Europe of Five Empires

[eurofed]

It is 1650 AD or 2403 AUC; both year-numbering systems are used in Europe. In socio-economic, cultural, and technological terms, however, it feels and looks rather more 1750/2503. Five vast empires (the Holy Roman Empire, the Eastern Roman Empire, the North Sea Empire, the Lithuanian-Ruthenian Commonwealth, and Muscovy) have carved out Europe and the Mediterranean region since the Middle Ages. Three of them (the HRE, the ERE, and the NSE) have been busy since the Age of Exploration doing the same to the rest of the world, or at least anywhere Europeans can settle and live comfortably without having to fear neither climate nor disease. Christianity has all but won its millennial war against Islam, which only survives in its last Central Asian and West African strongholds. The European empires have turned their continent into a global hegemon and brought it to the forefront of the world in terms of wealth, military power, and technological progress. Only the South and East Asian sophisticated civilizations and vast empires (India, China, Japan-Korea) seem able to stand up to the Europeans as equals. How did this world come to pass ?

Historians agree the most important turning point occurred when St. Charles I the Great and his successors re-established the Western Roman Empire in Western Europe, stabilized and kept it together, and expanded it to absorb Central Europe, southern Italy, Iberia, and North Africa. From a trans-temporal perspective, there seem to be two main historical paths that could have produced this outcome. In one of them, the Carolingians just got lucky since only one heir per generation survived and no dynastic crisis occurred among Charlemagne's sons, great-sons, and great-great sons, starting with the founder’s talented eldest son. The strong precedent this created made the eventual transition to de jure unitary succession at the beginning of the 10th century look natural in the eyes of the aristocracy and the Church.

The Carolingian emperors as a rule were strong enough to stand up to their external enemies (Norse, Slavs, Arabs, and Hungarians) when they were on a rampage and take the offensive whenever the circumstances allowed it. The latter got more and more feasible over time as the empire gradually grew stronger than its enemies thanks to military reforms and internal stabilization. They pursued a policy of gradual but steady administrative centralization as well as southward and eastward expansion of the Empire. The latter kept the nobility sufficiently busy and content with division of the spoils to stay loyal to the throne.

The second path involved the Ottonians enjoying the same kind of boon, a long streak of steady success and good luck with no serious succession crisis. A longer-lived Otto II won the succession war of West Francia, but instead of putting his own candidate on the throne, he picked the crown himself, re-uniting the Carolingian Empire. He reaped just as decisive successes in the Battle of Stilo, bringing mainland South Italy in the HRE, and in the suppression of the Great Slav Uprising, ensuring a steady pace of the Ostsiedlung in the next few centuries. His just as long-lived son Otto III turned the Dukedoms of Bohemia, Poland, and Hungary into vassals, making them subordinate to the HRE in ecclesiastic matters, conquered Sicily, and achieved a detente with the ERE after marrying Byzantine princess Zoe. He stabilized the empire with a series of administrative and military reforms on the Roman model that sent the HRE down a path of gradual but steady centralization.

The outcomes of both paths would completely converge over time as the Empire gradually consolidated its Carolingian core with southern Italy and absorbed Christianized Bohemia, Poland, Hungary, Croatia, and Romania as constituent principalities. The HRE took the lead of the Reconquista, which was carried to a successful conclusion fairly quickly thanks to its vast resources. The Empire absorbed all of Iberia and expanded the Reconquista to North Africa from Andalusia and Sicily. That region, too, was eventually conquered and forcibly assimilated. The HRE evolved into a solid multi-ethnic nation-state that was based on the pillars of a neo-Roman universalist identity, Latin as a lingua franca, and Christianity. It spanned continental Western Europe, Central Europe, Southern Europe, and a re-Christianized North Africa as its core territories.

The Eastern Roman Empire was able to enjoy a fairly similar path of revitalization and continued success thanks to its successful assimilation of the Bulgarians and the Serbs, who were absorbed by the Byzantines after their conquest of the Bulgarian Empire, and the Armenians, who chose to align and cooperate with the ERE to resist the Arab onslaught. The resulting Greek-Bulgarian-Armenian union that spanned Southeastern Europe, Anatolia, and the Caucasus proved strong enough to resist the assaults of Islam and gradually reverse its conquests, also thanks to the help of the HRE.

Despite their inevitable imperial rivalry and occasional military clashes, the HRE and the ERE were able to recognize each other as peers and sister empires, and achieve a sufficient degree of military cooperation against the common Muslim enemy. This allowed Christianity to win back all the areas it had lost to Islam during Arab expansion and conquer even more in the Middle East. This outcome was favored by the evolution of the Western Church, which developed a decentralized structure and stayed subservient to Imperial authority much like the Eastern Church in the Byzantine lands.

A strong HRE quashed the theocratic ambitions of the Popes for political autonomy, temporal power, and papal supremacy. The Pope was forced to accept the status of Patriarch of Rome with the same power and prestige as several other highest-ranking bishops in the East and the West. The Church developed a decentralized, polycentric structure that allowed the Latin and Greek areas and the various European states to co-exist in religious communion and loose ecclesiastic union. It also allowed an eventual reconciliation of the Latin-Greek and Oriental Churches during the Christian re-conquest of the Middle East. The resolution of the Chalcedonian schism considerably eased Christian re-conquest of the Middle East as well as military cooperation and eventual fusion between the ERE and the Ethiopian Empire.

