#How Important Are Roman Republican Models in the Development of French Republican Thought?

[incoherentbabblings]

Sometimes I re-read my old undergrad essays from and nodding my head sagely as I read what I assumed made perfect sense at the time but now looking back I can only go wooft if you know what I mean. I both miss being that involved in academia but also thinking I didn't do enough I didn't hold enough of my own opinions. I needed more time in a way. To have a second wack at some of what I wrote knowing what I know now? Argh, that's the problem ain't it?

[jurakan]

I made this post basically because @andasideofpanache told me to.

So there’s a bit of a kerfuffle going around because the makers of Game of Thrones announced that they want to do an alternate history show about what life would be like if the Confederacy had won the American Civil War. And I don’t know how I feel about it, exactly, other than I think it’s...kind of boring? As far as alternate histories go, it’s pretty standard. “If the Confederacy won the American Civil War” and “If the Nazis won World War II” are the two alternate histories I see all too often and that’s horrible because the answer is that life would suck.

I think it’d be much better if you took some other point in history and took something that was pretty much neutral and said what if it’d gone the other way? So for the viewing pleasure of the followers of this blog: 

A BUNCH OF ALTERNATE HISTORY IDEAS THAT ARE MORE INTERESTING:

-What if Christianity was not the dominant religion of Western Civilization: Look as a Roman Catholic I don’t know if I can conceive of the idea of Christianity just not existing so that’s not what I’m suggesting here. But i am suggesting that it’d be interesting to design a world where it didn’t become the dominant theological viewpoint in Europe. How would the medieval world look? What would make the art different? What would our modern world look like? What would be considered “traditional values” in that world? What would our calendar look like?

And I’m curious as to what different people would put to replace it; my first instinct is Mithraic religion, but as that was a mystery cult I don’t think it’d pick up much steam. Islam’s still a big contender for that, but if you wanted to do something more out there you could pick Zoroastrianism or the official Roman state pantheon of gods. I mean could you imagine PETA freaking out over augurs reading animal guts? There’s a fun picture.

-What if Spain had controlled North America until it had become independent?

As a Hispanic person I get a bigger feel for how much English culture still influences American society today. I’m still baffled by people’s fetishization of the English royal family (especially Anglo Catholics, considering that whole Church of England thing but whatevs), given that a King of Spain actually told Hugo Chavez to shut up to his face in 2007. Really guys, the Spanish-speaking world is where it’s at.

So to see the US as a country more culturally influenced by Spain than England would be a great thought experiment, especially considering that Spain came to the New World first, and fully expected that that new land was all theirs for the taking. The obvious changes would be the dominance of Spanish as the spoken language and probably Catholicism would be more common than Protestantism. But what cultural values would be more common? What would the US’s government turn out to be without the direct influence of English Enlightenment thinkers? Which thinkers would be influential? How would the relationships between countries change in that setting (do we eventually become BFFs with Spain like the US did with Britain or with Spain instead and what’s up with France)? What would the State names be like? Would religious freedom have been such a big thing in our country? Would all the Neo-Pagans be less inclined to British Celtic and Germanic mythologies as much as Roman, Ibero-Celtic, Basque and Mesoamerican mythologies? How would the architecture look different? And so on and so forth.

-What if China colonized North America first?

There’s a conspiracy theory that floats around every now and then that China actually found the west coast of the North America long before Columbus set sail. So...what if they did? What if they set up a colony there? How would that completely change the game?

For starters, the capital would be on the West Coast, and European culture wouldn’t be the dominant one in the country. Even after independence Mandarin Chinese would remain the biggest language in the world, Chinese philosophers would be the important ones people in the country studied and I strongly suspect that democracy and republicanism wouldn’t be as popular given that the Chinese government was imperial until 1911--and not in the same sense of having a Parliament or representative body like England or France. All our urban legends would be more like Chinese ones, and...I don’t know what the opposite of Yellow Peril stereotypes would be, but that’d be something interesting to explore.

Also, would slavery had been a thing? I mean, not that the Chinese never had slaves, but would it be so racialized as it was under a European model of colonialism? I have my doubts, especially considering that there’s not an Africa right there for them to exploit.

-What if Alexander the Great had an heir that held his empire together?

Very famously when Alexander the Great died his empire was divvied up between his generals and became several different nations that all eventually fell to Rome. But what if it hadn’t? What if Alexander had named an heir (a son or general or whatever) who’d been able to hold everything together until Rome came along?

What would the empire be called? And would it be able to hold against Rome? Would the two become allies? Or, more likely, would they duke it out and become bitter enemies? And who’d win? How would that change the world today? How would that effect Greek and Roman philosophy/language/culture and the place they held in Western Civilization today? Would we still have Hanukkah? 

-What if Napoleon hadn’t been defeated?

