Pre-Christianity, maybe.
Middle Ages, your basically handing your enemies an excuse to call a crusade.
Miscellaneous <1900 (Alternate) History Thread
- Thread starter RMcD94
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Middle Ages, your basically handing your enemies an excuse to call a crusade.
With a Scandinavian union forming in the 1800s, would the railway from Oslo to Gothenburg to Malmö have been treated as a proper mainline railway? I.e. double tracked all the way and built for actually decent speed.
Maybe with Gothenburg as the Union capital this, along with the Gothenburg-Stockholm, & Stockholm-Norrland coast lines would be the primary mainlines, and the OTL mainline Malmö-Stockholm would not be a mainline?
Maybe with Gothenburg as the Union capital this, along with the Gothenburg-Stockholm, & Stockholm-Norrland coast lines would be the primary mainlines, and the OTL mainline Malmö-Stockholm would not be a mainline?
Was there ever a time in Medieval English history that someone named Victor could have been King?
John Fredrick Parker
Donor
Was wondering if this could be its own thread, only to find @redjirachi tried to start one a couple years back.
Would Ming war with Brunei over Caboloan/Pangasinan if Luzon becomes Muslim and a Sultanate completely and the allied Sultanate that Brunei creates tries to annex Caboloan with the help of its Muslim inhabitants?
nah fam it was an agricultural paradise, it just so happened to be completely outcompeted by even better agricultural paradises like egypt, syria, anatolia or for the brief period it was held, mesopotamia. but like as soon as the western romans faded away, the franks in gaul found themselves in a super cool position as they had become the new grain silo of western europe
WI: Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis are put on trial for treason, convicted and hanged? How would Reconstruction be handled if this happened? What would pop culture be like in such a world? If anyone wants to write this TL, you're free to go ahead.
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No way. Ferdinand II’s niece Joanna of Naples is a far likelier match
Bytor
Monthly Donor
Is anybody here knowledgeable on the history for the printing press in the British Isles?
I'm wondering what it would take as a Point of Divergence to have both Modern English and Modern Scots retain the glyphs ȝ, Þ, ð, and rather than using gh, th, and sometimes y for them?
Like was there a printer who made movable type for them to be added to the printing presses imported from the continent, but something prevented them from being able to distribute the pieces broadly?
I'm wondering what it would take as a Point of Divergence to have both Modern English and Modern Scots retain the glyphs ȝ, Þ, ð, and rather than using gh, th, and sometimes y for them?
Like was there a printer who made movable type for them to be added to the printing presses imported from the continent, but something prevented them from being able to distribute the pieces broadly?
I wonder as possible would that at some time between Abdallah al-Mahdi Billah founding the Fatimid Caliphate and his successors conquest of Egypt, for shift their strategic focus and conquest impulse from the East to the West, from Egypt to the Umayyad Emirate and later Caliphate of Cordoba (Al Andaluz)?
I am assuming in that the Germanic conquests here are a reference to the migrations.
Honestly, there is no way to answer this without just writing a book on the topic, as it's still a very up to debate which were the most influential factors. I will try to give a brief summary answer of it, however, I must start this by stating that ineptitude is not a considered factor, if anything saying the Roman Empire was inept would be a reductio ad absurdum of all the issues that were affecting the Empire at the time of the 5th century.
In many ways, it was the standard decline of any imperial power whose power structures fail to effectively adapt to the new challenges and circumstances. However, given this is more specifically about the Germanic Migrations, will pick the starting point at 358 given it was when Julian settled some Frankish tribes as foederati in Gaul. The importance of the foederati isn't so much in Rome using foreign troops—it was a completely normal practice for the Roman Empire since the republican days to utilize non-Roman troops when available, and even keeping tribes together for recruiting them while settling them elsewhere was also nothing new—it was important because it introduced a new source for high ranking officers and officials whose advancement was solely based on imperial favor, and that it wasn't tied to the aristocratic and military cliques and factions that plagued the Roman Empire. This was particularly significant as the imperial system was built along the lines of a military dictatorship, even if it was starting to become more dynastic by the 300s, so having non-roman officers was valuable to any reigning Emperor as they could be appointed to high offices without the fear that their troops would proclaim them Emperors after the first victory against an enemy, its no surprise that there had been many high ranking Frankish generals serving as Magisters since Constantine's reign, as these generals' full authority was dependent on imperial patronage. With strong Emperors like Constantine, Valentinian and Theodosius, it's a perfectly fine system of power, but with obvious drawbacks when these generals start playing as the power behind the throne, they may not be able to become emperors themselves (and this is tied with the increasingly dynastic nature of emperorship) but they can rule, which is what will later happen with the 5th century Roman Empire being plagued by a long line of Roman Warlords all fighting to be the power behind the throne, most famous warlords being Stilicho, Aetius and Ricimer, but there are a lot more like Bonifatius, Felix, Fravitta, etc... arguably Alaric was also one.