The outcome proved devastating for Islam and the Caliphate, which in a few centuries lost Iberia and Northwest Africa to the HRE as well as the Levant, Mesopotamia, Egypt-Nubia, and central-western Persia to the ERE. The joint Imperial-Byzantine Crusade against Islam eventually culminated in the conquest of Arabia and the destruction of Mecca and Medina. The loss of its holy cities and all its core lands delivered Islam a shock, humiliation, and existential challenge it was ultimately unable to overcome. In its weakened state, it was unable to keep a significant presence in East Africa, the Indian subcontinent, and Southeast Asia. All the inroads it had made in these regions during its Golden Age were eventually reversed and lost to Christian conquest or resurgence of Hinduism and Buddhism. In the end, Islam was only able to survive in the Persian and Turkic states of eastern Greater Persia and southern Central Asia, where Shia became the dominant branch, and in the Sahelian kingdoms of West Africa.

The third European empire arose in Northern Europe since the growing strength of the HRE forced the Norse to divert their ambitions to the British Isles and the Russian lands. Moreover, the HRE lacked much interest for the North Sea and Baltic areas due to its focus on southward and eastward expansion. These factors favored the rise and consolidation of the North Sea Empire, an Anglo-Norse state that eventually came to absorb the British Isles, Scandinavia, and the Baltic lands. The NSE never showed much interest for expansion in Western Europe due to the superior strength of the HRE. Denmark was at times the only seriously contested land between the two states but the NSE eventually assimilated it.

Kievan Rus arose in Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine from the fusion of most East Slavic tribes with Viking traders, raiders, and conquerors. It stood for a few centuries as the fourth European empire, only to collapse to invasion of a massive confederation of Asian steppe nomads. The nomad invasion and the plague which followed it a century later dealt serious blows to the European powers, respectively causing devastation of Eastern Europe and the Near East, and a sharp population loss. However the HRE and the ERE were able to keep the nomadic invaders away from their core areas and eventually repel them.

The damage caused by these events ultimately proved entirely recoverable for the European empires and in a few ways it even spurred the continent’s rise to global hegemony. The nomadic onslaught and the subsequent settler repopulation accelerated the collapse of the Islamic Caliphate as well as the HRE’s and the ERE’s assimilation of Central Europe, Southeastern Europe, and the Near East. Much the same way, the plague’s demographic loss ultimately enhanced Europe’s transition to a urbanized market economy. In the wake of the nomadic empire’s decline the Russian lands reasserted their independence, although they got split between the Lithuanian-Ruthenian Commonwealth and Muscovy.

The two Eastern European states gradually absorbed all the Russian lands between them and got trapped in a constant, inconclusive struggle for hegemony in the region ever since. The substantial stalemate only got indirectly broken in perspective once development of firearms by the Europeans since the 14th century allowed Muscovy to break the power of the steppe nomads for good and expand in Asia. Muscovite conquest of Siberia and northern Central Asia provided the empire with more land and resources, although they were often of limited value for a pre-modern economy, except as it concerned the fur trade. It also ensured the Christianization of these regions. The superior strength of the HRE and the ERE ultimately prevented any westward and southward expansion by the LRC and Muscovy, forcing the two states to focus on their contest for domination of the Russian lands and eastward expansion for the Muscovites.

[eurofed]

Imperial unity, peace, and stability was established in Europe under the tripartite rule of the HRE, the NSE, and the ERE since the High Middle Ages; it was only marginally disturbed by occasional military clashes between the empires in border areas and not really disrupted for long neither by the nomad onslaught nor by plague. These conditions brought a renaissance to Europe since the 11th century, with the beginning of a steady and robust process of rebirth and transformation, revitalization of the cities, trade-based prosperity, and intellectual flourishing. Gradual European conquest and assimilation of North Africa and the Middle East substantially strengthened the process, allowing the rebirth of the united Mediterranean urbanized trade area which had existed in Roman times, only expanded to a fully integrated and thriving Northern and Central Europe.

In the end it grew into a vast Pan-European-Mediterranean trade network that spanned from the North Sea and the Baltic to the Eastern Med, the Persian Gulf, and the Red Sea. Trade-based prosperity greatly fuelled the social, economic, scientific, and technological evolution of the continent into Renaissance and Age of Exploration standards by the 13th-14th centuries. European development of ocean-worthy naval technology allowed discovery and colonization of the New World through exploration of the Northern Europe-Iceland-Greenland-North America route as well as control of the Indian Ocean trade routes to southern and eastern Asia through the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf. Trade competition between the European empires and greed for new land and resources pushed European exploration of the world and relentless colonization of all the regions where conditions of climate and disease allowed the mass settlement of Europeans. These regions included the Americas, Australasia, eastern Africa, and southern Africa.

