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talkpoliticsIn 1800 a general named Napoleon Bonaparte was fighting an Austrian Archduke in a battle named Marengo.The battle was a bloody mess very narrowly decided by the victor. What if Napoleon had lost Marengo and his career had crashed and burned just as it was starting? Would the French Revolution have been able to hold together against the Second Coalition without Napoleon? What happens with the Partitions of Poland, as assuming the French Revolution does fall apart 14 years sooner than it did there would be no Grand Duchy of Warsaw to create an endless mess in Europe. Would Germany or Italy unify? For that matter what happens with the global empires, not to mention the USA's difficulties with the UK's forts in the Ohio Country and its inability at the time to defeat the UK in a serious war?
The second scenario is this one: suppose that the House of Chu defeats the House of Han in the Battle of Gaixia, thereby returning China to a mixture of separate states that re-establish their separate history as opposed to the ideal of unified states that met periodic disruptiions in reality? Without a unified single state in China, what happens for Asian history here? Would China be more or less influential if it had been divided than it was as a unified state? Would we in fact call that region China or something else?
The third is based on an old myth: suppose that in a straightforward clash of arms between the Aztec Empire and Hernan Cortez in an alternate La Noche Triste that the Cortez expedition is completely annihilated to a man. What happens with one of the largest Native American polities of the time destroying an attempt at conquest instead of falling to it? Obviously smallpox is going to do very horrid things to the Aztec Empire, but this will significantly alter the broader course of the history of the colonization of the Americas for obvious reasons. Will the Spaniards meet a unified Tawantinsuyu/Inca state? If they do and they fail again, does the colonization of the Americas happen at all in a fashion we'd recognize? In addition to completely butterflying away the United States and Canada, what other changes would this mean for both the Western Hemisphere and Europe's perception of itself?
In order to comply with rule 8, my opinions follow (and are cut so as not to spoil the scenarios):
1) The French Revolution ends with the War of the Second Coalition. Russian power becomes much more consolidated in Poland and the absence of the protracted general war in Europe leaves a great many more people alive all over Europe, leading in even 50 years to a completely unrecognizable continent that is in all probability much less devastated and more populated than it was historically, while the colonial process unfolds very differently than historically. Likewise if the USA is stupid enough to assume it can just march into Canada and take it the United States will cease to exist in the war that follows. The Duke of Wellington may well be the conqueror not just of Mysore but of the United States as well.
2) This is the one that has the most dramatic butterflies in the long term. My personal feeling is that China would, if it remained divided, have still seen periodic conquests ala India but they would have also tended to be relatively short-lived. The culture of this alternate China would in no way resemble the historical one, while Qin Shi Huang would be seen as the Eastern Alexander the Great and like him a kind of tragic figure in that the attempt to unify the East failed just as it did in the West.
3) As I see it smallpox and the appearance of later conquistadors would see the Aztec Empire collapse a few years later than it did historicallly, Cortez would be brought up centuries later as an example of the Conquistadors that failed, and the horseshoe nail completely butterflies away any recognizable colonization of the Americas by not-Spain and not-Portugual. England may still build colonies but the odds of a USA are not necessarily great, and the colonial process may see one or two American states enduring into independence ala 'Abyssinia' or Meiji-era Japan.
That's what I think. What do you guys think?
The second scenario is this one: suppose that the House of Chu defeats the House of Han in the Battle of Gaixia, thereby returning China to a mixture of separate states that re-establish their separate history as opposed to the ideal of unified states that met periodic disruptiions in reality? Without a unified single state in China, what happens for Asian history here? Would China be more or less influential if it had been divided than it was as a unified state? Would we in fact call that region China or something else?
The third is based on an old myth: suppose that in a straightforward clash of arms between the Aztec Empire and Hernan Cortez in an alternate La Noche Triste that the Cortez expedition is completely annihilated to a man. What happens with one of the largest Native American polities of the time destroying an attempt at conquest instead of falling to it? Obviously smallpox is going to do very horrid things to the Aztec Empire, but this will significantly alter the broader course of the history of the colonization of the Americas for obvious reasons. Will the Spaniards meet a unified Tawantinsuyu/Inca state? If they do and they fail again, does the colonization of the Americas happen at all in a fashion we'd recognize? In addition to completely butterflying away the United States and Canada, what other changes would this mean for both the Western Hemisphere and Europe's perception of itself?
In order to comply with rule 8, my opinions follow (and are cut so as not to spoil the scenarios):
1) The French Revolution ends with the War of the Second Coalition. Russian power becomes much more consolidated in Poland and the absence of the protracted general war in Europe leaves a great many more people alive all over Europe, leading in even 50 years to a completely unrecognizable continent that is in all probability much less devastated and more populated than it was historically, while the colonial process unfolds very differently than historically. Likewise if the USA is stupid enough to assume it can just march into Canada and take it the United States will cease to exist in the war that follows. The Duke of Wellington may well be the conqueror not just of Mysore but of the United States as well.
2) This is the one that has the most dramatic butterflies in the long term. My personal feeling is that China would, if it remained divided, have still seen periodic conquests ala India but they would have also tended to be relatively short-lived. The culture of this alternate China would in no way resemble the historical one, while Qin Shi Huang would be seen as the Eastern Alexander the Great and like him a kind of tragic figure in that the attempt to unify the East failed just as it did in the West.
3) As I see it smallpox and the appearance of later conquistadors would see the Aztec Empire collapse a few years later than it did historicallly, Cortez would be brought up centuries later as an example of the Conquistadors that failed, and the horseshoe nail completely butterflies away any recognizable colonization of the Americas by not-Spain and not-Portugual. England may still build colonies but the odds of a USA are not necessarily great, and the colonial process may see one or two American states enduring into independence ala 'Abyssinia' or Meiji-era Japan.
That's what I think. What do you guys think?
(no subject)
Date: 11/12/12 08:18 (UTC)