So on one hand you see a rise of warlordism in the Roman Empire in the 4th and 5th centuries tied to a weakening of Imperial power, mostly because of weak Emperors. However, this is at the top level, locally imperial power had been in decline since the mid of the 3rd century, with the Empire being constantly plagued by local revolts, banditism, bagaudae and the emergence of local armed aristocracy (that had before the 3rd century been concentrated in cities but during the 3rd century started abandoning the cities to settle themselves in fortified villae across the countryside and this was a serious problem as we can attest by the amount of edicts from 4th century emperors trying to stop them from operating private prisons and private armies of retinues). This meant a collapse of authority in large parts of the Empire, authority that had to be reimposed by force, and in this the emergence of the previously mentioned class of generals comes back as they acted as the enforcers of imperial authority. Foederati also come back to this as they gave a means to the imperial center to reimpose authority with the foederati acting as their agents, which meant that the imperial field armies would be free from having to do that to focus on other issues. This outsourcing of traditional enforcement of imperial authority at the local levels was also done via the now rising armed aristocracy, who would in the 4th century be co-opted by the imperial power structures, the aristocracy gaining privileges to ensure the enforcement of taxes and conscription, with the local coloni (tenant farmers) losing rights and privileges and starting to be tied to the land (this is more tied to the rise of serfdom in the Roman Empire and the stratification and in some points outright became what is described as a late roman 'caste system' but won't expand much on that just to say that during the 4th and 5th centuries there was a constant attempt by imperial authorities to increase social rigidity for ease of managing human resources).
As you see the weakening of imperial authority locally is countered by the usage of foederati and the warlords to reimpose it, but as a consequence it's these individuals and the foederati that start having the connections to the local power brokers. Further weakening of imperial authority via Emperors unable to enforce their will on the system, meant a further need of foederati whose leaders are now themselves warlords who then use their positions in the imperial court to legitimize their power, with new foederati agreements granting them more and better lands to settle while gaining offices that legitimize their assumption of imperial authority in those regions, an affair that tended to be done in cooperation with the local Roman aristocracy tho ofc there were cases of conflict between the two. By the time the foederati leaders emerge as leaders of Kingdoms, they do it on the basis that they are acting like representatives of Imperial authority, even keeping coinage with the portraits of the ruling Emperor in the East, there were tho exceptions like that of the Vandal Kingdom that presented themselves as completely independent rulers.
I admit I failed to address on the religious and economic reasons, but if I go by then we are going to be here all day and this post will get even bigger, so calling it at this point, tho hopefully explanation comes across that it was a considerable amount of factors that prevailed in the Germanic tribes assuming authority in western parts of the Roman Empire, and that it wasn't really ineptitude on the Romans part, but that Romans and Germanics had a vested interest in the weakening of Imperial authority to increase their own local power. In many ways, it's a simple decline of central authority that has to concede power in order to address local problems and threats, tho in this case it also involved originally outsiders to integrate themselves into the process and taking advantage of it.
Potato potato
How should've the 5th century emperors dealt with the ever expanding power of the foederati? Should they have eliminated some foederati and coerce the rest into submission? Should they have integrated some of them?
I thought Christianity's role in Rome was a blessing for the emperor since it gave him much more authority.
Thank you for writing this bit on the foederati's role and its relationship to Rome
The foederati were integrated into the power structures and were in many ways the main backers of Emperors, as that justified and legitimised themselves, stronger Emperors used the foederati to also strengthening themselves but the 400s is a period of Emperors that do not fit the system that had been conceived with a dynamic Emperor strongly active in military affairs. Honestly I would say the bigger problem were the local aristocracy.
My comment there is more on the way religious figures started being integrated into imperial power structures, their power relations with the local aristocracy and the matters related to different understandings of Christianity between groups and how that affected the imperial power structures. Wasn't really a Christianity is the problem return to Traditional Roman Religion comment, I completely disagree with the idea Christianity was directly linked as something to blamed for the decline.
Grey Wolf
Donor
Well, the Italians did it, and it was a House of Savoy name going back a couple of centuries IIRC. Therefore, someone needs to give Savoy a crown, which is not without the bounds of possibility
I think it's probably unlikely, as Victor just wasn't a common name. According to this site, it appears a couple of times in the Curia Regis Rolls in 1200 and 1203, followed by a few records from the 16th century. I have no way of verifying that, but the site does seem to have good sources for its other data, so it's probably correct. Apparently it wasn't even a particularly popular name in nearby parts of Europe either. So there would need to be a good reason for someone royal to have the name - maybe a king wins a battle and his son is born the same day so he is named for the victory, or something like that - but remember that most people back then only had one name, so there'd have to be a good reason for the king not to use more traditional names, imo.
Grey Wolf
Donor
Oh I missed that bit
Well, England could well have had a King Alphonso, so I suppose there is SOME chance in some alternate history of a King Victor
Beset Rearguards
Straggly Wolf