European settler colonization of these areas was still an ongoing, incomplete process by the 17th century, but its fulfillment appeared to be unstoppable and inevitable in a century or so at most. Steady prosperity and peace in Europe caused the continent to develop a fairly substantial demographic surplus of people eager to better their lot in life by colonizing virgin lands; they formed a sizable source of settlers for the American, African, and Australasian colonies. In contrast, West Africa and Central Africa remained largely immune to direct European colonization due to climate and disease conditions, although a good degree of ‘informal imperialism’ penetration and influence took place.

Much the same way, the European empires also came to prefer control of trade on profitable terms over direct conquest in its dealings with the South Asian and East Asian civilizations, due to their perceived strength and value. Early contact with Europe, establishment of steady Pan-Eurasian trade and cultural exchanges, and the potential threat of European colonization drove India, China, and Japan-Korea to contain political fragmentation and shake off isolationist stagnation and complacence. Notable effects included the rise of a fairly strong and stable Indian empire that unified the northern two-thirds of the Indian subcontinent and seemed to be going to absorb the rest over time as well as the fusion of Japan and Korea into an expansionist hybrid empire that colonized Manchuria and the Philippines.

This allowed the Asian empires to avoid colonization and deal with the European ones as equals. However in global terms European civilization developed a strong advantage on the Asian ones and consolidated its global hegemony thanks to control of world trade routes and colonization of the Americas, Africa, and Australasia. Much like the Amerindian and southern-eastern African cultures, the polities of the Malay Archipelago proved far too weak, disorganized, and disunited to resist European economic colonization. European conquerors overrun the region, even if European settlement did not take place in significant numbers. Indochina stood as an imperiled buffer area with an uncertain future due to its persistent political fragmentation.

Due to the combination of a dominant neo-Roman attitude which was pursued by the European states to consolidate their imperial unity and political legitimacy, early achievement of global hegemony, and early establishment of steady exchanges with the sophisticated Asian civilizations, Europe became strongly imperialist but avoided the development of ethnic racism. It established an attitude towards other peoples and civilizations broadly similar to the one of its Roman model. The Europeans were strongly prejudiced against less advanced cultures and intolerant of other religions they perceived as ‘barbaric’ or ‘pagan’. Such prejudice typically involved the Amerindian and African cultures and religions, which were seen as essentially devoid of value and ruthlessly suppressed during colonization. Due to extreme antagonism between Europe and the Muslim world during the Middle Ages, Islam too was perceived as a dangerous monotheist heresy and an existential threat. The Europeans ruthlessly suppressed it in all the lands they conquered, to its ultimate near-extinction outside its last east Persian, Central Asian, and West African strongholds.

To a lesser degree, the Europeans were also prejudiced against Shinto and Chinese folk religion due to their animist character. However the Europeans were usually willing to treat respectfully the other sophisticated civilizations they perceived as equals. This typically included India, China, and Japan-Korea and helped ensure a more tolerant attitude towards Eastern religions and philosophies. Such tolerance especially involved Buddhism and Confucianism which the Europeans mostly regarded as secular philosophies potentially compatible with Christianity. European attitude towards Hinduism and Taoism was mixed: they loathed the polytheistic elements and the caste system but appreciated the monist aspects and the sophisticated philosophical speculation. The Europeans also did not have any strong prejudices towards non-Whites and mixed-bloods that adopted Christianity and European culture.

Since the Middle Ages, Christianity developed its Church into a decentralized structure of several ‘national’ Churches that were largely autonomous in administrative and ecclesiastic matters and subservient to their respective state’s authority. This allowed the European empires to co-exist in ecumenical communion, safeguard their political independence, avoid any permanent division of Christianity, and even heal pre-existing ones such as the Chalcedonian schism. Ecumenical councils co-chaired by the European monarchs or their representatives were infrequently used as the supreme authority of the Church to preserve doctrinal unity. Heretical movements that typically acted as a front for radical social reform occasionally arose and flared for a while thanks to their potential of rallying flags for dissatisfied lower classes. Just as invariably, however, they were ruthlessly suppressed by state persecution for the same reason. As a rule conditions in Europe always remained sufficiently stable and prosperous to prevent any of these radical movements from gaining enough support among the elites and the middle classes to achieve critical mass.

Ongoing European colonization of the Americas, Australasia, East Africa, Southern Africa, and the Malay Archipelago largely followed a fairly uniform pattern that combined extensive settler colonialism (except in Southeast Asia) with conquest and forced cultural assimilation of 'backward' and 'pagan' natives. The Europeans typically preferred forced assimilation to genocide but ruthlessly used all the violence necessary to subjugate the natives and force them to concede control of all the valuable land and resources to colonialists. The high degree of political unity, absence of religious divisions, and relatively stable balance of power between the empires made wars in Europe relatively infrequent and not so destructive. This and fairly steady prosperity due to control of global trade networks barring the occasional plague allowed the continent to develop a sizable population surplus that in good measure immigrated to the colonies as settlers.

As a consequence, the European colonies typically developed a demographic pattern based on a mix of White settlers, mixed-bloods, and Europeanized natives. This pattern got rather more favorable to European settlers in the Americas and Australasia since their Native population was limited because of Stone Age levels of development and the demographic catastrophe caused by lack of immunity to Old World diseases. The Europeans shunned the establishment of chattel slavery and basically replaced it with indentured servitude which variously involved socio-economically disadvantaged European, African, and Asian immigrants.

