of My People, Io Mihailŭ Great Voivode and Lord of the United Romanian Lands".
- Mihai declared that "the power belongs to the Romanian People and is exercised by its representatives".
- Mihai declared that "I free all the Romanians and gift Transylvania, their land, back to them, its ancient, rightful owners".

August - September 1601
- Mihai encouraged peasant uprisings in Transylvania and Moldavia against the Hungarian Nobles and Moldavian Boyars who opposed him.
- The power of the Hungarian Nobles in Transylvania was completely broken; almost all of them were either exiled or killed.
- Mihai decided upon an inheritable Monarchy, further curbing the power of the Boyars.

1602
- The peasants who fought in the Romanian-Austrian War were awarded land, mainly in Transylvania.

1602 - 1641
- A relatively free press and the ever increasing literacy contributed to the spread of democratic ideas.
- The growing importance of manufacturing and the start of industrialization made the Boyar class increasingly obsolete.

1626
- Most Romanian peasants were awarded land in the territories recently liberated from Ottoman rule; the Boyars began to sell their manors because they had no more peasants to work for them.

April 1644
- The Romanian Revolution declared, inter alia, that "the Feudal Privileges are completely abolished and all the citizens of Romania are equal under law".
- For all intents and purposes, the Boyars ceased to exist as a separate social class.

1645 - 1651
- Empress Iulia half-heartedly tried to curb the freedom of the press and other civic rights and liberties.

1652 - onwards
- In the conflict between Imperial and Senatorial Power, the Romanian People took the side of Empress Maria.
- Gradually, the power of the people became real.



Political Structure of Romania at the Accession of Empress Maria I to Thrones

Notes:
1. Maria I was Empress of Romania (Empress of the Romanians), Empress of Greece (Basileus Autokrator of the Hellenes) and Empress of the Orient (Orientis Imperatrix).
2. Romania and Greece were two Independent States joined in a Dynastic Union; they shared the Monarch, the Army and the Navy, the currency and the customs and economic area, but had distinct Governments and Laws.
3. The Empire of the Orient (Imperium Orientis) was a federal structure consisting of Constantinople and several Member States (Romania, Greece, Armenia, Georgia, Slovakia) and their dependencies. By Law, the Crowns of Romania and the Orient were identical.
4. This chapter deals only with the situation in Romania Proper and not in the Romanian Dependencies or in the other Member States of the Empire of the Orient.


1. The Emperor / Empress

The Emperor was the Head of State and Government, Commander in Chief of the Army, Supreme Judge and Protector of the Faith. In theory, the Emperor had vast powers:
- to nominate and to dismiss Ministers and other State officials;
- to propose laws and to assent or veto any laws voted by the Senate;
- to represent the Romanian State in its international relations;
- to declare War, to enter Alliances and to sign Peace Treaties;
- to dissolve the Senate, etc.

In practice, the power of the Emperor was restricted by the Senate, the Army, the Church, the Guilds, the Press, the Public Opinion and other less obvious factors.


2. The Senate

The Romanian Senate was the Central Legislative Authority. It had the power to propose, discuss and vote Laws and Regulations.

The Senate had the following composition:
- 90 Senators sent by the 30 Provinces (3 from each Province);
- 30 Senators named by the Emperor;
- 10 Senators named by the Romanian Orthodox Church;
- 10 Senators named by the Army;
- 10 Senators named by the Guilds;
- 10 Senators named by the Protected Nations (Germans and Szeklers, 5 from each one).


3. The Local Power Structures

The Provinces were rules by Prefects, the Județe by Praetors and the Municipalities / Cities (Alba Iulia and Michaelia Iulia), the Towns and the Villages by Mayors.

The Prefects and the Mayors of Cities were named by the Emperor, most of the Praetors were still those who had been chosen before the Revolution by the local Boyars, the Mayors of Towns were chosen by the delegates of the local Guilds and Churches and the Mayors of Villages were usually elected by the local peasant communities.


4. Other Centres of Power

- The Romanian Army and Navy with its Generals and Admirals;
- The Romanian Secret Service;
- The Romanian Orthodox Church with its Patriarch and Holy Synod;
- The various Guilds;
- The Protected Nations (Germans and Szeklers);
- The Press (newspapers and magazines) and the Public Opinion;
- The Universities with their Professors and Students;
- The incipient Political Parties (the Conservatives, the Progressives and the Nationalists).



The Power Struggle Between the Imperial and Senatorial Powers

The unexpected death of Empress Iulia in November 1651 and the accession of the young and inexperienced Maria to the Thrones signaled the beginning of a protracted power struggle between the Senate and the Empress.

The Senate was controlled by the former Boyars and assorted conservative forces who wanted to either completely reverse the achievements of the Revolution or, at least, to use a multitude of legal loopholes in order to maintain their grip on power.

While Mihai (universally revered as the Father of the Nation) and Iulia (supported fanatically by the Army) had enjoyed de facto absolute power, Maria had neither the charisma nor the strength of will and character of her illustrious predecessors.

Even if the Empress was not a true Progressive, she had to act like one because, although she had the support of the Army and the Secret Service, her power base lay in the vast masses of disenfranchized common people.

Maria was not confident enough to simply dissolve the Senate and replace it with people loyal to her. Instead, she employed several overt and covert tactics to achieve her goals:
- used the Press to strenghten her position (and of the Progressives) and diminuish the influence of the Senate (and of the Conservatives);
- had the Secret Service discredit troublesome Senators, thus thinning the ranks of the Conservatives;
- offered publicity to the hitherto mostly unknown village elections and helped generalize the practice to the Towns and then Județe;
- created Local Assemblies in Towns, Cities and Județe with elected members;
- used the Greek Union Referendum to prove that Nation-wide elections could actually work in Romania, a Modern Country with a population both highly literate and very interested in politics.



The Romanian Franchise

The Franchise in all elections and referenda consisted of all Romanian Citizens over the majority age of 20.

Romanian Citizenship was awarded to all subjects of the Realm that:
1. Were Ethnic Romanians and
2.1. Owned property or
2.2. Could read, write and cypher or
2.3. Served in the Army or Navy.

The proportion of Citizens among the Romanian Population increased continously, from cca. 13% in 1626 to almost 25% in 1663 (cca. 32% of adults).

While about 62% of the adult Romanian males were Romanian Citizens, due to various reasons, less than 2% of the adult Romanian females enjoyed Citizenship Status. This low percentage of women in the franchise was probably a blessing in disguise because, had the proportion been higher, they might have been disenfranchised altogether. One reason for the enfranchisement of women was probably the fact that the both the current and the previous Romanian Rulers had been women with one of them (Iulia) even being an almost legendary warrior.



Electoral Power

Each Romanian Citizen had an Electoral Power, i.e. the number of votes he could cast.

The Electoral Power of a Citizen was a number between 1 and 10, could be increased or (rarely) decreased and depended on several factors such as age, marital status, number of children, wealth, studies, military service, etc. Unfortunately, the computation of the Electoral Power was cumbersome, prone to errors and susceptible to bribes.



Local Elections

Starting from 1657, local elections at Village, Town and Județ level began to be organized on an almost regular basis.

Characteristic example: Local Praetorial Elections in Lăpușna Județ, 1661

Total Population: 67432
Adults: 31295
Franchise: 12287 / 39.26% (12133 males, 152 females)
Turnout: 9762 / 79.45% (9714 males / 80.06%, 48 females / 31.58%)
Votes: 29927 (medium Electoral Power: 3.066)
Conservatives: 10738 / 35.88%
Progressives: 7711 / 25.77%
Nationalists: 5802 / 19.39%
Independents: 4810 / 16.07%
Invalid: 866 / 2.89%

Local Assembly Seats: Conservatives 7, Progressives 5, Nationalists 4, Independents 4
Praetor: Independent, supported by the Progressives and the Nationalists
Vicepraetor: Conservative

The Conservatives lost power in almost all Local Elections to the Progressives, the Nationalists, Independents or various coalitions thereof.



The Greek Question

Since 1641, when Iulia was acclaimed as Empress of the Greeks, the Greek politicians had been aggitating for an upgrade of the Dynastic Union with Romania to a Real Union or even to a Full Union, i.e. the complete merger of the two States.

While in Greece the lack of a free Press and of any semblance of democracy precluded any possible public debate on the matter, in Romania the Greek Question became a widely debated and highly divisive issue:
- Pro-Union -- The Greek Government, the Greek Orthodox Church, the Romanian Orthodox Church, the Romanian Conservatives, the Romanian Senate;
- Anti-Union -- Empress Maria, the Romanian Nationalists, the Romanian Secret Service, the Romanian Army;
- Neutrals -- the Romanian Progressives.

There were plenty of reasons for both positions:
- The Greeks wanted to become equal with the Romanians in a larger country possibly with the hope of eventually attaining linguistic dominance as it had happened in the Eastern Roman Empire;
- The Orthodox Churches dreamt of a possible ecclesiastical reunification;
- The Romanian Conservatives and the Senate which they dominated wanted to increase their electoral share by the addition of highly conservative Greece;
- The Anti-Union side feared a dilution of the National character of the Romanian State, coupled with a serious Graecophobia in the case of the Nationalists.

After having vetoed several unification attempts by the Greek Government and the Romanian Senate, Maria decided to call Nation-wide plebiscites in both countries in order to settle the Greek Question once and for all.



The Greek Union Referenda of 1663

The two Greek Union Referenda represented the first Nation-wide vote in Romania and, respectively, the first vote in Greece since the days of Ancient Athens.

