Continued from Thread:5053.
The history of pre-European Africa is a bit hazy, but there are a few constants. There has usually been some kind of empire covering the Western Sahel, such as Mali or the Songhai Empire. Civilisation in Egypt has also been a constant, whether that be an independent empire or part of a wider Islamic Caliphate. Ethiopia has been home to a relatively prosperous civilisation since ancient times, due to its geographical location and local geography (those two are different things). Along with the Swahili-speaking trading cities along the east coast and the Zulu Empire in Southern Africa, I used all these as relatively stable nexus points around which to build much of the rest of the African map.
As I mentioned before, however, this may be putting too much emphasis on local cultures and treating Africa too much as a self-contained entity when, especially in North Africa, this may not be the case.
The Africa map I made is sat between two extremes. The first extreme is an Africa more similar to real-world colonial Africa; split up into big blocks between powerful outside (or perhaps in the case of Atra Mors, interior) empires. The second extreme is like the map King linked to at the top of this thread; a more balkanised Africa in which nations have remained largely bounded by languages and geographic regions. Either could be interesting, though I would lean more to the latter rather than the former. Thoughts?
The balkanized Africa would mean more cultures and civilizations, which is good in that it's more what we envisioned Atra Mors to be in the first place, but an Africa with more outside influence and some larger power blocs would probably be the more realistic route to go. Africa has almost always been behind the rest of the world in terms of technology and influence, so it makes sense that in most timelines, outside forces will have a lot of influence there. I think that in Atra Mors, that influence will be felt far less than irl, and it will probably be concentrated on northern Africa, specifically the Sahara. Sub-Saharan Africa might see some Islamic influence, and definitely plenty of cross-cultural interaction via trade, but it'll mostly be politically independent. I can see a few larger powers existing south of the Sahara, including Ethiopia, but I imagine it'll be mostly a large number of smaller powers rather than a small number of larger ones.
So, the point I'm rambling towards is, northern Africa will probably lie closer to the first extreme, central and southern Africa towards the second.
You're probably right. Culturally and even ecologically (due to the Sahara desert) Africa has never really been a single contiguous region. Subsaharan Africa has always been distict form Northern Africa, which has either been an extension of Europe (before the foundation of Islam) or the Middle East (after the foundation of Islam).
Majoras, how do you think Northern Africa would tie in with the Eurasian map you have so far, in terms of how it would be affected by alternate historical events?
Well, the Ottomans did rule much of Egypt and some of Libya until European conquest (which would obviously not happen); But the Ottomans might be more concerned with taking the fertile lands of Europe rather than the worthless Sahara, at least until the discovery of oil...
The Egyptians, Libyans, etc. could probably declare independence without any resistance from the Ottomans, who would be more concerned with the invasion of Europe. The Ottomans might try to conquer the land back after the discovery of the value of oil, though.
It depends a lot on whether the North Africans would really want independence from the Ottomans.
I could see some sort of Egyptian cultural renaissance or independence movement or whatever, but that wouldn't be a plausible alternate history scenario so much as us finding an excuse to include another culture/nation (on a similar note, maybe the Zayyanid nation in Europe should go?). Honestly, I doubt any North African powers would really want independence. There just wouldn't be any strong national identity there (besides which, the concept of a nation wouldn't really be a thing in this world - see earlier threads, can't remember which ones, where we discussed the history of nationalism in more detail). I think we should keep the Ottomans in the eastern Sahara, and the west would probably be dominated by Islamic nations.
When we start thinking of historical events closer to 'modern day' in Atra Mors (2350 AD), I think we have a lot more leeway in how things turn out. Remeber, by then almost 1,000 years would have passed since Atra Mors diveraged from our own universe. A lot of things will have happened in that time. A lot of very different things. So far from the point of divergence, due to chaos theory and the butterfly effect and blah blah blah, it will be very difficult to try to predict what exactly things like national moods, cultural identities and political climates will be like.
So I would consider later events in history with more of an eye to what kind of setting would be more interesting, as a number of different outcomes would be equally plausible by this stage.
I replied to this a while back, but Wikia ate it.
An interesting setting is a good thing, but we should probably look for where to draw the line between plausible speculation and the slew of what-ifs that is Romanum.