[eurofed]

Victory over Islam caused Europe to develop a notion of its own geographical extent that encompassed North Africa and the Near East, more or less as in Roman times. Its established borders included the Atlantic, the Sahara, and the Persian deserts. The northeastern and southeastern borders were more vaguely and controversially defined, but the Urals Mountains for the former and the Sudd-Bale Mountains line for the latter were the prevalent convention. By the 17th century, Europe stood at the threshold of industrialization and had mastered OTL 18th century levels of technological and cultural development. It developed a high degree of cultural unity since the European empires invariably picked the path of choosing a lingua franca or developing a ‘national’ language (typically the one of the capital or court) and making everyone of import use it. Reasons for this choice included a prevalent neo-Roman attitude, early formation, large extension, high level of ethnic diversity, influence of a united Church, early establishment of a continental trade network, and mutual imitation.

Such imperial languages included Latin for the HRE, Greek for the ERE, and Anglo-Norse for the NSE. Modern Latin and Greek did not differ radically from their Classical forms, but were distinguished by a few lexical and pronunciation variations, an expanded vocabulary, and a simplified syntax. Standard Anglo-Norse was a Germanic language with a sizable amount of Latin borrowings. These languages were initially used by the landed, ecclesiastic, and trading elites. With the invention and diffusion of mobile print, they spread to the middle classes and pretty much everyone wishing to get basic education and rise above the station of peasant or laborer. The process considerably improved literacy rate and mobile print allowed stable standardization of the European languages in their written form. Oral linguistic variation did exist, but typically never drifted to the point of impairing mutual intelligibility.

Countless other Romance, Germanic, Celtic, Slavic, Semite, Berber, and more ethnic languages did exist across Christianity and were spoken by the lower classes in their respective areas, but they had no prestige and close to zero literary representation. So they were trapped in the status of despised peasant dialects, appeared in decline, and in all likelihood were bound to extinction or radical marginalization once industrialization caused the establishment of universal public education. In the ERE, cert Middle Eastern languages such as Coptic, Aramaic, and Farsi kept some important cultural and religious relevance and regional prevalence, but they too appeared in decline and being gradually replaced by Greek.

The LRC and Muscovy developed two different (and competing) variations of East Slavic with a sizable amount of Germanic and Greek borrowings as their respective national languages. Due to the limited number, high diffusion, and vast prestige of its standard imperial languages, Europe enjoyed a remarkable degree of cultural-linguistic cohesion, at least among the upper and middle classes. Educated Europeans could travel, trade, socialize, and exchange ideas with relative ease anyplace their empires ruled, even more so if they were fluent in multiple standard languages. This greatly favored commerce and cultural exchanges and was another important reason for the rise of the continent to global hegemony.

By no surprise the sophisticated Asian civilizations and advanced empires that were able to withstand the onslaught of European colonization had mastered more or less the same trick of linguistic unity for their elites. China developed Mandarin, united northern India came to recognize the importance of a Hindi lingua franca as a necessary component of national cohesion, and the early fusion of Japan and Korea allowed a good degree of cultural merger, including the development of a standard hybrid language. Farsi stood as the national language of the Persian Empire.

The world stood at the threshold of industrialization with a relatively limited degree of linguistic division since the vast majority of the elites in the dominant empires and advanced civilizations fluently used at least one of a small group of globally-important and regionally-dominant languages (Latin, Greek, Anglo-Norse, two different and competing versions of imperial East Slavic, Hindi, Mandarin, Japanese-Korean). All of them were in the same league of importance and diffusion; no one was yet dominant enough on the others to be guaranteed the status of sole international lingua franca; however Latin came the closest to the level.

[eurofed]

All the European states developed into centralized absolute monarchies, although in practice the monarchy was always counterbalanced by political groups from among the aristocracy, clergy, and middle class and could not exercise arbitrary power with impunity. Such checks to the monarch’s power often found expression in proto-parliamentary institutions, although in normal circumstances these bodies had a subordinate or consultative role, except perhaps in case of major changes to taxation or the fundamental laws of the realm.

The HRE and the ERE in a parallel development evolved a rule of succession that was vaguely elective in theory but in practice based on appointment of the heir by the ruling monarch and his crowning during his predecessor’s lifetime. By their combined example, this succession system became the standard across Europe. The designated successor was usually one of the monarch’s sons or close relatives, but the case of a monarch ignoring genealogy to pick his preferred successor for reasons of talent, loyalty, political support, or favoritism occurred often enough a strict rule of hereditary succession never developed. Another reason for this development was the not so infrequent case of a childless monarch picking a trusted member of his family or the high nobility as his successor.

If a succession crisis occurred due to the incumbent monarch and the designated heir dying at the same time or close to, the issue typically got settled by civil war, election of the new monarch by an assembly of leading men, or a mix of both. As a rule, succession crises and civil wars in Europe were rare and limited enough not to disrupt the development and unity of the empires in a permanent way. Nevertheless, succession by appointment or election and the not so rare case of a successful usurper wishing to legitimize his rule drove the Europeans to develop a notion of the divine rights of monarchs that was in certain ways broadly similar to the Chinese ‘Mandate of Heaven’. A monarch that was appointed or elected in a proper way and ruled sufficiently well and fairly was subject to no earthly authority, deriving his right to rule directly by the will of God. However, legitimacy of a ruler did not require him to be of royal blood or even noble birth, and in extreme circumstances an incompetent or unjust ruler could be deposed by rebellion. A successful rebellion was interpreted as evidence that divine approval had passed on the successive ruler or dynasty. The Biblical precedent of David replacing Saul with God’s blessing was often quoted in these cases.