While in Greece the electoral campaign was limited to several Government sponsored articles calling for Union, in Romania the campaign was fierce, with innumerable articles and public orations for both sides.

Question: Should Romania and Greece unite into a single State? YES [_] NO [_]

Referendum in Greece
Total Population: around 3,310,000
Adults: around 1,840,000
Franchise: 403,296 / 21.92% (all males)
Turnout: 219,009 / 54.30%
YES: 123,777 / 56.52%
NO: 90,834 / 41.48%
Invalid: 4398 / 2.01%
Result: YES (Union with Romania), Valid

Referendum in Romania
Total Population: around 9,920,000 (Romania Proper)
Adults: around 5,050,000
Franchise: 1,626,122 / 32.20% (1,596,331 males, 29,791 females)
Turnout: 1,449,023 / 89.11% (1,444,430 males / 90.48%, 4593 females / 15.42%)
YES: 320,120 / 22.09%
NO: 1,120,855 / 77.35%
Invalid: 8048 / 0.56%
Result: NO (NO Union with Greece), Valid

Because of the Romanian rejection, the proposed of Union with Greece was permanently shelved.
It was a resounding victory for Empress Maria and a green light to her plans for the reform of the Romanian Senate.



The 1675 Reform of the Romanian Senate

It took 12 more years for Maria to gather enough power and confidence to finally dissolve the Senate and reform it.

New Senate composition:
- 90 Senators elected from the 30 Provinces (3 from each Province);
- 30 Senators named by the Emperor;
- 10 Senators named by the Romanian Orthodox Church;
- 10 Senators named by the Army;
- 10 Senators named by the Guilds;
- 10 Senators elected by the Protected Nations (Germans and Szeklers, 5 from each one).

1675 Romanian General Elections

Total Population: 11,180,500
Adults: 5,925,600
Franchise: 2,013,540 / 33.98% (1,972,332 males, 41,208 females)
Turnout: 1,456,595 / 72.34% (1,433,771 males / 72.69%, 22,824 females / 55.38%)
Votes: 4,826,078 (medium Electoral Power: 3.313)
Conservatives: 1,538,071 / 31.87%
Progressives: 1,114,371 / 23.09%
Nationalists: 1,435,999 / 29.76%
Independents: 663,957 / 13.76%
Invalid: 73,680 / 1.53%

Elected Romanian Senate Seats (90): Conservatives 33, Progressives 22, Nationalists 31, Independents 4

From then on, the Romanians were called to vote in both General and Local Elections every five years.


In 1675, a mere 74 years after its foundation, Romania was the first representative democracy in the whole World and it would remain the only one for almost a century!

 

[Zagan]

The Century of Peace
An Ordinary Day, an Ordinary Family
​

Note: As the title says, this chapter will attempt to show the life of an ordinary Romanian family during an (almost) ordinary day.


16 July 1668, Adunați¹ Village, Colașin² Județ, Muntenegru Province, Romania Proper, Empire of the Orient

1. Numerous Romanian villages are named Adunați. In Romanian, it means gathered (from various places) and it refers to its inhabitants.
2. Kolasin, in OTL Montenegro.


The Aileni³ Family

Gŭeorgŭe⁴, 56, the head of the Aileni family, Romanian Citizen (EP⁵ 3), retired soldier, peasant
Gŭeorgŭe was born in 1612, during the glorious reign of Saint Emperor Mihai I, in a poor Moldavian peasant family. Although only 17 in 1629, he volunteered to fight for his country in the Second Romanian-Ottoman War. He took part in all the major battles from deep inside Romania all the way to the walls of Constantinople, then the Capital of the former Ottoman Empire. He was wounded in the leg during the siege of Constantinople and was decorated for his bravery by the Emperor himself. His leg, although cured, began to ache when he aged.
Gŭeorgŭe received a nice plot of land in the Province of Muntenegru, the Județ of Colașin, a pleasant hilly region which had a Serb majority at that time. He built a house, worked the land and, as it was customary back then, took a young Serb girl from a nearby village to be his wife.

Iana (née Neșicĭ⁶), 50, Gŭeorgŭe's wife, housewife, peasant
Iana was born in 1618, in the Ottoman Empire. She was 8 at the Liberation from Ottoman rule and only 14 when she was abducted by her future husband. Only a generation before, it were the Turks abducting young women from her village. At least the Romanians were Christians... During the following decades, she gave birth to no less than twelve children.

Mărioara, 35, daughter, housewife
Born in 1633, Mărioara, the oldest child of the Ailenis, married Răzvan Florescu, a blacksmith, in 1650. They have 8 children. Mărioara is the only one of the children who can still speak a little Serbian. She expects to become a grandmother in the autumn.

Anca and Ioan died in infancy.

Manuela, 30, daughter, Romanian Citizen (EP 1), shop owner, socialite
Nobody likes to talk about Manuela, the black sheep of the family. At 15, she eloped with Marin Dragu, a 22 years old student from the Alba Iulia University who was visiting his family in a nearby village. They divorced five years later. Manuela owns a delicacy shop in Alba Iulia, has acquired a small fortune and has even managed to get citizenship. There is a rumour that she is seeing a married son of a Senator.
She has one son with her former husband and one daughter from a later affair.

Alexandru, 27, son, Romanian Citizen (EP 1), soldier
Alexandru is deployed in Asia Minor, fighting the ongoing Mahommedan insurgency.

Mihai, 27, son, Romanian Citizen (EP 2), priest, primary school teacher
Mihai is married to Milana Cerevicĭ, a naturalized Romanian from a Serb family. They have 3 children.

Adriana, 25, daughter, peasant
Married at 18 with a soldier, Adriana was widowed less than one year later. Her only daughter, Alina, was born mere days after the death of her father on a faraway battlefield. Adriana lives with her parents.

Letiția, 22, daughter, housewife
Letiția married Haralambie Oniciu, a clerk working at the Praetorial Office in Colașin, the Capital of the namesake Județ. They have no children yet.

Gina, 20, daughter, peasant
Gina is still unmarried, much to the changrin of her parents. She lives with her parents.

Matei died the previous year, mauled by a bear, while hunting with his father. He was only 18.

Șerban, 13, son, schoolchild

Filoftea, 7, daugher

Marcu, 11, adopted

Radovan, 2, adopted (from a young Serb single mother)

Living at home: Gŭeorgŭe (56), Iana (50), Adriana (25), Alina (6), Gina (20), Șerban (13), Filoftea (7), Marcu (11), Radovan (2).

3. The name Aileni was initially a matronymic (A Ileni / A Ileanei / Son of Ileana). This may suggest that he or one of his recent ancestors was born out of wedlock.
4. OTL Romanian Gheorghe / George.
5. Electoral Power (the allowed number of votes, an integer between 1 and 10).
6. Serbian: Jana Nešić.


It was already late afternoon. Gŭeorgŭe had been weeding his fields since early morning under the unforgiving July Sun. He was obviously not young anymore. He was tired, his injured leg hurt as usual and he experienced a new rather sharp pain in his chest.

Gŭeorgŭe: "Adriana, Marcu, it's enough for today. We shall go home."

Adriana: "Yes, Father... Father, are you feeling unwell?"

Gŭeorgŭe: "It's nothing, just an ache. Let me hold your hand..."

************


Gŭeorgŭe and Adriana walked slowly home, while Marcu ran ahead of them.

At home, Iana was cooking dinner, Radovan was sleeping, Alina and Filoftea were playing in the yard and Șerban was teaching Gina some arithmetic he had learned in school. Gina was very interested in learning but, unfortunately for her, the nearest school for girls was about 20 miles away, in the Județ Capital, so she could not attend it. She had thus to learn from her younger brother whom she was continuously pestering, much to the changrin of their mother who would have preferred the two of them to help her with household chores instead of that useless learning.

Marcu: "Mother, Father is not feeling well! He's in pain."

Iana: "What's wrong, Husband? Are you sick?"

Gŭeorgŭe: "Leave me alone, Woman. I just need to rest."

Șerban: "Please, Father, it may be something serious. The teacher told us we should always see a doctor when we feel sick."

Gŭeorgŭe: "Your teacher... He is probably friend with the Doctor. We don't have so much money to throw them away like that."

Șerban: "But, Father, as a wounded war veteran you should have a rebate. Please, Father, I am worried..."

Gŭeorgŭe: "Fine, take the horse and go to town to find the Doctor. And buy a handful of nails and some wax. And, since you are already there... go to the Post Office as well. Here, take 20 Banĭ. It should suffice. You may buy some sweets on your way back if you have any money left."

************


Iana: "Husband, Gina is spending hours learning all kind of things from Șerban. I told her, but to no avail. She'd better find a good husband..."

Gŭeorgŭe: "Leave her alone, Woman. Learning is good for everyone, even for girls. She may even find a better match if she's a little more learned... Tell me, Gina, what does Șerban teach you?"

Gina: "Arithmetic, History, Geography. I'm not so interested in Romanian, besides reading and writing which I already know. And Theology, I find it completely useless. I can read the Bible myself if I want to... [...]"

Gŭeorgŭe was not listening anymore. The pain had receded and he was already taking a nap.

************


Iana and Gina served dinner and everybody sat down at the living room table. Iana said a prayer and everybody crossed themselves and then started to eat. They had fresly cooked bread, a soup made of potatoes, carrots and celery and a mămăligă⁷ with butter and cheese. The food was tasty and plentiful but, as usual, everybody was eagerly waiting the Sunday when they would eat meat.

