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QuantumBranching — Bloody Lions!
#africa #alternate #history #map
Published: 2019-05-21 06:44:51 +0000 UTC; Views: 11943; Favourites: 86; Downloads: 51
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Description
Just a random quick map: a Lion's Blood-inspired African-dominated world. The bits not controlled or puppetized by African powers are left out (not ISOT'd )A few extra things, inspired by questions over at ah.com
1. Europe varies between still mostly tribal in Ireland and the parts of eastern and central Europe most devastated by steppe invasions to fragmented medieval with gunpowder in the more advanced regions: the most developed are the *Viking nations which are comparable to Peak Premodern Ottomans at their strongest (if less politically unified) and still can offer something of a challenge to the African powers (which haven't reached Gatling Gun levels of industrial murder yet)
2. Mesopotamia has always been sort of a border area for Egypt, shifting in and out of their control depending on the latest cycle of Eternal Persia or invasion from the Steppes. It's currently Persian, although Persia is unlikely to expand any further west unless something seriously weakens Khemet (there are softer targets to the north and east).
3. Peru is native, NW America has Asian colonies.
4. As for the other parts of the globe that I haven't filled in, it's partly due to being a bit unsure what to do with them. I was in fact actually thinking of Eastern/Central Europe as the crumbling fringes of some sort of Steppe empire, if perhaps a few cycles of Inner Asia later than the Huns. Sort of like in GURPS Ezcalli. Not quite sure about the ethnic balance, I'm unsure as to the status of Germanic peoples south of Denmark and the Baltic (overrun by Slavs pushed west? Mixed with the Celts? Confined to a Slavic/Celtic borderland? Pushed into north Italy and the Balkans?) In any event, with the Roman empire never really getting off the ground there has been no spread of monotheist religion from the Middle East to north Europe, and most of the area is various flavors of paganism and fragmented politically west of the *Khanate, although there might be Buddhists in eastern Europe (another thing I'm thinking about)
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Comments: 21
Seems the religions that unified Europe's tribes went down into Africa instead in this world.
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Wow, this is definitely a cool idea. Can't wait to see what the rest of the world looks like; I'm guessing that the Gallian/continental Celt territories not satellized/puppetized by the Ioruba are a bunch of petty kingdoms/clans/tribes that sell their ennemies/kinsmen to their African neighbors for a tidy sum in an unpleasant parallel to OTL... My parallel kin are in for a rough time (although I can't help but chuckle at seeing white slaves in the *South - wouldn't be surprised if it ended up panning out kinda like the movie "White Man's Burden").
Also, kinda guessing the *Zulus are gonna end up some kind of alt-Prussia, especially if they're mostly pally with their *Maori "vassals". Having two such warrior cultures under the same roof is unlikely to be a coincidence.
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Oh my god we can't let the Zulu and Maori make contact. They will become far too powerful. Oh my god.
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Ireland might end up slightly more advanced in this world, there was a book called "Atlantean" years back written by a sailing enthusiast. The guy basically pointed out that being an island doesn't necessarily mean being isolated, e.g. Viking traders from Ireland were trading as far away as Baghdad in the near east along with the Med - Irish nobles often had Foster Children from merchant prince families in Catalonia, Sicily and Italy.
If Ireland dodged invasion in this world those trade links inherited from the Irish Vikings would probably endure - Dublin City was once a Viking City State that traded all over the Baltic. Also I wouldn't call our forefathers tribal, I spent some time during my Irish Legal System term plodding thru Irish Law History, they weren't savages and had a functional nationwide legal system that protected people's rights and laid down obligations - check up the subject of Brehon Law.
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Well there never were any savages really, it was just a term European colonists used to dehumanize the peoples they were, ironically, destroying and conquering and plundering in a manner one might call savage.
It's funny how savage is often used to imply that before civilization we were eating each other and killing each other by the millions but ironically, as far as recorded history's concern that has only happened DURING civilization not before. What with Donner Party type events and world wars and extermination camps and "ethnic cleansing".
Also any tribal band of hunter-fathers can have a similar "legal system" the most basic form, social rules and expectations punishable by shame.
And our forefathers were tribal, everyone started out that way.
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If you mean calling other people savages for propaganda purposes, yep that happened. When I was a school kid I came across Gerald of Wales or Gerald Cabrenensis ~ he was a writer and "historian" who wrote when the anglo-normans invaded Ireland and whew did he write some 1st grade bull to justify the invasion.
He basically painted the Irish who had their own native Celtic christian church as near pagans, whether it was his claims of witchcraft or his assertions that Ireland was filled with friggin Werewolves(no I'm not kidding) and the other weird supernatural crap he claimed. His book and stories were presented as absolute fact by English writers and historians until well into the 1600's.*
If you want savagery read about the 30 years war that happened in Europe during the 1600's but for hecks sake don't read Irish history man, you'll just friggin depress yourself!
Even tribal people have produced complex law codes, during jurisprudence term I came across a book on the Xeer system used in Somalia and East Africa, with rules and principles of justice that pre-date Islam and capable of dealing with any problem a society could face. We're not dealing with simple rules like "touch my camel and i'll break your face"
The aborigines of Australia had their "lawsayers" with a huge body of oral law passed down from when Adam was a snotty nosed kid in the Garden of Eden .Us Irish had the Brehon Code which originated with the Druids and then administered by jurists called Brehons ~ it had laws that sounded quite like modern health & safety regulations, had case law predating Christianity and was still being used in parts of Ireland as late as the 1600's.