European society was definitely hierarchical; however down the centuries the opportunities of upward social mobility provided by trade, colonization, and military conquest had been relatively common and easy for the talented and the ambitious. Many gifted and lucky commoners had amassed vast riches, risen to high ranks in the army, civil service, or the clergy, or were ennobled thanks to their wealth, accomplishments in the service of the state as civil or military officials, scholars, or artists, or a successful career managing a business. Due to the fairly high degree of social mobility and neo-Roman ideals allowing for rise in one's station in life thanks to merit, the European elites acknowledged and cherished the notion of an hereditary nobility but kept its ranks open to worthy new members. For the same reasons there was fairly good acceptance of marriages between members of different social classes not too distant in rank and wealth.

The European states over time increasingly emphasized their political continuity with the Roman Empire to boost their legitimacy according to the 'translatio imperii' theory and adopted its legacy and its universalist ideals as a model. This primarily concerned the ERE, which could claim a factual continuity with Rome with good reason, and the HRE. The Western emperors thanks to their vast power and prestige were soon able to get universal acceptance for their claims the HRE was the WRE reborn after a period of abeyance and anarchy. European scholars modified the theory of 'translatio imperii' to account for the permanent division of the two Roman empires. They assumed that although Christianity and the Roman Empire were theoretically united, due to their growing size and complexity Providence allowed their administrative division into separate areas ruled by different imperial courts, ideally bonded into fraternal collaboration. This theory initially only meant to justify the separate existence of the HRE and the ERE, which acknowledged each other as sister empires but regarded the other European states as lesser entities of dubious legitimacy.

The long-standing efforts of the other European states to claim equal dignity got eventually fulfilled by the Age of Exploration, when the NSE was at last able to affirm its equal status to the senior empires. The 'translatio imperii' theory was then modified to acknowledge the existence of four legitimate successor states to Rome of equal standing within Christianity: the HRE, the ERE, the NSE, and Rus. The fact Rus was in practice split between two rival states of similar power for an indefinite time was recognized as an anomaly. It was a good pretext for the other empires to snub the LRE or Muscovy, and put their legitimacy into question, whenever the diplomatic situation called for it. European scholars found justification for the fourfold division in the usual argument of Christianity growing too much in size and complexity (made more compelling by colonial expansion) and the Roman precedent of Diocletian's Tetrarchy.

This political theory fit rather well with the overwhelming sense of cultural superiority the Europeans developed with their overwhelming success in the Crusades and colonial expansion. They came to deem themselves superior to most other ‘barbarian’ and ‘pagan’ cultures they met during the Age of Exploration – although with a noticeable lack of ethnic prejudice. They thought their empires were destined to rule the world and dominate other peoples in order to bring them the benefits of true religion, a just and efficient government, and a proper way of life. They deemed most non-European polities rogue entities in a state of rebellion against legitimate authority and typically beset by barbarism, paganism, and a degenerate form of government. However they recognized in certain cases it might be convenient to keep a state of truce and trade peacefully with them.

The main exception they acknowledged to this supremacist mindset and claim of universal dominion were the South and East Asian empires and sophisticated civilizations. Many Europeans deemed them worthy equals and legitimate empires in their own right – although made flawed by their regrettable adherence to pagan superstitions. As a matter of fact, several European scholars came to propose an extension of the imperial political theory that acknowledged the existence of seven ‘true’, legitimate empires to account for the existence, stability, power, and antiquity of the Asian states. This typically included the HRE, the ERE, the NSE, (divided) Rus, (united) India, China, and Japan-Korea.

[eurofed]

These maps represent Europe and the world in the 17th century CE (ca. 1650 AD/2403 AUC).

[Krall]

There are some interesting ideas here - the maintenance of cultural and political unity around the Mediterranean, and the survival of the North Sea Empire both piqued my interest - but the history of Europe and Christianity seems very deterministic and stable. Pretty much everything goes perfectly right for the ERE, HRE, and NSE, with very little variation in politics and culture between the three empires and no real obstacles or threats to their dominance, which makes for a rather bland history I'm afraid. Are there really no major heresies or divisions within Christendom despite it spanning so much of the globe for so long?

[eurofed]

Sept 23, 2016 13:24:15 GMT Krall said:

There are some interesting ideas here - the maintenance of cultural and political unity around the Mediterranean, and the survival of the North Sea Empire both piqued my interest - but the history of Europe and Christianity seems very deterministic and stable. Pretty much everything goes perfectly right for the ERE, HRE, and NSE, with very little variation in politics and culture between the three empires and no real obstacles or threats to their dominance, which makes for a rather bland history I'm afraid. Are there really no major heresies or divisions within Christendom despite it spanning so much of the globe for so long?