7. Similar to Polish polenta.

************


Gŭeorgŭe took an old newspaper and read the titles then asked Gina to read the content of an article which he found interesting as his failing eyesight prevented him from reading the fine print.

It appeared that the Progressists had clashed again with the Nationalists in the Senate. The Nationalists insisted upon the purity of the Romanian Nation, frowned any more assimilation attempts and even distinguished between the original Romanians and the new Romanians. The Progressists wanted equality between all Romanians irrespective of their origin. Gŭeorgŭe was deeply troubled by the Nationalists' position.

Gŭeorgŭe: "Wife, look at those crazy politicians! They say that only the old Romanians, the original ones are true Romanians and all others are somehow inferior!"

Iana: "You know that I'm not interested in politics, Husband."

Gŭeorgŭe: "But this should interest you as well. Answer me, Wife, what are you now? A Romanian or a Serb? They imply that even our children might not be pure Romanians!"

Iana: "I was born a Serb but I'm Romanian now. And our children are obviously Romanians. They don't know a bit of Serbian!"

Gŭeorgŭe: "Yes of course, but these crazed Nationalists like to create conflict where there isn't any. They are dangerous, you know... Adriana, do you know any Serbian?"

Adriana (laughing): "Ne znam. I don't know, Father. Just a few words. It's absurd to say that we are not proper Romanians somehow."

************


Șerban returned home with the Doctor, the nails, the wax, the sweets and a letter from Alexandru.

The Doctor asked Gŭeorgŭe about the nature of his complaint, listened to his lungs and heart using a small cup, declared that the culprit was a weakened heart and prescribed rest and a lack of physical effort. Gŭeorgŭe paid him 200 Banĭ and showed him the documents attesting that he was a wounded and decorated war veteran. The Doctor took a coupon from his briefcase, filled it, signed it and gave it to Gŭeorgŭe. It was a 50 Banĭ rebate redeemable at the Praetorial Office in Colașin.

Gŭeorgŭe: "Thank you, Doctor... Say, Doctor, couldn't we just say that I gave you 400 so you give me an 100 rebate coupon instead of this one? We could split the money..."

Doctor: "Umm, I'm sorry, Mister Aileni. It's not worth risking my job for such a small amount of money..."

************


While the children ate the sweets, Gina read her brother's long awaited letter⁸.

8. Alexandru Aileni's 1668 letter to his family was auctioned online for 8000 Banĭ. It is now displayed at the Cetinŭe Museum of History.


From Sergeant Alexandru Aileni, Eleventh Legion, Romanian Fifth Army, Asia Minor
To Gŭeorgŭe Aileni, Village Adunați, Județ Colașin, Province Muntenegru, Romania


Esteemed Father and Mother, dear brothers, sisters, nephews and nieces,

How are you? How is everything at home? Is Letiția already expecting a baby? Did you find a husband for Gina? Is Bălan⁹ still alive? Have you heard anything from Manuela?

I am healthy and well, thank God. The food is good and the sleeping quarters are clean and confortable. We did fight a few battles but the Mahommedans are no match for our Christian Army. I simply cannot understand how it was possible less than a century ago for the Mahommedan armies to roam freely in Europe itself! Thankfully, now that seems truly unconcievable.

What troubles me is the fact that we had to slaughter the entire population of a small village which had sheltered the bandits. Including women, small children and old people. It was horrible, but we had to follow our orders. I have fasted and confessed my sins but I still find it difficult to sleep at night sometimes.¹⁰

I met a Greek girl who works as a nurse at the field hospital and I like her a lot. I think I might ask her to be my wife. I hope that you are not against it. She will learn Romanian, of course. After all, it's not like we are pure-bread Romanians ourselves.

I miss all of you very much. I love you and I long for the moment I will be once again in your midst. I wish you good health, good harvests, happiness and peace.

Please pray for me,
Your loving son, brother and uncle,
Alexandru

9. Bălan is probably a dog.
10. The paragraph written in gray had been blackened by the military censorship but it had been revealed using modern technology.


Gŭeorgŭe: "I don't want to hear the name of that whore again!"

Iana: "She is still our daughter..."

Gŭeorgŭe: "She is not my daughter anymore. She disgraced our family and she will rot in Hell!"

Gina: "I'm so glad that Alexandru is well. I am always worried, knowing that he is at war and he could be hurt any day..."

Gŭeorgŭe: "It's not a war, Gina. Let's not blow this out of proportion. The real wars were fought during the reigns of Emperor Mihai Viteazul and Empress Iulia the Warrior. Then we were fighting against a powerful Empire and there were battles when half of the Legionnaires from my Cohort were killed in action! Now we are fighting against a low level insurgence of mainly disorganized bandits and our losses are few and far between. Alexandru has very good chances to come home unharmed when all of this is finally over."

************


It was already late. Iana smothered the lamp and everybody went to sleep. Tomorrow will be another day, full of hard but rewarding work, of industrious study, of joyous childish play, of human Christian hope. Another day in the Imperium created by Saint Emperor Mihai I.

 

[Zagan]

The Century of Peace
The War Against Islam​

Note: While the following events may seem extreme to us, we have to see them through a historical lens. Attitudes and morality were quite different even in the recent past and that kind of atrocities were sadly viewed by many as being normal.


Anti-Islamism in Europe (excerpts)
Paul Dragu, Constantinople, Romania, 1954

While Anti-Islamism is, unfortunately, still present in current populist political discourse, it is difficult to imagine how much worse the situation used to be a couple of centuries ago. [...]


Before the 17th century, one can argue that European Anti-Islamism was, in fact, entirely justified. For centuries, the Islamic Powers from Asia and Africa had attacked, invaded, raided, pillaged, conquered and settled vast swathes of the Christendom. Spain, North Africa, Egypt, the Holy Land, Syria, Asia Minor, Mesopotamia, the Caucasus, Crimea, Greece and most of Romania had been, at one time or another, under the Islamic yoke. Countless innocent Christians had been persecuted, raped, killed or abducted and sold as slaves in the Islamic Lands.

In the 17th century however, the tide had decisively turned against the Islamic invaders and the European Powers after liberating all of Europe went on to reclaim for Christendom all the former territory of the Ancient Roman Empire.

That was the moment when the former oppressed became the oppressors, the former conquered became the conquerors, the former invaded became the invaders. We must try and leave our biases away for a moment and realize that, during the last two hundred years, we have treated the defeated Mahommedans significantly worse than we had been treated by them when they had been victorious. We should really ask ourselves if this was what Christ would have taught us to do. Shouldn't we have rather shown a certain degree of Christian mercy to those we had overpowered? [...]


While the northern Powers had been more or less humane in their conduct towards the Mahommedans under their rule (France, Britain, Germany, Sarmatia) or did not have any Mahommedan subjects (Scandinavia), all the southern Powers are, in our opinion, guilty of major and sometime senseless atrocities perpetrated against the subjugated Mahommedan populations, ranging from common misconduct to outright ethnocide. [...]


Scandinavia
Scandinavia did never have any Mahommedan subjects under its rule.


France
France used to own several colonies in West Africa with a sizable Islamic population. The Mahommedans suffered some degree of discrimination compared to the local Catholics but there was never even a hint of ethnocide.

The former French African colonies still have a stable, though slowly decreasing, Mahommedan population to this day.


Britain
With their vast Colonial Empire, the British have always had many Mahommedans under their rule, mostly in Africa, India and the East Indies. While all natives suffered the usual colonial oppression, the Mahommedans were never treated worse than the adherents of any other religion, Christianity included. European superiority has always been promoted by the British to be of a racial not religious nature as in the Catholic countries. There were even a few instances in India, where the Mahommedans were positively discriminated compared to the Hindus majority due to the divide et impera principle.

The remaining British colonies still have their fair share of Mahommedans today.


Germany
The Germans have always treated all their colonial subjects equally bad, regardless of their faiths, so we cannot postulate the existence of any Anti-Islamic feelings there.

The Mahommedan population of the East Indies decreased proportionally with the overall population.


Sarmatia
The Sarmatian Mahommedans have, on average, fared better than the Orthodoxes, surely due to the menacing presence of Russia. Most of the Tatar nobility from Crimea and Transazovia has been fully absorbed into the Sarmatian Szlachta. While the number of Mahommedans has slowly decreased due to assimilation and conversion, there has never been any systematic discrimination against them.

Now, 1.18% of the Sarmatians are Mahommedans, a few still speaking the Tatar language in the highlands of central Crimea.


Spain
During the conquest of North-West Africa, the Spaniards killed about a quarter of the local population through warfare, massacres and famine, then proceeded to enslave all those who refused to convert to Catholicism and shiped them to their colonies in the Americas. The vast majority of the slaves perished, either on their way to the Americas or at the destination, due to a combination of malnutrition, tropical diseases, extremely hard work in torrid weather, neglect and abuse. Neither the public opinion nor the Spanish Catholic Church seemed moved by the colossal human suffering caused by their country.

Today, the initial Arab and Berber population of Spanish North Africa is almost completely extinguished. In Spanish North Africa there lives now an estimated population of 350,000 Berbers, their language being endangered. There are no Arabs anymore and everybody is a Catholic, at least in theory. In the Americas, the descendents of the freed slaves are now completely assimilated into the local population. All of them are fully enfranchised.


Italy
After receiving Italian North Africa at the end of the Second European War, the Italians engineered an even more devious plan of extermination than that of their Spanish brethren. The Mahommedan population was slowly expelled from the populated coastal areas, forced into the unforgiving Sahara Desert and left to wither away, unable to find sufficient water and food to sustain their numbers.