*One crazy story he wrote claimed that a soldier of the invading lord Hugh De Lacy kidnapped an Irish girl to rape, he took her into a mill built by one of the Irish saints and was struck down by spontaneous combustion of his naughty bits......
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Exactly.
Lol combustion of his naughty bits yikes, sadly untrue of course but if it was a lot of Catholic priests would have had a similar fate if you catch my drift.
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Oh hell we're still digging up stuff from that particular scandal here in Ireland, unsurprisingly we've seen alot of communities trying to retake control of local schools from the "patronage" of Bishops and religious orders etc..
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Yep, Western style Christianity continues to fragment and erode.
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And various decentralized African societies had legal system of their own, too - don't call them savages
In any event the Irish legal system is going to be rather different: there's no Catholicism with it's legal and organizational traditions, and no Latin alphabet (although ogham might evolve into a more wide-spread written language). Ireland is likely to be even more politically fragmented than in our world without Catholic influence, and while being an island may not mean isolation, their neighbors will be more backwards and trade routes more fragmented in a world with neither Christianity nor the Roman Empire. An Irish clergyman in our 1000 AD could travel to England to France to Italy to Germany to the Balkans which remaining in the same religious and cultural mileau - not the same here. They're not going to be influenced by our world's European feudalism, either.
(To return to your use of the term "savages", when I say Ireland is "tribal", I don't mean to summon up the stereotype of bone-through-the-nose naked spear chuckers. The Irish have a quite developed iron-using society which builds castles and such [1]. It's just that they're divided up into a multitude of tiny kingdoms and clans which spend a lot of their time fighting themselves, and lack any really extensive or intensive state systems.)
I suppose Viking conquest might lead to a more centralized state - the Norsemen weren't bad at that (see, the Normans, in France, England, and southern Italy), but I don't want to wank the "Viking civilization" more than necessary.
[1] Well, for the rich, anyway - sod huts for the peasantry.
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oh you could read Gerald of Wales Giraldus Cambrensis *- he was one of your Normans and a writer, basically he wrote about how backward & tribal Ireland was and simply how it "needed" to be invaded & be saved by Christian Normandom.
The bit in his stories where he bullshitted about Ireland being loaded with friggin WEREWOLVES was a hoot when I read it as a schoolboy, and the bit about how Irish women had BEARDS
*just to get an idea about the stuff countries were saying about each other at this time.
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Hmm, it's a worthwhile "What if?" for Ireland, and while various decentralized african societies* had legal traditions of their own they didn't have legal academies dating back to before Christianity as Ireland did. Also Irish Brehon law had nothing to do with the Christian church anyway as much of the law predated Christianity, so there would have been no substantial difference in this timeline.
Actually if there was no Catholic church in this timeline that's one less reason for Ireland to end up being invaded , Pope Adrian IV(the only English Pope) basically gave the English king clearance to take possession of the country on condition he "reformed" the local church i.e. twisted our arms till we took orders from Rome oh, and pay him tax called "St. Peter's Pence"...the asshole.
We might not have needed Ogham as some Druids used the Greek and Latin alphabets, we also traded with Carthage so there's good odds that something easier than bloody Ogham would have spread. I had to learn to write my name in Ogham as a school kid because our history teacher thought it was "worth" learning.
Eh, towards the end here in Ireland we had 4/5 major kingdoms** i.e. states with kings that mattered a damn and basically we got a situation where one of these kings would kick the shit out of the others until they fell in line and acknowledged him as supreme monarch. Not that different from the political arse kicking that happened in the rest of Europe. When dark age chroniclers referred to the Irish monarch in latin they used the title "Imperator Scotorum" - Irish Emperor, Gaelic "Ard Ri" - High King.
Sooner or later we'd probably throw up someone like Brian Boru or Donal Ban(Leinster King) who'd kick the country into being organised, much more likely without outside interference.
We actually do have....some savages, but I'd call them Dubliners, hint avoid certain bars in Dublin on Friday nights.
*Yes I've actually read about the Xeer, I fell across it by accident during independent study in Jurisprudence term, it's an African tribal legal system parts of which pre-date Islam. The book Somalia: A Tradition of Law by Nicola Gladitz was in the college library, along with a book on Soviet Communist jurisprudence .
** Ulster, Munster, Leinster & Connacht and the small kingdom of Meath/Tara in the strategically important midlands.
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Are you planning to fill in the rest of the world?
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sorry you seem to have left a message in for the wrong deviant, you must have been wanting to leave one in for QUANTUMBRANCHING
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Does this world randomly have Islam despite no Christianity and other butterflies like Lion's Blood.
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Probably not. Bruce respects butterflies and this isn’t a direct cover.
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Actually, I was thinking that in lines with the book much of Africa follows a montheistic religion of Arabian origin, which like Buddhism in India failed to take over in it's homeland but became successful elsewhere. It's no more like OTL Islam than Islam is like Mormonism, however.
(The Yoruba, OTOH, mostly follow a systematized paganism: their calendar, for instance, dates from a mythical founding of their ancient capital by a semi-divine being)
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Ah I didn't think so but figured I'd ask anyway.
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That's a cool concept. What are the main religions in this scenario? And the relationship between Africa and Europe are exactly like OTL but with places switched or are there differences?
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heyy, that's cool, rarely ever see worlds with a dominant Africa
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