This is obviously supposed to be a best-case TL for Europe, and by extension Christianity given its period focus (and for the same reason a downright Islam-screw). It looks like, and makes for, a bland history at times, because it's a rather stable and highly beneficial equilibrium the actors have found, more or less the way happy marriages do, but such things exist in reality.

Christianity evolved in a fairly decentralized pattern which left the various European empires in control of ecclesiastic affairs in their own lands and the loose unity of the Church no threat to their political independence. So they can reap the benefits of religious unity and they would have no real gain from supporting schisms or heresies in their lands. As noted in the TL, grassroots heretical movements occasionally arise across Christianity in different times and places, typically as a religious front for the social or anti-taxation claims of the lower classes. But the elites have no really good reason to support them, since the status quo suits them fine, so they get invariably crushed in blood and fire as it happened the vast majority of times IOTL. It's simply conditions have evolved to make an equivalent of the Reformation unnecessary; much like OTL, once industrialization happens, European society would have grown secular enough that a religious front for the democratic movement won't likely be necessary nor appropriate. But it might potentially go the other way.

Decentralization of the Church and the convenience of cooperation against Islam made the Latin-Greek schism unnecessary, and eventually even persuaded the two sides in the Chalcedonian schism to accept reconciliation. If the political will was there, both schisms were avoidable or reparable since they were based on fairly complex and obscure theological details and often genuine cultural misunderstandings; face-saving clever theological clarifications 'encouraged' by the secular rulers cleared such misunderstandings away. The common Islamic threat and the lack of an-all powerful, centralized Pope to submit to made loose but genuine religious unity it possible. The Latin, Greek, Anglo-Nordic, and *Russian Churches can basically keep their own autonomy (the Greek and Coptic Churches did have to accept an ecclesiastic merger once the ERE entrenched its control, but Islam made it look like the lesser evil) and enjoy the benefits of religious unity.

More or less the same way, the HRE, the ERE, and the NSE evolved into near-optimal and rather stable geopolitical niches for them (and so would Rus if and when it manages to re-unify), so they don't have much reason to fight, except for colonial competition. They have no ideological reason for clashing, and they are fairly satisfied with the geopolitical status quo in Europe that took shape with their rise and stabilization, and the victory over Islam. They have evolved a political and cultural model of their own civilization that preserves the political independence of the various empires combined with a sense of superior cultural unity of a common neo-Roman and Christian overarching civilization. It gives them freedom to be independent and squabble when it is convenient, yet reason to feel part of a greater whole and cooperate when it is useful, and a justification for conquest and colonial domination of the rest of the world (except perhaps the Asian empires). European culture holds the ideal its empires should always cooperate in brotherly harmony as caretakers of a united 'Western' civilization (that is eventually destined to inherit and rule most or even all of the world, depending on one's opinion of the Asian empires' role in God's plan), and they exist as separate entities out of convenience because of their combined size and complexity. But they live in an imperfect, sinful world, so occasional family squabbles, even fairly bloody and vicious ones, are an inevitable fact of life.

This model provides political independence, stability, and legitimacy to the empires, and gives them the benefits of easier trade and cultural exchanges, so they don't have much reason to challenge it. It is not a perfect thing (the NSE and Rus had to struggle to affirm their equal status to the HRE and the ERE, division of Rus remains an issue) but it seems preferable to the alternative. Ethnic nationalism never had a real chance to entrench and flourish in TTL Europe against Roman-Christian universalism, so it got equated in the European collective mind with Iron Age tribal barbarism, backwardness, and anarchy, and therefore in all likelihood it is discredited for all time. The residual linguistic base for potential ethnic division among the lower classes seems headed to get extinguished over time and with industrialization.   

Make no mistake, much as colonialism allowed Europe to reap a fuckaton of wealth, a lot of new land for its excess population, become the global hegemon, and favored stability at home, it also created enough potential conflicts to keep the continent from being too peaceful. Colonial competition (for territory, trade, and resources) often stays fierce but relatively peaceful, occasionally it explodes in colonial wars. Such conflicts are often fought in the colonies, but not unfrequently they spill over in Europe, and then get fought in the border territories and the sea. This may, and indeed did, cause moderate border changes (certain areas have changed hands various times), but the broad shape of the empires has remained fairly stable for centuries, and these conflicts have caused relatively limited damage to the empires. They are basically the equivalent of OTL 18th century conflicts, stretched over a larger time and space span. The TL does not bother to give a detailed chronicle of them given their relatively limited impact and consequences besides noting their existence as a recurring phenomenon.

Europe has fought several minor wars, but has not experienced anything of similar destructiveness to the Thirty Years' War since TTL equivalents of the Black Death and the Mongol invasion (names of peoples and leaders may differ, but steppe nomad breakouts are a fairly consistent phenomenon). The steppe nomad invasion devastated Eastern Europe and the Middle East, and caused the collapse and division of Rus, but was contained and stopped before doing more damage. The European conquest, pacification, and forced assimilation of the Muslim lands was also quite brutal for a good while for the usual reasons, but in the end harshness eventually toned down since most North Africans and Middle Easterners in the conquered lands came to realize Islam was a lost cause and accepted conversion to Christianity and cultural assimilation in the HRE or the ERE. The destruction of Mecca and Medina on top of the Europeans conquering almost all the Muslim world was a signal to many God was on the Crusaders' side. The Muslim diehards mostly fled beyond the deserts to the depths of Central Asia or West Africa, where the Crusaders were unwilling or unable to pursue them. Theoretically speaking, the victorious Crusaders planned one day to storm the last Islamic strongholds and finish their bloody job, but such territories seemed remote, difficult to reach, and of relatively limited value, especially in comparison to what they had already conquered or were conquering outside of Europe, so in practice they let them be.