Today, Italian North Africa is home to no more than 830,000 nomadic desert-dwellers, most of them Mahommedan Berbers and Tuaregs. They are partially enfranchised.


Russia
Despite having no clear official organized policy against their Mahommedan subjects, life in the Russian Empire has always been harsh for them due to pogroms, expulsions, discrimination, forced conversions, abduction of children and other random acts of violence.

Today, there are between 1.5 and 2.5 million Mahommedans in Russia. There are no elections in Russia.


Greece, Armenia and Georgia
Almost all Mahommedan population from these countries has been expelled during the population exchanges with the former Ottoman Empire.

Today, there are less than one thousand Mahommedans in each of these countries. With the exception of Georgia, they have no political rights.


Romania Proper
After the incorporation of the former Ottoman Europe (the 1625 census), Romania had about 227,000 Mahommedans (Turks, Tatars, some Albanians and a few Slavs) amounting to cca. 3.7% of the total population.

15 years later (the 1640 census, which included recently annexed Eastern Thrace), the Mahommedans were less than 90,000 (cca. 1.3%) and at the end of the Second European War (the 1652 census), there were officially no remaining Mahommedans in Romania Proper (with the exception of the newly annexed Province of Marmara).

Unlike the other Christian Powers, Romania did not actively massacre its Islamic minority. What had happened then? How did those hundreds of thousands of people dissapear?

From the scarce documentary evidence available (see Annex B), we can break up their fate as follows:
- about 8,000 (2-3%) lost their lives in various pogroms perpetrated by the Romanian Nationalists with the tacit aproval of the authorities;
- about 120,000 (35-45%) were expelled to the rump Ottoman State in three successive waves (1626, 1632-1634 and 1648-1649);
- about 3,000 (~1%) converted to Catholicism (all of them Albanians);
- the rest converted to Romanian Orthodoxy and eventually merged into the Romanian Nation.

One frequently asked question is that of the faithfullness of those mass conversions. Although we do not have a definitive answer, there is sufficient evidence (see Annex C) to safely say that at least some of the converts were actually Crypto-Mahommedans who continued to practice their ancestral faith in secret for several generations. There are documents which suggest that, as recently as 1868, there was still a small Crypto-Mahommedan community in Southern Dobruja.

The converts, both the Crypto-Mahommedans and the true ones, suffered significant discrimination and occasional violence on the behalf of the Romanian Secret Service, Police and Gendarmerie as well as the Romanian Nationalists and the Romanian Society in general, having to live in a climate of fear, hatred and suspicion for many decades.


The Orient

If the Romanian treatment of Mahommedans was quite bad in Romania Proper, in the Empire it was worse by several orders of magnitude. Actually this mirrors perfectly the general status of the human rights in Romania Proper versus the rest of the Empire.

Romania Proper was, at least in theory, a democratic State, where the people had rights, the Rule of Law was more or less respected, the press was partially free, the Monarchy was constitutional and the power of the authorities was kept in check by laws, customs and powerful public opinion.

Neither of these constraints existed in the Orient, where the Romanian Emperor ruled as an absolute Monarch with no Rule of Law, no mass-media, no political parties, no separate Judicial Power and no checks whatsoever for the brutality of the Romanian Army, Colonial Authorities and Popular Militias who rampaged those lands with absolute impunity!

To be fair, not all anti-Islamic violence was perpetrated by Romanians. The Cossacks, who were expelled by the Sarmatians from their ancestral lands and were settled by the Romanian Authorities in Asia Minor, were probably the most savage in their actions against the almost defenceless Turkish civilians.

One often overlooked fact was that the organized violence against the Mahommedans was not always physical. Besides the usual massacres, rapes, expulsions, requisitions and so on, the authorities had painstakingly set up a vicious and massive psychological war against Islam and its followers:
- not content with merely demolishing the mosques, the Colonial Authorities turned many mosques into pigsties and forced the subdued Mahommedans to tend for the pigs;
- the Romanian Orthodox Church authored, published and disseminated fake Korans full of carefully inserted errors and blasphemous statements while the true Korans were confiscated and burned in public cermeonies;
- the Secret Service disseminated rumours regarding either fake conversions to Christianity or even demon or idol worshiping, thus nurturing strife and uncertainty in the midst of the Islamic communities;
- families were broken up with children separated from their parents and indoctrinated with Christian and European superiority versus Islamic and Asiatic backwardsness.

The decrease of the Mahommedan population in the various parts of the Empire is summarized in Table 7. [...]

Note: I will post the table and other statistical data in a separate post, as usual.



Prelude

In the span of just 31 years, the young Romanian State (Principality until 1625, then Imperium), under the rule of two monarchs (Saint Emperor Mihai I the Brave until 1641, then Empress Iulia the Warrior), fought three victorious wars against the crumbling Ottoman Empire, conquering it in the process.


1. The First Romanian-Ottoman War (1622-1625)
(see I.28 and I.29)

The recently (1601) united Lesser Romania (only the territory north of the Danube, i.e. the former Principalities of Transylvania, Wallachia and Moldavia), then still a nominally Ottoman Vassal, joined an Anti-Ottoman Crusade, contributed by far most the most land troops and liberated most of the Balkan Peninsula.

At the Peace of Alba Iulia (see I.30), the Principality of Romania was recognized as an Independent Country and almost doubled its territory by annexing most of the former Ottoman Europe (with the exception of Eastern Thrace). Soon afterwards, Romania became an Imperium and was accepted as a fellow Great Power at the Great Powers Conference.


2. The Second Romanian Ottoman War (1629-1630)
(see I.44 and I.45)

Only four years after the Peace of Alba Iulia, Romania was dragged by Greece into another war against the Ottoman Empire. After being invaded by the Ottomans, the Romanians regained the initiative and advanced to the walls of Constantinople, shelling it into ruins.

The Treaty of Adrianople (see I.46) saw the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire with some of its remains being loosely united into a weak Ottoman State. Romania annexed Eastern Thrace and three Colonies -- Cyrenaica (exchanged with Egyptian Sinai), the Holy Land and Lebanon.

That treaty marked the humble beginnings of the Romanian Colonial Empire which grew hundredfold in the following centuries!

During the following decades, the Romanians fought an on and off insurgency in the Holy Land and opened the Sinai Canal linking the Mediterranian to the Red Sea, a truly amazing feat of engineering for that time.


3. The Oriental Front of the Second European War (1645-1652)
(see I.63)

After returning from the Sarmatian Front, Empress Iulia led the Armies of Romania and its Allies into a protracted and vicious but ultimately victorious war against the Ottoman State, Turkey, the Levant, Mesopotamia and Arabia, conquering an area greater than Romania, covering herself in glory and finally dying heroically in battle.

A series of treaties led to the demise of the Ottoman State and the creation of the Empire of the Orient (a quasi-federal entity dominated by Romania), the small Principality of the Bosphorus (annexed one year later), the new Colonies of Sinope, Asia Minor, Syria, Cappadocia (Armenian), Cilicia (Greek) and the Protectorates of Turkey and Levant.

The end of the war pleased neither the Muslims who wanted complete freedom from Christian rule nor the Romanians whose endgame was total domination of the Middle East and the ultimate destruction of Islam.



The Colonial Wars in the Orient

After 11 years of incessant war all over Europe and the Orient with an enormous toll of young human lives, including their beloved Empress Iulia, the Romanians were both extremely war-weary and near the bottom of their financial and human resources. Thus, the long reign of Empress Maria (1651-1723) started with 18 years of peace.

That period of peace could not last any longer due to various factors:
- the increasing power, independence and restlessness of the Army (feeling that she is no longer able to control the Army, Empress Maria preferred to let it fight in the Orient instead of plotting against the fledgling Romanian Democracy);
- the real or imagined plans of the Turks and Levantines (with or without Arab, Persian or Egyptian help) to break free from Romanian rule and / or attack the neighbouring Romanian Colonies;
- the desire to help the irregular Cossack, Greek and Jewish Militias encroaching on Turkish and, respectively, Levantine territory, leading to skirmishes with the local Muslim defense units;
- the age old human desire to subjugate other peoples and take their riches and their lands;
- the new quest for prestige Colonies (after all the lucrative places have been already appropriated, the Great Powers wanted to simply paint the map in their national colour, so deserts, frozen wilderness, impenetrable jungles and remote desolate islands suddenly became attractive);
- the increasingly powerful Christian Romania could not tolerate any longer the presence of independent or autonomous Islamic countries anywhere near its ever expanding borders.


4. The Conquest of Turkey (1670)

At the end of the Second European War, a badly mauled Sarmatia decided to take no more chances and get rid of its troublesome religious minorities. One of those was the Russian Orthodox (and pro-Russian) Cossacks from the Black Sea Steppe and the Dniepr Valley.

Because simply massacring them was not palatable to the internal and international public opinion and expelling them to neighbouring Russia was not advisable due to fears of strenghening it, the Sarmatians decided to let Romania have the Cossacks.

That way, everybody was pleased: Sarmatia eliminated a potential danger to its territorial integrity and social cohesion, Romania gained hundreds of thousands of loyal and thankful citizens with a solid martial culture and the Cossacks themselves escaped persecution and settled new and rich lands full of Muslims whom they loved to fight with! The mandatory conversion from Russian Orthodoxy to Romanian Orthodoxy was a mere formality as the doctrine of the two churches was virtually identical.

