Published: November 3rd 2023, 2:21:40 am
MODERN ROMAN EMPIRE
How many times a day do you think about the Roman Empire? Apparently, a lot. Rome’s contribution to human history is immense, but what if the Roman Empire never fell?
Well, this is what why how, and that’s what the video’s about.
So, how could Rome have survived?
Well, the first domino in the end of the Western Roman Empire was flicked over all the way across Europe, a hundred years beforehand at the Battle of Adrianople. In real life, the Eastern Emperor Valens refused to wait for his nephew Gratian, the Western Roman Emperor, before plunging into battle against the rebelling Goths. If either Valens was a little more patient or Gratian a little more cooperative, then the two forces would have linked up and won a winnable battle.
In real life, the Goths won, killed Valens, and spent the next several years rampaging across the region. The Romans eventually beat them, but the Goths remained a solid unit that plagued Rome for the next century. Roman soldiers were pulled from other areas to fight against them, leaving Italy open for pillage. If the Romans won at Adrianople, then they could have strongarmed the surviving Goths into scattering across the frontier like other previous invading groups.
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Anyways, what would happen next? With a tighter leash on the Gothic armies, the Western and Eastern Empires could use them to greater effect against the invading Franks, Vandals, and Huns. Imagine if Rome had Alaric on its side against Attila the Hun.
Now, not everything would be perfect; both the East and West are getting weaker and need to increasingly rely on foreign soldiers. But they limp through the crisis of the Fifth Century and emerge at the other end okay.
In the 500s, emperors in the East and West regain some of their old strength. They enact law codes based on Christian morality and they launch campaigns to retake lost territory. Border territories are protected by new districts called themes, with each guarded by a garrison.
Over the next centuries, the surviving Empires fight countless wars against Muslims in the east and Germans in the north, while also suffering through the occasional civil war between competing emperors or branches of Christianity. Meanwhile, power is increasingly decentralized from the emperors to the thematic commanders and the villas owned by rich noblemen and worked on by tenant farmers [coloni] and slaves. This is Medieval feudalism with Roman characteristics.
Now, the Dark Ages aren’t as dark as real life. Europe does not lose Roman-era technologies and is even competitive with the Muslim World, which goes through a golden age.
The preservation of knowledge, the foundation of new universities, and competition between different feudal lords allows the Western Roman Empire to go through a Renaissance in the 1100s. Centered in Italy, Roman inventors create clockwork machines, woodblock printing, and even gunpowder weapons.
However, Rome isn’t the only to master the use of gunpowder: in 1313, Turkish-Mongol forces siege and sack Constantinople, ending the Eastern Roman Empire. The Greco-Turko-Mongol Empire that replaces it lasts for another century as a hostile force to Rome’s east before crumbling apart. This also spreads a plague which deeply devastates the Roman Empire, but leads to an age of plenty for those who survive.
Since Roman merchants lose access to the Silk Road due to Muslim rule of Constantinople, they turn west for an alternative route: In 1422, a Genoese merchant by the name of Andronico Gattiluzi crosses the Atlantic and arrives in the New World. From there, Roman victores march against the Mayans, Aztecs, and Inca. Joined by a wave of disease, they crush the armies of what they name Atlantis, conquering it in the name of the emperor.
Over the course the 1400s, the Roman Empire reverses feudalism; gunpowder can blast through castles, so the emperors, enriched by Atlantis’s gold, reestablish their power over the feudal lords. A resurgent strain of Classical philosophy, reimported by Greeks, advises the emperor to be measured, rational, but absolute. Others go farther and promote a return to the old republic, but they’re usually locked in a dark hole somewhere.
In the 1500s and 1600s, Roman legions finally reconquer long lost lands in the north, including Britannia and Germania. They fight a century-long war against the Turkish Sultanate, retaking Constantinople after a multiyear siege. The Emperor cements his tyrannical authority, launching inquisitions against Christians who refuse to recognize him as the Word of God on Earth. Then the emperors launch crusades for the Holy Land; Roman legionnaires sack and pillage Jerusalem and Damascus. These legionnaires are armed with not swords, not muskets, but newly invented rifles; the emperor directs immense investments in new technologies. This also brings about the first steam-powered machines for mining and transportation. New steamships, armed with machine guns, bring Roman soldiers blasting through the palaces of Africa, India, and Asia—Rome establishes new colonies across the world, ostensibly to spread Christianity and civilization, but actually to extract resources.
