Ibero-Basque fishing was a bit overestimated, to be honest : there's no real trace of european fishing near Newfoundland before the early XVIth century, so it's maybe not even decades prior but a parallel development.
WI the Romans discovered the Americas?
- Thread starter Mitchell Hundred
- Start date
BlondieBC
Banned
Sure, it does not have to happen, but it could easily. These lands are well suited to have ports to shelter and repair ships. Or places to land and salt the cod. Or for that matter, to mine the salt. Or to harvest the trees for ship timber. And maybe some figures out that one can trade with the locals for furs, which presumably would fetch a good price in the Roman empire.
So lets take a great port location that was used IOTL. A Roman city located in Manhattan of 10,000 people would be a tiny portion of the 50,000,000 man Roman empire, but it would be the European settlement in North America before 1600 or so. Ships ran up and down the east coast of Africa trading directly/indirectly for the Roman Empire. Roman ambassadors made it to China. What I have proposed is an easy POD.
As to the jealousy issue, I think I also have that one covered. Since it had sponsership of a high Roman official, the secret is out. Some in the Roman empire probably "owns" these fishing grounds. And once the imperial city at Antwerp, and more importantly, the Army of the Rhine becomes dependent on cheap cod, nothing will be allowed to interrupt this supply.
It is just OTL took a different path.
An actually easier POD is that the Roman legions in Gaul and England are supplied by cod ships fishing off Scotland. As the cities based on this areas grow and the fishing fleet grows, we see limited interaction with North America. The interaction is sporadic and consists of a few thousand ship-years of effort off Canada over 3 centuries. And to be quite honest, our records are so poor in the Roman empire that if the Romans had done a few thousand ship-years of fishing off North America, we would could easily have no written records surviving.
Lusitania
Donor
Do not deny it. Any voyage would be drought with danger and more than likely be doomed.
BlondieBC
Banned
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Yes, because they probably did not set up any settlements more permanent that drying and salting fish on a rock anchorage. We know it happened because the Spanish setup a position to tax it. We lack good records on how much there was. AFAIK, we don't have detailed taxing records from the 1450-1500 time frame that would show how much activity happened.
Lusitania
Donor
But the fishermen had no desire to setup permanent camps. They were tied to their region or province. Europeans came to the Grand Banks to fish. They went ashore to dry the fish but did establish permanent settlements.
Not even this. What we have is essentially fishing rights, such as records on coste de Bretaigne, la Terre-Neuffre, Islande que ailleurs (Brittany's coast, Newfoundland, Island and elsewhere) were registered in the mid XVth century at Beauport Abbey; in probable relation to other places as Bacalaus Island. Meaning less a "Basque discovery" than fishermen (Basques, Portuguese, Scandinavians, Germans, French, British, etc.) knowledge of these seas in the period immediatly before Columbine discovery without real idea what Newfoundland was supposed to be in this period while probably west of Greenland.
While there is definitive evidence of atlantic sailing near the Artic Sea, there is simply none for Americas before the early XVIth (except some French historians from the XVIIIth and XIXth bent on prooving that Basque, thus French, did discovered it first).
We're talking of a fishing presence between Greenland and Canada in the mid-to-late XVth. That's mere decades from Colombus' trails at best, and it's worth noting early explorers in North America didn't mention european fishermen there, when we know that these explorations preceded their sourced appearance.
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Lusitania
Donor
What i was saying that as history witnessed the ships were destroyed or if they survived and landed on the coast. The crews were starving and either so few in numbers that they were assimilated into native population without any record of it or were killed.
Só a Roman fleet to survive and establish a Roman America (remember only one way) would of required luck and be properly stocked with food to sdurvive the trip.
Lusitania
Donor
So first sailing technology even fishermen in the Roman time wOuld of been difficult to reach the Grand Banks.
Also if there is a demand for salted cod the first place most if not all fishermen would of gone would be off Norway. Then over the next century or so expand westward discovering North Atlantic island to Iceland. This would of provided Roman Empire with huge amount of salted cod no need to sail into the unknown to search for other fishing grounds.
Most certainly : a good motivation for western Atlantic fishing in the XVth and XVIth centuries was the rivality of Hanseatic trade and an early overfishing in Baltic and Scandinavian waters.
Another problem with an explosion of salted fish production would be salt. A good part of medieval salt production was made in Germania, or in Altantic salt marshes. You'd need at least to significantly increase Gallic production and I'm not sure it would be enough to compensate for the limited Germanic production and the absence of IOTL Polish one, if fishing is this important that a western relocation is necessary.
Problem is just that Romans nor Carthagians didn't know about land in the West. They couldn't be sure that they wouldn't be sailing to endless ocean. Romans hadn't even technology do that. Their ships weren't suitable cross ocean. Crew of such ship would be hellish lucky if they even reach Americas. And Rommans hadn't reason colonise that speciality if they find that early.
Realistically, you need the Roman Empire to be more secure, so that it can have further economic development of the West, specifically the Atlantic West. You aren't really going to see any sustainable voyages out west to ensure a reliable journey if you aren't good at sailing in the Atlantic to begin with.