Since the beginning of the Age of Exploration, the European empires have been quite busy colonizing all the areas of the world with valuable resources, a lack of advanced native empires to deter them, and climactic/disease conditions to allow mass European settlement (the Americas, Southern and Eastern Africa, Australasia, and except for mass settlement, Southeast Asia as well). They have already colonized a lot, but it is an half-done job, so the border areas of the colonies in the Americas, Southern and Eastern Africa, Southeast Asia, and Australia are in perpetual state of warfare as the Frontier gradually but relentlessly advances. Things here are not really different from OTL, except the colonizers avoid chattel slavery and genocide for its own racist sake (if a people resists colonization too fiercely, however, they better make their own peace with God). Mass dying off of the Amerindian peoples, however, occurred all the same for the usual reasons.

Since the European empires do accept conquered peoples as near-equals if they accept their rule and cultural assimilation, and their shared culture frowns on ethnic division as an hallmark of barbarism, it is an open question if the colonies shall remain bound to the European core for all time, or experience the equivalent of anti-colonial revolutions. Onset of industrialization and the democratic movement may create a window of vulnerability for an equivalent of the American Revolution to happen, and this political-cultural model is potentially vulnerable to ideological division and a political split between say a republican-democratic Western Hemisphere and a monarchic-absolutist Europe. Or the empires might weather gradual change and keep their global extension for all time, since here conditions seem more favorable for that. It might go both ways. What seems highly unlikely is ideological revolutionary movements causing a breakup of the European cores of the empires. In all likelihood, they shall fall to revolution, or resist it, as a whole, besides any temporary civil war. Of course, if certain powers are swept by revolution, and others forcibly resist it, Europe may well be posed for an age of total wars akin to the French Revolutionary/Napoleonic Wars, even if it safely avoided the Reformation religious wars.

Relations between the European empires and their Chinese, Indian, and Japanese-Korean counterparts are in practice not very different from the ones between the European empires themselves, despite the extra friction caused by religious and cultural differences. That is, not infrequently peaceful relations, sometimes more friendly, sometimes more tense, in a background of fierce trade competition, interrupted by occasional armed clashes and bouts of colonial warfare. As a rule, the Europeans may fight to seize favorable trade terms, coastal bases, and privileged access to economic resources, rather than extensive territorial acquisitions or control of the Asian empires at large. The European empires get the upper hand most of the time, but the Asian empires are sufficiently strong and solid to avoid complete subordination or direct colonization. An element of genuine respect also plays put in relative European restraint, since India and East Asia are the only cultures and empires most Europeans are driven to regard as their true peers in the world. In the long term, one may probably expect the Asian empires to pull a Meiji and achieve industrial modernization only slightly later than Europe, so they can entrench their equal status to the European empires and be the lasting global counterbalance and exception to their supremacy.

The Europeans apply more or less the same 'indirect colonization' strategy to the areas (West and Central Africa) they are unable to penetrate and settle because of climate and disease, out of necessity. As a rule their attitude here would be as brutal as in the Americas, since native African polities are much weaker and less solid in comparison to colonizers than the Asian empires, and the Europeans regard the African and Amerindian cultures as barbarian and devoid of value, but they are unable to make much inroads in these regions, so they make themselves content with seizing and exploiting what they can, peacefully trading when they must or is simply the convenient thing to do. On the other hand, the Europeans avoided the adoption of chattel slavery in the colonies, so Africa has been spared the onslaught of transatlantic slave trade.

[Krall]

It still seems implausible - to the point of being ASB - that the European empires could have avoided any real threat to their stability, development, and hegemony. Even if there is a geopolitical equilibrium that is beneficial to all parties, there are still going to be people who don't see things that way, there are still going to be petty disputes that get blown out of all proportion, and there are still going to be massive social and cultural changes. There're so few messy details and sudden, unexpected disasters that this timeline resembles a co-operative multiplayer game of Europa Universalis more than real history.

I guess I'm just confused as to why you'd make this, if it's so implausible and bland? Where's the enjoyment here?

[eurofed]

Sept 23, 2016 18:03:48 GMT Krall said:

It still seems implausible - to the point of being ASB - that the European empires could have avoided any real threat to their stability, development, and hegemony. Even if there is a geopolitical equilibrium that is beneficial to all parties, there are still going to be people who don't see things that way, there are still going to be petty disputes that get blown out of all proportion, and there are still going to be massive social and cultural changes. There're so few messy details and sudden, unexpected disasters that this timeline resembles a co-operative multiplayer game of Europa Universalis more than real history.

I guess I'm just confused as to why you'd make this, if it's so implausible and bland? Where's the enjoyment here?