Romania settled its Cossacks in the newly acquired Colony of Asia Minor, the stretch of land from the Aegean to the Black Sea on the Asian shores of the Sea of Marmara. The Cossacks simply killed or expelled the local Turks and took their land. There was one problem though -- the initially small number of Cossacks increased so much during the second and third waves of colonization that there was no more land available for them in the Colony!

Gradually, starting from 1660, the Cossacks began to cross the long and porous border with Turkey, raiding villages, killing and enslaving the Muslim population and stealing their lands. The very small Turkish army allowed by the Peace of Angora could not patrol the whole border and fend the brazen Cossacks. By 1668, small skirmishes had already turned into full-fledged battles.

The Turkish Government had issued numerous protests to the Romania, its Protecting Power, but obviously to no avail as the Romanian Colonial Authorities were actually colluding with the Cossacks, encouraging them in their acts of aggression. In 1669, the whole situation was already explosive and Turkey, deprived of any real Romanian Protection, decided to defend itself and began to levy soldiers to increase its army effectives.

In May 1670, Romania invoked the Angora Treaty, whose provisions, ironically, it had never respected, issued a strong Ultimatum and invaded Turkey shortly afterwards.

The 34,000 strong hastily assembled Turkish Army was no match for the 60,000 superbly trained Romanian Legionnaires. After three months of one-sided fights, Angora fell and the Turkish State was occupied, dissolved and merged into the Asia Minor Colony*. No treaty was ever signed. After hundreds of years of greatness and decline, the Turkish State simply ceased to exist.

*The term Asia Minor is ambigous, as it depends on the time period:
- in the Greco-Roman Antiquity, it represented the whole Anatolian Peninsula;
- between 1648 and 1670 it was the name of the small Romanian Colony on the Marmara Sea Asian shore;
- between 1670 and 1696, the name was extended to the annexed Turkish territory;
- after 1696, with the Marmara shore annexed directly to Romania Proper, it started to represent just the former Turkish Protectorate;
- today its old meaning from Antiquity appears to be once again in use.

The annexation of Turkey had several very important consequences:
- a century long low level insurgency with several massive outbursts of violence leading to a continuous and unpopular haemorrhage of troops and funds;
- the sudden end of the good bilateral relations with Persia and Egypt and the subsequent creation of the Islamic Alliance between Persia, Arabia, the Levant and Egypt with all its nefarious consequences;
- the delay of the start of industrialization [according to the study of Petrescu et al.], due to the availability of large amounts of arable land for the increasing population of Romanian peasants who were thus not forced into the industrial workforce.


5. The Romanian-Islamic War (1683-1711)

The extremely slow and protracted 28 years long war between Romania and its allies on one side and the Islamic Alliance on the other side is important enough to merit its own chapter.

Note: See the next chapter.


6. The African Colonial Wars (1703-1765)

This long series of poorly defined wars was fought as the Romanian Army and Colonial Administration advanced deeper and deeper into Africa. The Romanian conquests in Africa came to an abrupt end at the start of the Third European War.

By 1765, Romania had under various degrees of control (Colonies, Protectorates, Influence) large swathes of Eastern Africa, up to the border with German Africa in the south and the African Great Lakes and the Sahara Desert in the west. In 1721, the Christian Kingdom of Ethiopia became a full Member State of the Empire of the Orient.

Note: The accompanying maps (in a separate post) will help clarify the complex situation in Romanian Africa.


7. The Romanian-Persian War (1763-1766)

While some historians treat this war as part of the long series of Wars against Islam, we think that both its particularities and its timeframe support its inclusion in the Third European War, despite Persia not being a European country.

 

[Zagan]

The Century of Peace
The Forgotten War​

Note: The construction "Century of Peace" refers to the period with no wars between European Powers. The Colonial Wars are not taken into consideration.


Anti-Islamism in Europe (excerpts)
Paul Dragu, Constantinople, Romania, 1954

In its seemingly neverending conflict with Islam, the fortunes of the Christendom varied in direct relation to the degree of unity and cohesion in the two warring camps.

During the early Caliphates, the fractured Christendom did not stand a chance against the Islamic onslaught. Palestine, Syria, Egypt, Northern Africa and Hispania were lost in a historical blink of an eye.

When the Western Christendom rised to the call of the Pope, the resulting selfless Christian solidarity lead to the superb phenomenon of the first Crusades and the temporary liberation of the Holy Land from the accursed Mahommedan yoke.

Later, the asinine infighting between our sisterly Churches led to the disastrous fourth Crusade which dealt a mortal blow to the Eastern Roman Empire from which it never fully recovered. The lack of a strong bastion of Christianity in the Orient allowed the catastrophic rise of the Ottoman Empire, the greatest scourge that had ever befallen this part of the Christendom.

The small countries of the Balkans, frequently quarelling with one another, were rapidly overrun by the mighty Turks united under the Ottoman banner. With the Ottomans on the Danube and deep inside the former Hungarian Kingdom, the disunited Romanians and Germans would have certainly shared the gruesome fate of their neighbours if not for the Providential Coming of Saint Emperor Mihai I the Brave.

We should never underestimate the impact our beloved Saint Emperor had upon the beleaguered Christendom. Almost singlehandedly, he united all Romanians in a single powerful Empire, was the catalist of Sarmatian and German Unity and engineered the 1622 Anti-Ottoman Crusade which forever curbed the Ottoman menace. [...]

The founding of the Great Power Council, this wonderful institution which allowed the European Powers to act together against their common enemies, heralded the unprecedented era of Christian domination in which we are living today. [...]

To be completely honest, the spectacular 17th century Christian victories against the Islam were greatly aided by the disunity of the Mahommedans and especially by the repeated treasonous Persian stabs in the back against the crumbling Ottoman power.

In the First Romanian-Ottoman War, the Persian entry into the war hastened the Ottoman capitulation and saved many Christian lives.

In the Second Romanian-Ottoman War, the destruction of the Ottoman Empire was aided by internal rebellions and defections in Egypt and Arabia.

In the Third Romanian-Ottoman War, the internal disunity of the weak Ottoman State, the neutrality of Egypt and cobelliberancy of Persia helped Romania strike a mortal blow to the Ottomans and include most of it into the newly formed Christian Empire of the Orient.

Conversely, when Romania was deserted by its erstwhile allies in the wastelands of Arabia, Empress Iulia the Warrior was killed, the campaign was hastily brought to a premature end and the conquest of Mecca had to be postponed indefinitely.

[...]

Unfortunately, the era of Islamic disunity was brought to an end by increasingly bold Romanian actions in the Orient. The total destruction of the Ottoman State, the ultimately aborted thrust towards Mecca, the continuous encroachments upon the sovereignty of the Turkish and Levantine Protectorates and the horrific abuses perpetrated against the helpless Mahommedan population by the irregural militias and Romanian Colonial Authorities made the remaining Islamic countries wary and resulted in increased political, economic and military cooperation between them.

The 1670 annexation of Turkey was only the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back. [...]



The Islamic Alliance

21 April 1671 AD (12 Dhu'l-Hijjah 1081 AH), Mecca, Arabia

In the last day of the Hajj, the leaders of the remaining Muslim States of the Middle East pledged to maintain peace among themselves and to fully support each other in case of war with a Christian State (which was understood to be Romania).

The founding document of the Islamic Alliance (التحالف الإسلامي / Altahaluf Al'iislamiu) included the following points (abridged):

1. The faithful peoples from the countries of the Dar al-Islam (Islamic countries) shall refrain from waging war among themselves and live in peace with one another just as Allah intended.

2. In the case one of the signatory countries wants to wage war against a country from the Dar al-Harb (non-Islamic countries), it shall first inform the other signatories and discuss the opportunity of said war. If a consensus is not reached about the opportunity of the war against the kafirs (infidels), the other signatories are not mandated to provide military help but should, in any case, provide moral support to the warring country while maintaining their neutrality.

3. In the case one of the signatory countries is attacked by an infidel country, the other signatories must immediately provide full military support to the attacked country until the successful conclusion of the war and the expulsion of the infidels from the Dar al-Islam.

Signed today, 12 Dhu'l-Hijjah 1081, in the Holy City of Mecca, by:

• the Shahanshah of the Persian Empire,
• the Sultan of Egypt,
• the Caliph of Arabia and
• the Emir of the Levant. [1]

[1] The Levant was not an Independent country but a de jure Romanian Protectorate within the Empire of the Orient. It was, nonetheless allowed to join the Islamic Alliance as a full Independent State by the other Muslim States.


1671 - 1681

The signing of Islamic Alliance had an immediate effect both in the Islamic countries and in Christian Europe, especially in the Empire of the Orient (as Romania, Greece, Armenia and Georgia used to be under Muslim domination for centuries).

Persia, Egypt, Arabia and the Levant began to prepare for what they saw as an inevitable war with Romania. All countries improved and expanded their armed forces while Persia helped the weaker members of the alliance with weapons and military instructors.

Romania protested the increase in the size of the Levantine Army, citing the 1649 Peace of Damascus and accusing the Levant of breaking its provisions. Enboldened by the support of its stronger neighbours, the Levantines disregarded the Romanian protests and continued to expand and modernize their army.

With a future conflict more or less certain, Romania and the other members of the Empire of the Orient began to prepare for war themselves. Armenia and Georgia were by far the most concerned because they were small countries which shared a border with the more powerful and suddenly hostile Persian Empire.