So, lets butterfly away the fall of the West with a Majorian Lives PoD - lets say Ricimer gets thrown from his horse off of a cliff into an unexpectedly vicious pack of wolves well before the African Fleet would be built. This leads to the reunification and a final settlement that has a new declaration of all Foederati as citizens. Empire survives this in the West, huzzah. (Sorry, LSCat, you're going to hurt me I think for this).
This leaves us a period where the Romans can return to Britain, but furthermore, return to a province that has a surviving Dux Britannorum, making a Roman restoration much easier, to the point that the Romans are now in a position to go North once again, and also deal with Ireland for good.
A united Britannia et Hibernia effectively creates a large peaceful area that will primarily transport goods by the North Sea, Irish Sea and Atlantic. Which means trading ships can be developed that work in the ocean. Going from Ireland to Rome could be useful in a trip. If you can foster that, and through this largely peaceful Atlantic Coast in the Western Empire you can really get that economy moving.
After that, making trips westward are more possible. Find Orkney, Shetlands, Iceland, Greenland, Vinland and oh... What have we found? A perfect place for a penal colony, or a place to send troublesome characters.
But realistically, without a strong economy on the western coasts, I can't see the Romans doing it outside of an accident, let alone making the effort to capitalise on the discovery.
So, lets butterfly away the fall of the West with a Majorian Lives PoD - lets say Ricimer gets thrown from his horse off of a cliff into an unexpectedly vicious pack of wolves well before the African Fleet would be built. This leads to the reunification and a final settlement that has a new declaration of all Foederati as citizens. Empire survives this in the West, huzzah. (Sorry, LSCat, you're going to hurt me I think for this).
This leaves us a period where the Romans can return to Britain, but furthermore, return to a province that has a surviving Dux Britannorum, making a Roman restoration much easier, to the point that the Romans are now in a position to go North once again, and also deal with Ireland for good.
A united Britannia et Hibernia effectively creates a large peaceful area that will primarily transport goods by the North Sea, Irish Sea and Atlantic. Which means trading ships can be developed that work in the ocean. Going from Ireland to Rome could be useful in a trip. If you can foster that, and through this largely peaceful Atlantic Coast in the Western Empire you can really get that economy moving.
After that, making trips westward are more possible. Find Orkney, Shetlands, Iceland, Greenland, Vinland and oh... What have we found? A perfect place for a penal colony, or a place to send troublesome characters.
But realistically, without a strong economy on the western coasts, I can't see the Romans doing it outside of an accident, let alone making the effort to capitalise on the discovery.
If the Romans are colonizing the Bahamas, they could presumably set up a salt works on Inagua.
Assuming that they can colonize Bahamas (they most probably can't even ensure regular crossing to Bahamas from their usual Atlantic harbors), I don't think that salt works that have to cross at best two months of sailing to North Sea would be a viable alternative to supply : this is rather what you'd expect from Brezhnevian Soviet Union, than a Roman empire where agricultural production was essentially made on a regional or macro-regional scale.
It'd be for the fish salting operations you mentioned, and yes, it would require a Soviet degree of central planning not historically found in thd Roman Empire (Kruschev wakes up as Ceasar?)
Giving that an allohistorical Roman fishing would be essentially located in North Sea and Baltic, for both technological and logistical reasons, it doesn't make much sense to expect being supplied trough Bahamas.
I was more thinking about insane geoeconomical policies and particularly badly logistics, in addition of Romania's production patterns that generally saw gathering and transforming in a same region. Even Caligula on LSD wouldn't pull something like this. Well, probably not, at least.
I was thinking something like: sail across low latitudes from Hispania to Bahamas, load up salt ; ride Gulf Stream to Grand Banks, offload salt and mail from Rome, pickup salt fish, back to Brittania.
No rum or molasses, since the Romans lack distilling and sugarcane. Tobacco?
True that.
Atlantic sailing in Roman times tended to avoid western Spain : most of it was set in the Channel, North Sea and Gaulish seas; while trade and exchanges to Spain tended to be made by land or trough Mediterranean sailing.
And again, the problem is that while Mediterranean ships are mostly unfit Atlantic sailing, the vessels that could (and were widely used) were significantly lighter. When I say two months crossing, it's using most of the favourable winds and stream, and knowing where you're going. The incitative to go west, even knowing there is something there, is meager : Romans weren't really pioneers or having an explorer-colonial mentality, they basically ignored west and central Africa as much as they could while knowing its existence and it was significantly closer to them and known (and maybe traded with) by Carthaginians.
Thats an interesting point. I know you usually have some great sources, do you have anything on the expansion of salt production?
RightHoJeeves
Banned
Roman maritime tech simply isn't developed enough to allow for regular transatlantic trade. If out of blind luck a few ships here or there survive a crossing and a return trip some Roman poets or historians might make note of it but Europe will be none the wiser until such writings are rediscovered around the time of the Renaissance.
At best maybe Columbus or some other explorer will point to a Roman passage vaguely describing land across the Atlantic as supporting evidence when making a fundraising pitch to a European royal court but they would likely still be under the impression that it's describing Japan or China and history isn't radically different.
At best maybe Columbus or some other explorer will point to a Roman passage vaguely describing land across the Atlantic as supporting evidence when making a fundraising pitch to a European royal court but they would likely still be under the impression that it's describing Japan or China and history isn't radically different.