What if the two most devastating events in the medieval era, namely the rise of the Mongol empire and the spread of the plague, never happened? How would Eurasia develop without the fear of the Mongol hordes? How do trade, international relations and demography change?
No Gengis Khan and No black plague
- Thread starter Gancio The Ranter
- Start date
No it wouldn't, Persia didn't have such population sizes before the 13th century.
What a deterministic answer.
Just because Iran did not have such a population in OTL does not mean it could not acquire one. Just do not have epidemic warfare ravaging the heartland and the population would naturally grow and urbanize. The Mongols destroyed irrigation and other vital infrastructure across the Middle East that had allowed for large urban populations. In particular the Iranian Plateau was ravaged oven and over again by the self proclaimed Mongol successor states and Turkish Empires. The population never recovered until the early modern period. Iran is big. It is located on the trade routes between India/China and the West. Has the potential to unite/rule all Muslims as the Caliphate. I see no reason that in a timeline without the Mongols it could become one of the most dominant states in the world. A hegemonic, prosperous, and colonizing Superpower.
Now for Europe:
Is exceeding the population of Pre-Black Death Europe difficult? Yes it is. I admit that. But Europe prior to the Black Death was teetering on the edge of overpopulation and famine. There were several famines in the years prior to the outbreak of the plague. The nobility and the church will be unable to do anything, they will blame each other and/or God for the famines. There will be no outlet to the New World here. It is several centuries off. Without the Plague we would still be looking at a "time of troubles" that would be no less catastrophic for Europe. We would just be starting epidemic warfare we saw on the continent during the 1600s/1700s early. If you think that, no they woulden't have the money to pay for that, remember that the worst war during that time period, the 30 Years War, was so bad because all sides ran out of money and the armies turned to looting instead.
Avoiding the Black Death is one of last PODs that could lead to a Europe screw like this. It is important to bring that up.
This is unlikely. Iran didn’t break 10 million population until 1920. It is a country with poor water resources. It would be very hard to get it to twice the population it has now. I doubt any amount of irrigation would give it a massive population.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_renewable_water_resources
It's not deterministic, it's geography and climate.
No it does mean that, "only because Greenland did not have such a population in OTL it doesn't mean it can have a million people IATL". The population of Iran had plenty of time to recover since Timur up to the 20th century, it didn't grow super high because the geography and climate doesn't allow it, it's not like China was limited long term by warfare with the Mongol or later famines and Manchus.
Urbanization wouldn't increase the population more than 10-20%, by itself at least.
Yes, exactly, it did recover in a couple centuries, so why would it grow so large beyond that? Being big doesn't mean anything if you have deserts like Dasht-e Kavir/Lut.
Being located between trade routes didn't make the Tarim Basin or Central Asia any more prone to have big population densities, merely bigger cities and urbanization rates.
You see no reason, I see the fact the terrain has physical limitations and people can change it only so far.
What a double standard, geography and climate doesn't matter for Iran but "Europe was teetering on the edge of overpopulation", wouldn't your Persia be as well? You are pushing a population in side of Iran 2 to 3 times as big as it was during its golden ages.
Warfare in the 17 to 18th centuries was not caused by population, nor is the 18th century European warfare "epidemic", also interesting the fact you use "determinism" when frankly malthusian minded determinism is a more extreme position than pointing out that geography and climate are still largely uncontrolled by humans.
Max Sinister
Banned
Unfortunately I don't have the time right now to give you a good summary, but check out my Chaos timeline where Genghis dies in 1200.
Absorbing both of those will likely make Iran no longer Persian-dominated. ATM the CIA says that Iran is about 75% Iranian, of which about 70% is Persian. Absorbing Both the Indus and Mesopotamia, especially without the Mongols and Black Death means that at best they will make Pakistan speak Parsi. More likely however, they will not be able to hold on to both areas, as Iraq in 800 AD had an estimated population of 30 million, with this declining to 5 million in 20th Century, similarly the Indus Valley will have a very large population. And without total slaughter, which the Iranians are unlikely to do, both the Indus and Iraq will be producing large intellectual outputs, so will be able to withstand cultural conversion.
Khwarezmian state was a hodge podge assembly of the territories. What was "Perisian" in Transoxania and why would Uzbeks, Kipchaks and Turkmens became Persians? Not to mention that the military strength of this state was rather questionable.
Those ethnic groups did not exist prior to the 20th century when they concept of the nation state was forcibly imposed on the region by the Soviet Union. Before then there was no more "national identity" than Native American confederations like the Iroquois or the various African Kingdoms. Projecting our modern values on nationality on tribal peoples is flawed at best.
Did not have patience to watch it through but it seems that the clown(s) have very silly ideas about the European part of the equation. They start with the Russian states and declare that (a) without the Mongols these states would remain independent from each other and (b) that when "Moscow rebelled" against the Mongols it took all Russian states with it.
(a) By XIII Russian states had been already in a process of unification (hence "Vladimir-Suzdal Rus") and there is no reason to assume that without the Mongols this process would take 5 - 6 extra centuries.
(b) When Moscow "rebelled" it could not take the rest of the earlier Russian princedoms with it because Lithuania possessed more than a half of them.