Italy was also concerned due to the presence of a difficult to defend Saharan border between Italian Africa and Egyptian Cyrenaica. Anticipating possible trouble, the Italians increased the number and quality of their colonial troops dislocated in Tripolitania.

German concerns were limited to a possible closure of the Sinai Canal which was already vital, providing them with a fast and secure connection between the Metropole and the Südreich.

Anticipating a revolt of the large Muslim population from Asia Minor (annexed Turkey) in the likely case of a war with the neighbouring Muslim States, the Romanian Colonial Authorities increased the pace of the colonization of Asia Minor with Romanians, Cossacks, Greeks and other Christians.

At the same time, the Romanian Army, as well as the armies of the lesser members of the Empire of the Orient, prepared for war with frequent military exercises, better conscription, partial mobilizations and various upgrades in military equipment and strategy.

The frequent clashes between the Levantines and the Jewish militias from the Holy Land encroaching upon adjacent Levantine territory were increasingly uneven in favour of the significantly modernized Levantine Army.

The Levant was always protesting the Jewish actions to the Romanian Authorities without receiving any answers. Romania, the nominally Protecting Power of the Levant, was not only not doing anything to curb the power of the Jewish militias operating from the safety of the Romanian-held Holy Land, but was actually encouraging the large number of Jewish settlers in their attempts to appropriate parcels of land from the Levantine side of the border.

The explosive situation had its roots in the Romanian decision to colonize the Holy Land, initially with thousands of Jews evicted from Romania Proper and then with an increasingly larger number of Jews expelled by the other Christian Powers. By the start of the war, the only Christian countries with extant Jewish minorities were Russia (~600,000) and France (~370,000).

The rest of the surviving European Jews (~480,000) immigrated to the small and agriculturally poor Romanian Colony of the Holy Land where they already constituted a comfortable majority of cca. 71% of the population. That massive demographic pressure had led to a steady influx of Jewish colonists into the less populated areas of the neighbouring Levant and the unavoidable clashes with the local population and the Levantine Army.

With more and more Jews coming every week from France, the Colonial Authorities of the Holy Land had no choice but to encite them to settle over the border in Levantine territory and join their brethren who were already in excess of 55,000. For the Levantines, the situation was completely unacceptable.


March 1682

The Levantine authorities decided to expel all the Jews squating on their territory. For Romania, which had no means to accomodate the expellees in the already overcrowded Holy Land, the only possible solutions were to prop up the Jewish militias or to invade the Levant and start the war with the Islamic Alliance. The Romanians chose the former.


April 1682 - January 1683

With the Levantine Army trying to eliminate all Jewish presence from the Levant, the previously isolated skirmishes with the Jewish militias turned into a full-fledged war, a war which the Jewish irregulars were clearly losing against the superior numbers and fire power of the Levantine Army.

By the end of the year, despite the generous caches of weapons, ammuniton and explosives received from the Romanian Army, the Jewish militias were largely defeated and the victorious Levantines were already expelling or murdering the Jewish civilians.


February 1683

After an Ultimatum which remained unanswered, the Empire of the Orient declared war to the Levant and the Romanian Colonial Army, augmented with Legionnaires from the Metropole, prepared to invade the Levant from the North (Asia Minor) and West (Syria, Lebanon, the Holy Land and the Sinai).

In quick succession, Persia, Arabia and Egypt declared war to Romania, Greece, Armenia and Georgia and mobilized their armies for the war they were preparing for over a decade.

The Levant terminated their already meaningless Protectorate status, quit the Empire of the Levant and proclaimed its full Independence.



The Romanian-Islamic War

The Islamic Alliance (pop. ~40 million, army 1,880,000 - 3,930,000)

• the Persian Empire (pop. 23 million, army 700,000 - 1,800,000)
• Egypt (pop. 12 million, army 300,000 - 800,000)
• the Arabian Caliphate (pop. 4 million, army 500,000 - 700,000)
• the Levant (pop. 1.8 million, army 230,000 - 350,000)
• Turkish rebels in Asia Minor (150,000 - 280,000)

The Empire of the Orient (pop. ~25 million, army 1,900,000 - 3,720,000)

• the Empire of Romania (14.5 million, army 1,000,000 - 2,300,000)
• Greece (3.2 million, army 200,000 - 310,000)
• Armenia (3.0 million, army 120,000 - 190,000)
• Georgia (1.4 million, army 30,000 - 100,000)
• Slovakia (0.9 million, army 1,000 - 15,000)
• Cossack irregulars in Asia Minor (140,000 - 160,000)
• Jewish irregulars in the Holy Land and the Levant (170,000 - 210,000)
• Italian Colonial Forces in Africa (200,000 - 400,000)
• Sarmatian Expeditionary Force in Asia Minor (25,000)
• German Volunteers (9,000)
• German Navy (5,000)

Theatres of War

1. Caucasus (Persia vs. Armenia + Georgia + Romanian Expeditionary Force Caucasus)
2. Asia Minor (Persia + Turkish rebels vs. Romania + Greece + Cossack militias + Sarmatian Expeditionary Force)
3. Levantine (Levant + Persia vs. Romania + Jewish militias)
4. Arabian (Arabia + Egypt vs. Romania + German volunteers)
5. African (Egypt vs. Italy)
6. Naval - Mediterranian (Egypt vs. Romania + Greece)
7. Naval - Red Sea (Arabia vs. Romania)
8. Naval - Indian Ocean (Persia vs. Romania + Germany)

1. The Caucasus Theatre of War (March 1683 - November 1687)

The bulk of the Persian Army (500,000 - 780,000) invaded Armenia and then Georgia from their exposed Eastern flanks.

The small Armenian and Georgian armies (150,000 - 290,000 combined) were not able to withstand the formidable force of the Persian attack and the Romanian Expeditionary Force Caucasus (100,000 - 200,000) was not enough to change the balance in the favour of the Christians.

Erevan fell in October 1683 and Armenia capitulated in July 1685. Tilfis fell in September 1685 and Georgia capitulated in March 1686. The battered remnants of the Romanian Expeditionary Force Caucasus retreated to Asia Minor during 1687, leaving Armenia and Georgia under Persian occupation for the duration of the war.

The main reason for the humiliating defeat of the Romanian Legionnaires was considered at that time to have been the difficult logistics in a far away mountainous region with a poor road infrastructure, few navigable rivers and little food readily available. Today, some historians suggest that the war had not been taken seriously in Romania where years of nationalist propaganda made everyone believe that defeating the Muslims would be a walk in the park. Regardless of the reasons, the defeat caused a significant furore in Romania and the subsequent fall of the Romanian Government.

The Persian occupation in Armenia and Georgia was rather light, with violence and atrocities being relatively rare and the requisitions bearable. The Persian Empire did not attempt to annex the occupied countries or change their existing laws and customs.


2. The Asia Minor Theatre of War (May 1683 - December 1710)

Of all the theatres of war, Asia Minor was by far the most complex and contested, with the most countries involved, the largest number of soldiers, a massive long term Turkish insurrection, the largest and most important battles and the longest duration of the hostilities.

The best Legions of the Romanian Army (600,000 - 1,000,000), the Romanian Colonial Forces (180,000 - 240,000), the Cossack militias (cca. 150,000), the Greek Army (130,000 - 250,000) and the Sarmatian Expeditionary Force (cca. 25,000) battled the Persian Armies (650,000 - 1,450,000) and the Turkish rebels (150,000 - 280,000) to a stalemate for an incredible 27 years.

The frontlines advanced Eastwards and retreated Westwards with a exasperating periodicity, leaving behind death and destruction. Angora changed hands eleven times and Sinope nine times, being almost completely destroyed in the process.

At the end of the War, the population of Asia Minor was halved (cca. 1.3 million dead or displaced) and the military casualties were enormous (about half a million on each side). The cost of the war is difficult to acertain but it was probably astronomic, with both Romania and Persia ending the war nearly bankrupt.


3. The Levantine Theatre of War (June 1683 - April 1699)

At first, the Levantine Armies (230,000 - 350,000) were alone against the Romanian Colonial Forces (80,000 - 130,000) and the Jewish militias (170,000 - 210,000) and neither side was able to make any progress.

The arrival of the Persian Armies from Mesopotamia (250,000 - 300,000) changed the balance of forces in favour of the Islamic Alliance and the Romanian and Jewish forces were quickly pushed over the Jordan river (1688).

When the enemy crossed the Jordan and threatened Jerusalem, Romania send its Legionnaires (cca. 330,000) to regain the initiative and drive the Persian and Levantine soldiers out of the Holy Land (1691).

The Romanians took advantage of their momentum and, in a brazen and unexpected attack, advanced rapidly in the Levant and captured Damascus (December 1691).

With their Capital in the hands of the enemy and their Emir in captivity, the Levantine armies started to disintegrate, leaving large gaps in the failing frontlines. Unable to contain the Romanian invasion alone, the Persian Armies began a fighting retreat towards Mesopotamia (1692).

By the end of 1693, most of the Levant was under Romanian occupation and the Romanian vanguard crossed the Persian border into Mesopotamia. The Levantine State was meticulously dismantled, partitioned and officially annexed to the Romanian Colonies of Syria, Lebanon, Holy Land and Sinai (March 1694).

The Romanian advance into Mesopotamia slowed down during the following years and, seeing that further progress in unlikely, the overextended Romanian Armies were called back and retreated into the Levant. The exhausted Persian forces did not pursue the Romanians and the Levantine Theatre of War turned silent.


4. The Arabian Theatre of War (January 1684 - August 1707)

A rapid Egyptian advance (120,000) captured the western half of the Canal Zone, reaching the Sinai Canal and blocking all naval traffic (1684).