What if Napoleon had been lifelong emperor? Whether that means succeeding in escaping from that island prison, or just never being defeated in the first place, it’s an interesting thought? How long would his empire have lasted? Would it last into the modern day? And if so how different would it be from the EU? Would Britain join or always be in conflict?

And what about his descendants? Would they hold his empire or lose it bit by bit? Or would they expand it and take even more land? Would the French Empire be THE superpower and dominant society on the world stage in modern day?

-What if Antony and Cleopatra defeated Octavian?

Oh hey, what if Octavian was defeated and Egypt didn’t get as Romanized? What if he was killed and the Roman Empire got stopped before it really got started? Suddenly we don’t have an emperor. Does that mean Rome goes back to a (decadent and corrupt) republic? Would Egypt conquer them (and then the repercussions for the world stage after that)? Or would they be in a sort of cold war?

If Rome did endure as a country, what would be the opinion of the Roman Empire? Would we still glorify the “old days” of the Roman Republic if they’d endured, given they were corrupt and lasted? Or would we think of the good ol’ days of Rome being the Empire that never really lasted?

-What if El Dorado was a real place?

And the Spanish found it? And they were able to hold on to that gold, meaning that they remained the dominant superpower in the Age of Exploration/Colonization? Or what if El Dorado was able to defend itself and remained an oasis against Spanish colonization and European influence in Mesoamerica?

Or what if the Spanish didn’t find it but someone else did much later? And how would that discovery be taken by the world?

-What if Mesoamerica repelled the Spanish invasion?

Does that mean Spain wouldn’t have become a major power at all? Does that mean that it’d also be able to resist Anglo American settlers trying to expand the US? How long would the Aztec Triple Alliance last considering it was pretty crappy to its neighbors, and what would happen to replace it? A new Mayan empire, or something else entirely? How long would the practice of human sacrifice last?

Would Latin America be primarily indigenous then? Would Mesoamerica help other nations of indigenous peoples in the Americas and the Caribbean fight against European colonizers? Would Mesoamerican mythology be a more common religion in the modern day?

-What if the Eastern Crusades didn’t happen?

What if the Pope didn’t answer Constantinople’s call for aid against Muslim conquest? Or what if things had just gone peacefully in the meeting between Islam and Christianity? Alright that’s unlikely, but what if some sort of agreement and territorial difference was settled not through armed pilgrimage but by any other means?

But by the Crusades Europeans got a bunch of information about places beyond Europe and preserved Greek and Roman texts from their occupation of the Holy Land (and arguably, this helped contribute to the Renaissance). So does this mean that the Renaissance wouldn’t have happened? Or that certain military and cultural developments wouldn’t have happened?

If the West never went to official war with Islam in such a way would their be the same level of Islamaphobia around today? And what would the status of Israel be, considering that it was taken by Islamic forces in the Crusades? Would Islamic/Christian tensions be assuaged by Jewish people still be screwed by having their lands still not be in their own hands?

-What if the Reconquista never succeeded?

What would happen if Spain never became a Catholic nation again, and continued into the modern day to be dominantly Islamic? It would lead to their being an Islamic country in mainland Europe for one, but what would that entail? Would Portugal exist? Would the relationship with the rest of Europe be good or bad? What would it be like to be Christian, Jewish or atheist in a primarily Islamic modern day Spain?

And of course, what would that mean for Latin America? It wouldn’t be ‘Latin’ at all if it was colonized by an Islamic power rather than a Catholic one. How would that conquest go anyhow? Would African slavery be a thing on the scale it was under Christian Europeans? Would most of Central and South America be Muslim? Would the language be Spanish or Arabic? Or would there be an in-between language?

Would prejudice against Mexican immigrants be based in Islamaphobia? Or would Islam be more accepted in mainstream American society considering that there are tons of immigrants from Mexico?

-What if World War II just didn’t happen?

I don’t know what to do with this one other than suggest that question.

-What if the US had invaded Japan instead of dropping the atomic bomb?

Alright so a bunch of people on Tumblr always like to claim that the US was dickish because it dropped the atom bomb. Which, okay, it’s hard not to construe dropping an atom bomb as a dick move, but what if we’d gone with the other option, which was invading Japan with infantry? That would have sucked, because it’d result in more deaths of both Japanese and Americans. 

So you know, think about how that’d turn out?

-What if the Mongols has conquered Europe?

The Mongols tried to take Europe one time. What if they succeeded? How long would that have lasted? What would the cultural influences of a Mongol Empire, connecting Europe and Asia? Cross-cultural exchange existed then, of course, but it’d be even more prominent. We’d also have Western religions being more common in the East and Eastern religions more common in the West.

And THEN think about what would happen when that Europe or Asia goes out colonizing the world.

Some other ideas that I don’t have time to write about: -What if Buddhism hadn’t caught on? -What if there hadn’t been a Bronze Age Collapse? -What if Italy had funded Columbus’s voyage instead of Spain? -What if Italy never united? -What if the Saxons couldn’t conquer Britain?