Good idea. The best way we can probably achieve that (besides good research, of course) is through consistency. Maybe some kind of global narrative to link everything together. There's something called world-systems theory which suggests that at different points in history you have dominant 'core' countries, dependent (or subsisting) 'periphery' countries and 'semi-periphery' countries in-between. That may help with getting an idea of global geopolitics in Atra Mors; for example, the Ottomans would definitely be a core country, in my opinion.
There's another geopolitical theory from a while ago which split the world into three different regions. You have the 'pivot area' over much of Asia, the 'insular crescent' over the New World, Oceania and Subsaharan Africa and the 'marginal crescent' in-between. The idea was that the nations of the insular crescent (such as the UK and US) often place a lot of importance on naval power, the nations of the pivot area are largely land empires and the nations of the marginal crescent are somewhere in-between. The pivot area is so-called because, the argument went, most of the political drivers of the rest of the world come from within that region (the Mongol Empire, for example).
Another way of thinking about things I've heard of in the past is that the natural order for the world is a semi-stable situation in which two or more 'traditional' powers play off against each other (Rome and Persia, France and Germany, Europe as a whole) to be overtaken by an outside power (Goths, Britain, America).
Anyway, those are some different ways of modelling real-world history in the past which might be useful in bringing some consistency to Atra Mors.
Mr.Robbo wrote:
Good idea. The best way we can probably achieve that (besides good research, of course) is through consistency. Maybe some kind of global narrative to link everything together. There's something called world-systems theory which suggests that at different points in history you have dominant 'core' countries, dependent (or subsisting) 'periphery' countries and 'semi-periphery' countries in-between. That may help with getting an idea of global geopolitics in Atra Mors; for example, the Ottomans would definitely be a core country, in my opinion.Interesting. I glanced at the Wikipedia article, and I think I got the jist of it. So, should we try to identify which countries are core vs. peripheral or semi-peripheral? Although, the world-system is believed to have developed post-divergence as a result of European trade and exploration, so would it still exist in Atra Mors?
Mr.Robbo wrote:
There's another geopolitical theory from a while ago which split the world into three different regions. You have the 'pivot area' over much of Asia, the 'insular crescent' over the New World, Oceania and Subsaharan Africa and the 'marginal crescent' in-between. The idea was that the nations of the insular crescent (such as the UK and US) often place a lot of importance on naval power, the nations of the pivot area are largely land empires and the nations of the marginal crescent are somewhere in-between. The pivot area is so-called because, the argument went, most of the political drivers of the rest of the world come from within that region (the Mongol Empire, for example).I dunno about this one. I feel like the regions being grouped together here don't really have that much in common. As for the pivot region, I'd argue that the only real "pivotal powers" to come from there are the Mongols and the Russians, and one could argue the Huns. Thing is, throughout much of history, that area wasn't home to pivotal anything - it was mainly herders and loose tribes who occasionally produced a Genghis Khan or Attila the Hun. Sure, the Mongols held power for a while, but they fell apart after Genghis Kahn's death and they spent much of that time splintering and losing power to other groups.
Mr.Robbo wrote:
Another way of thinking about things I've heard of in the past is that the natural order for the world is a semi-stable situation in which two or more 'traditional' powers play off against each other (Rome and Persia, France and Germany, Europe as a whole) to be overtaken by an outside power (Goths, Britain, America).Interesting idea. One can sort of see the same thing happening today, with the United States emerging as the dominant power after the Cold War, only to begin losing influence to rising powerhouses like China. How would that work in AM? I could see the Byzantine Empire and the Sibir Khanate being the two major eastern powers after the scramble for Europe, with maybe the Safavid Persians being the contender that rises up to replace them? Or maybe an African power, like the Ottoman-derived Egyptian Sultanate? Although, I suppose the Mamluks and the Ottomans would be the initial contenders for control over Europe, so maybe the Sibir Khanate ends up overtaking them after the Mamluks fall and the Ottomans divide themselves into tribute states?
I think world systems theory could still apply in Atra Mors; throughout history there've always been developed, powerful central regions drawing on the resources and labour of less developed regions in one way or another. All that's changed is the method. As for the 'three regions' system (Heartland Theory), I could never tell if it was a true geopolitical model or a commentry on European politics at the time. I think there are lots of plausible possibilities for the third idea, depending on how history goes. Definitely have the Ottomans in there somewhere. Whether they last as a superpower to the present day, I'm not so sure.