The Romanian Armies from Sinai and the Canal Zone (140,000 - 270,000) were overwhelmed by the coordinated offensive from the South-East (230,000 Arabs) and the West (310,000 Egyptians) and had to retreat to the Holy Land, leaving the Sinai under Muslim occupation (1685).

The subsequent Muslim offensive in the Holy Land stalled and the arrival of the Romanian Legionnaires (100,000 - 460,000) turned the tide in the favour of the Romanians (1686).

The Sinai was liberated in an arduous campaign (1686-1688), pushing the Egyptians over the Sinai Canal and the Arabs in Arabia Petraea.

Despite the vaillant efforts of the Romanian soldiers, the Egyptian Army held the front on the Sinai Canal and an invasion of Egypt proved to be impossible at that moment (1689).

The Romanians turned to the battered Arab armies and, after capturing Arabia Petraea (1690), advanced southwards, until stopped by the desert heat, lack of water, impossible logistics and disease (1692), just like in the similarly doomed campaign of Empress Iulia from 1652.

After the Egyptian exit from the War (see below) and the reopening of the Sinai Canal (1701), the Arabian campaign was renewed with the massive logistical support provided by the Navy.

The Romanian southward advance was slow and difficult but implacable. Jeddah fell in November 1702, Medina in January 1704 and Mecca in February 1706.

The Caliph was poisoned in May 1706 and Arabia officially capitulated one month later. The Romanian Army vacated the holy cities of Islam during the following year, leaving an occupation force in Jeddah.


5. The African Theatre of War (December 1689 - September 1699)

The Egyptian capture and closure of the Sinai Canal, the Muslim unrest in Italian Africa, the fear of an imminent Egyptian attack and the solidarity with their fellow Christians were the four stated reasons for the Italian intervention against Egypt.

With the bulk of the Egyptian forces guarding the Sinai Canal, the Italian Colonial Forces from Tripolitania (200,000 - 400,000), supported by the Italian and German navies, invaded Cyrenaica against feeble Egyptian resistance (50,000 - 170,000).

With Cyrenaica captured (1690), the Italians stopped at the narrow passage between the Mediterranian Littoral and the Qattara Depression [2], where the Egyptians managed to hold the front for seven years.

A lucky Italian breakthrough (1697) led to the rapid collapse of the Egyptian defences. The Italians reached the Nile Delta in April 1698, captured Alexandria in September 1698 and Cairo in February 1699.

With more and more Egyptian soldiers removed from the defense of the Sinai Canal, the Romanian Colonial Forces from Sinai crossed the Canal, liberated the western half of the Canal Zone and invaded Egypt from the east (June 1699).

When the invading Italian and Romanian armies met on the Nile south of Cairo, the Egyptians realized that their position is untennable and sued for peace.

[2] The only bottleneck before the Nile Delta (the site of the OTL battles of El-Alamein).


6. The Mediterranian Naval Theatre of War (March 1684 - June 1684)

The combined Romanian and Greek Navies destroyed the Egyptian Navy in two completely one-sided battles. Afterwards, the Christian Warships enjoyed absolute supremacy in the Mediterranian and shelled the harbour of Alexandria damaging the portuar facilities.


7. The Red Sea Naval Theatre of War (July 1701)

After the damage to the Sinai Canal was repaired, the Romanian Navy entered the Red Sea and obliterated the Arabian Navy. Afterwards, the Navy continued to offer invaluable logistical support to the advancing Romanian Army for the remainder of the Arabian Campaign.


8. The Indian Ocean Naval Theatre of War (June 1702 - January 1711)

With the Sinai Canal open, the Romanian and German Navies sailed to the Indian Ocean to attack the Persian ships and harbours. Both sides lost a significant number of warships but, after a couple of years, the Christian Navies started to prevail, achieving naval superiority in 1705 and supremacy in 1707.

No longer fearing the feeble remains of the once mighty Persian Navy, the Christian warships entered the Persian Gulf and began to strike at the heart of the Persian Empire with impunity. The Persian harbours were damaged or destroyed and a large part of the Persian trade with India and the Far East was gutted.



The End of the War

After almost 28 years of war, the Romanians were nearing the bottom of both their coffers and of their manpower. The human and material losses were enormous and the rate at which both soldiers and money were lost was alarming.


March 1711

With the entirety of the Romanian civilian society adamantely against the hopeless continuation of the war, the Romanian Senate and the aging Empress Maria I urged the Army to accept a negotiated peace.

Faced with a possible revolt at home and a very probable future lack of material support, the powerful Romanian Generals conceded and let the Romanian Government sent its peace feelers to Persia.


2 May 1711

An Armistice ended the state of war between the Christian Coalition and the Islamic Alliance.


12 March 1712

Persia, Egypt, Arabia on one side and Romania, Greece, Armenia, Georgia, Slovakia, Italy, Sarmatia, Germany on the other side signed the Peace Treaty of Erevan in the Armenian Capital. Its main provisions are summarized below:

• Armenia and Georgia were excluded from the Empire of the Orient and placed under Persian Protection.
• The Romanian annexations of Turkey and the Levant were officially recognized.
• Western Mesopotamia (part of the Levant since the Second European War) was annexed by Persia and reunited with Eastern Mesopotamia.
• Romania was allowed to keep a garrison in the Arabian port of Jeddah.
• Arabia recognized the Romanian annexation of Socotra.
• Arabia ceded the port of Aden to Romania.
• Egypt ceded Cyrenaica to Italy.
• Egypt ceded to Romania an additional buffer along the Canal Zone border and its Red Sea Coast south of the 19th parallel. [3]
• Egypt was placed under Romanian Protection.
• Romania was allowed to keep a garrison in Alexandria.
• All prisoners of war were to be exchanged.
• No reparations were to be paid.
• The Islamic Alliance was terminated.
• All signatories pledged to refrain from interfering in the internal affairs of the others.

[3] Parts of OTL Sudan, Eritrea, Djibouti and Somalia.


Conclusions

• While Romania gained some territories in Arabia and Africa, annexed most of the Levant and gained influence in Egypt, it lost control over Armenia and Georgia which were detached from the Empire of the Orient and placed under the Protection of Persia. After a 28 years war which had led to the deaths of more than half a million Romanian soldiers, that was certainly not a good deal!
• Armenia and Georgia exchanged their Christian Protector (Romania) with a Muslim one (Persia).
• Greece, Slovakia and Sarmatia fought for nought.
• Italy gained Cyrenaica.
• Germany helped maintain the route to its Colonies open through the Sinai Canal.
• The Cossacks retained a free hand in parts of Asia Minor.
• The Jews gained a free hand in parts of the Levant.
• Persia gained Western Mesopotamia and influence in Armenia and Georgia.
• Arabia ceded Aden and the control of Jeddah.
• Egypt lost its peripheral territories and its full sovereignty.
• Turkey and the Levant vanished from the map.

Whether Romania lost the War or not was debatable but its biggest winner was clearly Persia. That is the reason why the Romanian-Islamic War was rarely mentioned in Romania and slowly faded into obscurity until it became the forgotten war. The proud Romanians hate being reminded of their failures.

 

[Zagan]

The Romanian-Islamic War
Military Alliances (1683)

Link


Key:

• Pale Red: Christian Coalition
• Pale Green: Islamic Alliance
• Pale Yellow: Neutral States
• Pale Blue: Water (duh)

Notes:

• Germany only sent volunteers and part of its navy.
• The contributions of Sarmatia and Slovakia was limited.
• The Turkish rebels in Romanian annexed Turkey / Asia Minor are not shown.
• It is unknown whether Somalia (de jure an Egyptian Protectorate) contributed any troops.
• The Saharan Claims of Spain, Italy and Egypt were internationally recognized. They are marked as "Claims" simply because there were no "boots on the ground" and a very limited population.
• The borders in the interior of Africa and in Central Asia are approximative.
• The German Colonies are not shown on this map (should be coloured Pale Red).
• Check the Legend in the lower-right corner of the map for the meaning of the numbers shown on the map.

.

 

[Zagan]

The Romanian-Islamic War
(1683-1711)

Link


Numbers:

1. Italy
2. Italian Africa
3. Italian Claim (Sahara)
4. Qattara Depression (Egypt)
5. Canal Zone (Romania)
6. Holy Land (Romania)
7. Lebanon (Romania)
8. Syria (Romania)

Letters:

• A. Cyrenaica (ceded by Egypt, annexed by Italy to Italian Africa)
• B. Most of the Egyptian Claim in Sahara (ceded by Egypt, annexed by Italy to Italian African Claim)
• C. Buffer Area (ceded by Egypt, annexed by Romania to the Canal Zone)
• D. Alexandria (Egypt, Romanian garrison)
• E. Jeddah (Arabia, Romanian garrison)
• F. Part of the Levant (Arabia Petraea, annexed by Romania to the Sinai)
• G. Part of the Levant (annexed by Romania to the Holy Land)
• H. Part of the Levant (annexed by Romania to Lebanon)
• I. Part of the Levant (annexed by Romania to Syria)
• J. Part of the Levant (Western Mesopotamia, annexed by Persia to Mesopotamia)
• K. Armenia and Georgia (Persian Protectorate)
• L. Asia Minor (Turkey, Romanian annexation recognized)

Note: Aden (ceded by Arabia, annexed by Romania as the Colony of Aden), not shown on the Map.