The enjoyment here is writing a best-case scenario for Europe as a whole, and describing it in its likely broad consequences. Be mindful that I'm a strong believer in vast empires (and ultimately cosmopolitan unity of mankind) being a serious inherent good, and I do not believe there is such a thing as an mandatory minimum amount of bad luck and disasters in the existence of any given individual, polity, or social construct in any single TL. Luck may vary radically for any such actor between TL, this is why ATLs and the multiverse are assumed to exist, but if it is a best case, it is a best case. Things don't go radically bad because bad things must happen; if it looks like good things are rather likely to happen, they most likely shall happen. Random disasters are often of the reversible or reparable kind in life, crises may be an occasion for growth or recovery instead of a death spiral or lasting loss. A stable, mutually-beneficial equilibrium may rise out of the independent actions of separate actors. ITTL the Black Death and the *Mongol invasion happened, but circumstances were favorable to Europe recovering from them w/o permanent damage, so they did. Islam was an existential challenge, but ITTL Europe was stronger and more united, so it crushed them. Plagues and wars happen, but they have no real reason to destroy the pro-Europe status quo radically, so they do not. The earlier, greater success of European colonialism happens for more or less the same reasons as OTL, only plotted on a larger scale to a wider end of the spectrum because of these more favorable consequences. However, earlier contact with a stronger Europe drives India, China, and Japan-Korea to shake off isolationist complacence, political fragmentation, and Confucian stagnation, so Europe won't get a real chance to dominate these lands.

ITTL, petty disputes that are blown out of all proportion often happen a lot of the time, it's just circumstances are rather favorable to turn them into the equivalent of the 18th century European or colonial wars rather than the Hundred Years War or the Thirty Years War, which may end up into this colonial or border territory changing hands, rather than any empire as a whole experiencing radical changes. Earlier conflicts resulted in Europe as it stands taking form, and after a while colonialism as acted a mighty venting valve for extreme tensions, even if it prevents perpetual peace to flourish. It doesn't seem much important or interesting to describe when and how Denmark, Bosnia, Wallachia, or Ingria, or for that matter Florida, Chile, Mozambico, or Sumatra, changed owners after any given minor war. It may well be that despite the general situation favoring fourfold geopolitical equilibrium, one monarch in any empire occasionally rose that decided to be the unifier of Europe, and waged wars for that. But all of them failed, and the geopolitical equilibrium re-asserted itself with minor changes. All in all, TTL Europe experienced evolution from Dark Ages anarchy into the rise, expansion, and stabilization of the 4/5 empires, and a social, cultural, and technological transition from Early Middle Age to late Early Modern conditions, not to mention the rise and spread of global colonization, and the near-destruction of Islam. These have been very extensive changes, it is simply they have evolved into a different status quo than ethnic proto-nation-states, rather more favorable to Europe than OTL, and conditions got unfavorable to religious division, so it didn't happen. Industrialization and the rise of democracy may well cause vast changes, and they may indeed cause vast disruption and disasters, but quite possibly and perhaps not of the kind that involve radical changes in the map, nor a significant regression of Europe's place at the top of the wolrd's pecking order (barring the likely rise of the Asian empires as a global competitor).

Up to that, do malcontents and visionaries that wish to disrupt the status quo exist ? Certainly, but circumstances have never been favorable to their success, so they never were successful. Their efforts got subsumed in the background noise of alt-history, the equivalent of Hussites, Anabaptists, the run-of-the-mill peasant uprisings, Charles V, or Louis XIV flaring for a while, then getting suppressed. The Reformation had no good reason to succeed, so it did not, and without religious division, the power conflicts between the European monarchies have been mostly limited to relatively limited wars of marginal destructiveness. Vast, universalist neo-Roman empires have been decisive successes, so they enjoy an overwhelming amount of political, cultural, and religious support. The European collective mind is driven to equate them with stability, civilization, progress, and success of 'true' religion, and 'ethnic' principalities with the barbarism, anarchy, backwardness, and paganism of pre-Roman or Dark Ages Europe, or pre-colonial Americas or Africa, as they perceive such things. So the occasional supporters of the latter are generally treated as loonies. The vast social and cultural changes of industrialization may well open the way to an age of radical conflict and disorder, but the European empires have been around in their current basic shape for almost a millennium, the continent never knew a real alternative to them that looked like a good thing, and the cultural base for division is largely extinct, so their national unity and identity is in all likelihood irreversible. The political disruptions of the democratic revolutions may provide a worthwhile ideological exception, but for reasons of distance they are only really likely to affect the colonies if ever in a permanent way, and even that is far from a given or especially likely thing. It might go both ways.

[Krall]

Alright, I guess I just don't see the enjoyment in this scenario then, so I'll leave you to it.

[eurofed]

Sept 23, 2016 19:55:00 GMT Krall said:

Alright, I guess I just don't see the enjoyment in this scenario then, so I'll leave you to it.

It is OK. Not all scenarioes can be appealing to everyone. As for me, I generally find TLs that seriously enhance Balkanization or delay scientific-technological or social progress too depressing to contemplate or discuss, no matter how exciting the tale they describe. In comparison I am much more notoriously indifferent to the amount of blood that gets spilled.