The Roman Empire grows insanely rich; it is by far the largest empire in human history. But this rapid change frays society. The merchant middle class is resentful of the patricians’ political power, while the plebeians and proletariats are resentful that they don’t get their share. When a famine hits in 1693, the empire buckles; proletariats revolt against their patrons, radical pastors in Germania preach against the decadent Imperial Catholic Church, and a generation of strife begins. In 1732, revolution erupts in the eternal city. Bloodthirsty proletariat mobs purge the patricians of the senate and the imperial dynasty, then declare a restoration of the Roman Republic.
This new republic spends ten years conducting campaigns against wayward provinces and foreign empires. The Roman army, swelled by millions of conscripts, marches all the way to Moscow and sacks the capital of the Russian Empire. But the long Russian winter whittles away their numbers… only a few thousand, starved, return home alive. Afterward, patrician forces from Greece invade and retake Rome, reestablishing the Empire in 1747.
Over the next century, the Roman Empire suffers a period of political instability but economic prosperity. Every other emperor is overthrown in a coup or revolution for either being too dictatorial or not dictatorial enough, with political power wrenched between the patricians and the plebeians. Meanwhile, the empire plunges deep into Africa, China, and Eurasia as well. By 1875, the entire planet, directly or indirectly, swears loyalty to the Emperor in Rome. Even the empire’s greatest rival, Russia, is made into a vassal state after a civil war.
With the entire prosperity of the planet at its beck and call, the Roman Empire enters a golden age. Immense advancements in technology are made; Rome launches missions to the Moon, builds an immense bridge across the Strait of Gibraltar, and high-speed rail from Londinium to Shanghai. With everyone pretty well-off, a stable constitution is finally put to paper, with the Emperor sharing power with the many different legislatures of Rome that represent the different classes and states.
But this golden age won’t last forever. I’ll give you a quick tour of the world in 2023, the year the Empire began its inevitable decline.
Europa is the heart of the empire; all business of note is conducted there. Most in Europe speak one dialect of Latin or another, everyone’s Christian, and all adults can vote for their politicians depending on their class. Despite recent changes, Europa is still a deeply unequal place, with the plebeian industrialists and tech entrepreneurs holding most of the wealth, sharing power with the last remnants of the old patrician aristocracy above a large proletariat body increasingly losing its little wealth. Among the aging Europeans is a large population of immigrants from elsewhere, chiefly Asia.
Asia is an immense continent, but Romans kinda have difficulty telling the difference between everybody. Half of the Arab World is ruled directly from Rome, but the other half is split between a series of puppet monarchies. Christianity is the majority religion among Arabs, with Islam pressed by the crusades into the Arabian Peninsula and Persia. Persia, India, Russia, and China are all immense puppet states run by loyal monarchies intermarried with the imperial dynasty from Rome. Though they’re poor, increasingly, industrial products are produced in these places instead of Europe; that means Europe is losing its leverage. Some in these monarchies plan for a future revolution against Rome, in secret. Many cities along the coast of Asia, however, are Roman colonies; they have majority European population and they’re armed to the teeth—that’s Rome’s leverage.
Most of Africa, on the other hand, is ruled directly by Rome but denied any rights of Roman citizenship. These vast colonies are the impoverished backwaters of the planet, where Roman governors can use extreme force to order African laborers into mines or crack down on any independence movements. There is an African middle class made up of the Christian local administrators of these colonies; they increasingly resent Roman rule and have the tools to do something about it.
Across the Ocean is Atlantis, north and south. The geography of Atlantis makes it the chief economic competitor to Rome. Plus, a large portion of the population of the many Atlantean states are the outcasts of the world system: indigenous people, freed Africans, Arabs, Indians, Slavs, non-Catholics, liberals, and so on who resent the caste system imposed by the Roman Catholic elites. With their vast farms and bustling industrial cities, the Atlanteans could pose a threat to the Empire, but for now Roman soldiers dominate the illiberal democracies and royal dictatorships that rule over them.
The future is veiled. It seems like Rome is on its way out. What will replace it, if anything, will be answered by future generations.
What do you think will happen? Would Rome survive? Will the world crumble into a new dark age? Comment below, and don’t forget to like and subscribe. Thanks to my patrons, Marklin and userseq. For a bunk a month you can help this channel and get your name in the credits. Adios.