Lines:

• Blue: Coastlines
• Red: Borders
• Pink: New Borders after the Peace of Erevan
• Grey: Alexandria and Jeddah (Romanian garrisons)
• Purple: Maximum advance of the Islamic Alliance in Asia Minor, Greek Cilicia, Syria, Lebanon, Holy Land (Georgia, Armenia, Sinai, Canal Zone were completely overrun)
• Cyan: Maximum advance of the Christian Coalition in Armenia, Persian Mesopotamia, the Levant, Arabia, Egypt from the East (Romania), Egypt from the West (Italy)
• Orange: Frontlines at the time of the Armistice in Asia Minor and the Levant

Note: The most important battles of the War are marked with a Battle Symbol and the name of the battle.


Another map with the final borders will be available soon.

 

[Zagan]

Romania after the Romanian-Islamic War (1712)

Link

Note: The map is scaled to 75% in order to fit into the 500 KB file size limit for attachments. Download Full Sized Map


Key:

1. The Canal Zone (Romanian)
2. Egyptian Alexandria (Romanian garrison)
3. Arabian Jeddah (Romanian garrison)
4. Berenice (Romanian, to the Canal Zone)

The Empire of the Orient:

• Constantinople (de facto Romanian)
• Romania and its Dependencies (see below)
• Greece (Dynastic Union with Romania)
• Slovakia (Dynastic Union with Romania)
• Egypt (Romanian Protectorate)
• Somalia (Romanian Protectorate)
• formerly also Armenia and Georgia, now under Persian influence

Note: With Armenia and Georgia gone, all the remaining Empire of the Orient is under the rule of the Romanian Monarch.


Romanian Dependencies:

• The Canal Zone (External Province, expanded with territory from Egypt and the Sinai, part of Romania)
• Constantinople Area (Empire of the Orient, de facto part of Romania, not visible at this scale)
• Socotra (Territory, no permanent civilian population)
• Lebanon (Autonomous Province, expanded with territory from the former Levant)
• The Holy Land (Autonomous Province, expanded with territory from the former Levant)
• Hungary (Autonomous Province, de jure Independent Country)
• Croatia (Autonomous Province, de jure Independent Country)
• Dalmatia (Autonomous Province, de jure part of Croatia)
• The Sinai (Colony, expanded with territory from the former Levant)
• Asia Minor (Colony, former Turkey)
• Syria (Colony, expanded with territory from the former Levant)
• Aden (Colony)
• Erythrea (Colony, tenous control)
• Romanian Somalia (Colony, tenous control)
• Egypt (Romanian Protectorate, with its own national colour)
• Somalia (Romanian Protectorate, not enforceable, with its own national colour)
• Alexandria (Egyptian territory, Romanian military presence, with the Egyptian colour)
• Jeddah (Arab territory, Romanian military presence, with the Arabian colour)

Nice Romanian control of the Red Sea, isn't it?

 

[Zagan]

The Levantine Area after the Romanian-Islamic War (1712)
Syria, Lebanon, the Holy Land, the Sinai & the Canal Zone
(with an OTL Google Maps layer)

Link


Notes:

• Berenice (southern exclave of the Canal Zone) is not shown on this map.
• Old borders are shown in Pink.

[B]@idumea[/B]: You can better grasp the extent of the Holy Land's territory using this map, thanks to its lower scale and Google Maps layer. You can see, for example, that all of ancient Edom, Moab, Ammon and Philistine are inside the Holy Land's borders (at least according to this map).

 

[Zagan]

The "boring" Century of Peace (1653 - 1765) will soon come to an end (in 2-3 chapters maximum).

In anticipation to the Third European War (1765 - 17xx), I reviewed the earlier chapters and made a few changes to chapter II.2. European Colonialism, mainly for the sake of internal self-consistency. If you want to, you can review it now.

Until then, it seems appropriate to provide a follow up to the World Map from this post (which covered the period 1650 - 1700).

The World Before the Third European War

Full Map Link


Legend:

• Lighter Colours: Claimed Territories, definitely in the country's sphere, but not yet incorporated because of either (1) not reached yet (Arctic ice, deserts, jungles) or (2) not conquered yet from the natives.
• Not shown: The Arctic (above ~74° N, uncontested Scandinavian), the Antarctic (below ~56° S, uncontested German) and various small islands (too small for this scale).

Notes:

• Some borders are only approximations.
• Some pre-war changes in the Middle East are not shown on this map (would be spoilers).

Key: See the lower-left corner of the map.


European Possessions:

Spain

• Macaronesia (Azores, Madeira, Canaries, Cape Verde, integral part of Spain)
• Mauretania (NW Africa)
• Empire of the Americas (American mainland and islands from the Magellan Strait to California)
• African Colonies (Bissau, Spanish Guinea, Angola)

France

• New France
• African Colonies (Senegal, French Guinea, Ivory Coast, French Congo)

Britannia

• British North America (including Newfoundland, Bermuda, Bahamas, integral part of Britannia)
• Lesser Antilles (unilaterally annexed)
• African Colonies (Gambia, Sierra Leone, Gold Coast)
• Capeland (Cape Colony)
• British India (including Ceylon)
• British East Indies
• Various small islands in the Southern Atlantic Ocean and Indian Ocean (some uninhabited)

Germany

• All of the World South of 40°S (except South America)
• Südreich (Australia, Papua, *New Zealand, Melanesia, Polinesia)
• Philippines (including Micronesia)
• Madagascar (including the Mascarenes)
• German Africa (Mosambik)
• Feuerland

Sarmatia

• Sarmatian Guinea

Romania

• Middle East Dependencies (Asia Minor, Syria, Lebanon, Holy Land, Sinai, Canal Zone)
• Aden (including Socotra)
• Erythrea
• Romanian Somalia
• Egypt (Protectorate)
• Somalia (Protectorate)
• Romanian East Africa (including Zanzibar)

Scandinavia

• All of the World North of 60°N (except British Shetland and Northern European Russia)
• North America and the Pacific North of 54°N
• North American Pacific Coast south of 54°N, the Aleutines, Kamcheatka, etc

Russia

• Russian Siberia

Italy

• Italian Africa (down to 16°N, the Mediterranian coast integral part of Italy);

Notes:

• Greek Cicilia is not a colony anymore but an integral part of Greece.
• Armenian Cappadocia is not a colony anymore but an integral part of Armenia.
• Armenia and Georgia are Persian Protectorates.

.

 

[Zagan]

About the previous map, but in a separate post...

• As you can easily see, it's a Mercator projection or, to be more specific, a Web Mercator, although the difference is negligible at this scale. The base map is Google Maps, with the Google Maps Layer hidden before exporting to PNG.

• The form factor is 1:2 because the map is cut vertically at about 74°N and 56°S.

• The horizontal cut is not at the OTL 180° meridian but through the Bering Strait, having all of Asia on the right side of the map. This is because in TTL, the meridians are numbered differently.

TTL Longitude

While the parallels are counted as in OTL (from 90°N = the North Pole to 0° = the Equator to 90°S = the South Pole), the meridians are counted from 0° to 360°, without an East / West designation.

Greater numbers are Eastwards, smaller numbers are Westwards. TTL Meridians are in Black, OTL Meridians are in Red.

The 0° (168°40'W) or the Date Line Meridian passes through the Bering Strait (the leftmost line on the map).

The 168°40' (0°) meridian passes through Greenwich.

The 180° or the Central Meridian (11°20'E) passes through the heart of Europe (Scandinavia, Germany, Italy).

The 348°40' (180°) meridian is our antimeridian.

The 360° (168°40'W) is identical with the 0° meridian (the rightmost line on the map).


To convert from TTL Longitude to OTL Longitude:
1. Add 11°20'.
2a. If less than 180°, substract from 180° and append W (OTL Western Hemishpere).
2b. If between 180° and 360°, substract 180° and append E (OTL Eastern Hemisphere).
2c. If greater then 360°, substract 360° then substract the result from 180° and append W (OTL Western Hemisphere).

Example 1: The vertical border between Mexico and British North America (73°50').
1. Add 11°20', result 85°10'.
2a. Substract from 180°, result 94°50'W.

Example 2: The border between Mauretania and Libya (174°).
1. Add 11°20', result 185°20'.
2b. Substract 180°, result 5°20'E.

Example 3: The border between Libya and Egypt (194°).
1. Add 11°20', result 205°20'.
2b. Substract 180°, result 25°20'E.

Example 4: The vertical border between Russia and Scandinavian Siberia (230°40').
1. Add 11°20', result 242°.
2b. Substract 180°, result 62°E.


To convert from OTL Longitude to TTL Longitude:
1a. If Western, substract from 180°.
1b. If Eastern, add 180°.
2. Substract 11°20' (and, if negative, add 360°).

Example 1: New York (74°W)
1a. Substract from 180°, result 106°.
2. Substract 11°20', result 94°40'.

Example 2: Paris (2°21'E)
1b. Add 180°, result 182°21'.
2. Substract 11°20', result 171°1'.

Example 3: Jerusalem (35°13'E).
1b. Add 180°, result 215°13'.
2. Substract 11°20', result 203°53'.


I hope that a little maths now and then isn't excessively boring and does not chase my readers away.


P.S. Just in case someone wonders...
Question: It's too early for advanced chronometres for precise longitude measurements. How were they able to determine the longitude of the Bering Strait with that precision?
Answer: They got lucky. When a Scandinavian ship wintered at the Bering Strait, there happened to be a Moon eclipse and the exact longitude could be obtained with an elementary astronomical calculation when they arrived back home!