Then goes the image: narrative about the Polish conquest of disunited Russia is illustrated by the painting showing capitulation of the Polish troops occupying Kremlin of Moscow during the Time of Troubles.
And when it came to the Swedish conquest of Poland I gave up .....
Sorry, are you saying that Kipchaks as ethnic group did not exist prior to the XX century when they were "invented" by the Soviet Union? Or that ethnic group is impossible unless it represents a national state? Wow!
No. I mean that individual tribes during that time period have no reason to identify with each other. Central Asia was far more diverse than those three Turkic groups you gave. Unless you are willing label each individual tribe in the region, stop trying to pass our modern notions of ethnicity onto Pre-modern people.
Of course, there were more. How does this contradict to my statement that Kipchaks were not Perisans?
You probably have to convey your ideas to Genghis Khan and his successors: they clearly identified Kipchaks, Tatars and quite a few others tribes as the enemies to be defeated and, in the case of tatars, exterminated. Uzbeks as a clearly defined entity with the "state" existed since at least early XVI when they established khanates of Bukhara and Khiva but as the nomadic tribes they existed earlier. As for the Turkmens, "The Turkmen largely survived the Mongol period due to their semi-nomadic lifestyle..."
>The Mongols never invade Russia, meaning that Lithuania most likely does not become a massive Eastern European empire and it's history radically changes
>Poland and Lithuania still unite into one nation despite that union being one of the most coincidental events in Lithuanian history, and Poland still expands east
Sounds pretty crazy deterministic to me.
Honestly, and forgive me for sounding harsh, but any scenario detailing a no Mongol Russia that doesn't even bother to mention Lithuania is not worth discussing, simply because Lithuania was such an important factor in late Medieval Russian history.
Yes it would be unrecognizable. But then every Perisan empire was unrecognizable to the Perisan empires before it.
Did not have patience to watch it through but it seems that the clown(s) have very silly ideas about the European part of the equation. They start with the Russian states and declare that (a) without the Mongols these states would remain independent from each other and (b) that when "Moscow rebelled" against the Mongols it took all Russian states with it.
(a) By XIII Russian states had been already in a process of unification (hence "Vladimir-Suzdal Rus") and there is no reason to assume that without the Mongols this process would take 5 - 6 extra centuries.
(b) When Moscow "rebelled" it could not take the rest of the earlier Russian princedoms with it because Lithuania possessed more than a half of them.
Then goes the image: narrative about the Polish conquest of disunited Russia is illustrated by the painting showing capitulation of the Polish troops occupying Kremlin of Moscow during the Time of Troubles.
And when it came to the Swedish conquest of Poland I gave up .....
It’s been awhile since I watched it, I confess I don’t recall his finer points. At least he didn’t extrapolate to WWI lol.
Indeed. Medieval Lithuanian and Russian history had been related to such a degree that nowadays at least some of the Belorussian historians and writers keep insisting that actually Belorussia is true Lithuania. Anyway, one can easily find Lithuanian "footprint" all over the Russian history from Lithuanian "voyevoda" Bobrok Volynets playing a decisive role in Muscovite victory over Emir Mamai and all the way to the Lithuanian roots of many of the most aristocratic Russian families.
Somewhat bad on all fronts.
Unless a different grand steppes conqueror comes soon after, the global spread of knowledge in all ways is significantly slowed. The scholarship of Baghdad would have a much harder time having reached China, nor Chinese technicians and bureaucrats all the way to North Africa.
The trade, technological and medicinal motivations to become the most advanced center of global politics is largely removed from the west. A hell of a lot came from this kind of thing, like ship designs to try and reestablish trade routes with the Yuan court as a precursor to the colonial era and its related technologies. Even some (debatable) smaller things like the influence of Indian mathematics is stunted by a less united silk road, or gunpowder.
The worst part for Europe would be the eventual plague that would appear. If, as I believe to be the majority consensus, the Black Plague does indeed originate in Mongolia, the Europeans won't be spared from it, but it will spread at a much slower rate so that Islamic powers will be recovering when Europe is at the height of its delayed depopulation. The Middle East could very well be the dominant global hegemony in place of OTL's Europe.
Unless a different grand steppes conqueror comes soon after, the global spread of knowledge in all ways is significantly slowed. The scholarship of Baghdad would have a much harder time having reached China, nor Chinese technicians and bureaucrats all the way to North Africa.
The trade, technological and medicinal motivations to become the most advanced center of global politics is largely removed from the west. A hell of a lot came from this kind of thing, like ship designs to try and reestablish trade routes with the Yuan court as a precursor to the colonial era and its related technologies. Even some (debatable) smaller things like the influence of Indian mathematics is stunted by a less united silk road, or gunpowder.
The worst part for Europe would be the eventual plague that would appear. If, as I believe to be the majority consensus, the Black Plague does indeed originate in Mongolia, the Europeans won't be spared from it, but it will spread at a much slower rate so that Islamic powers will be recovering when Europe is at the height of its delayed depopulation. The Middle East could very well be the dominant global hegemony in place of OTL's Europe.