Isn't he that historian of 18th century Britain? I suggest complaining to the particular subordinate who created that map, about which even an MBE wouldn't know.das said:In any case, don't complain to me, complain to General Editor Jeremy Black.
ITNESI History Thread
- Thread starter das
- Start date
das
Regeneration In Process
Whatever gets Israelite off my back, really. As far as ITNES is concerned, there are Caribs in the Greater Antilles. If you don't think that was the case in OTL, consider it butterfly effect, or better still polar bear effect (because some people seem to forget that a drunken polar bear flapping his paws will probably have a far greater effect on world history than a butterfly flapping its wings would. Especially if instead of flapping his paws for some reason our polar bear scares the Caribs into colonizing Greater Antilles just like that).
Anyway, things are likely to look rather different after the BT, keep that in mind.
As far as ITNES is concerned, there are Caribs in the Greater Antilles. If you don't think that was the case in OTL, consider it butterfly effect, or better still polar bear effect (because some people seem to forget that a drunken polar bear flapping his paws will probably have a far greater effect on world history than a butterfly flapping its wings would. Especially if instead of flapping his paws for some reason our polar bear scares the Caribs into colonizing Greater Antilles just like that).Anyway, things are likely to look rather different after the BT, keep that in mind.
das
Regeneration In Process
I hope to start it in late October/early November, nothing more definite yet.
das
Regeneration In Process
It might come earlier if you're very lucky, though.
das
Regeneration In Process
BT IV - Years 90-400 AD.
Americas:
In the last decade of the 1st Century AD, the two worlds within what will become known as the New World made contact; the Huancac merchants first arrived at the (comparatively) great Olmec Pacific trade center of Cuzo in 92 AD, and a few more years later several Huancac officials arrived at Tlictato itself. There, a trade agreement was negotiated with the Olmecs (all too eager to get more cash); soon, undeterred by distances and weather, Huancac and Olmec ships begun to travel back and forth between Cuzo and Guayaquil, and as goods were exchanged, cultural influences, innovations and diseases soon followed. Thus the 2nd Century AD was indeed a whole new era for the megacontinent beyond the Oceans...
The Olmec Empire continued to flourish and expand; this was the culmination of centuries of hard, determined labour. The Olmec religion had slowly, but surely transformed into a monotheism (sped up by a falling-out between the Crown Prince and the conservative/polytheistic priesthood); accordingly, the Crown Prince, as the sole representative of The One, became even more of a central and absolute ruler than before, in theory at least. In practice, though Olmecia's heartlands (the Mexico Valley, Yucatan and Khuba) were succesfully brought under nearly-unchallenged central control, the outer regions tended to be near-autonomous possessions of the Olmec military aristocracy, which ofcourse had every right to those lands, having conquered, during the 2nd, 3rd and 4th Centuries, Toltecia [1], northern Guangalia [2], Lower Adena [3], Calusa [4] and a wide array of Carib lands (both in the Carib Sea itself and on its southern coasts). Those conquests in most cases started with cultural and economic infiltration, and ended with brute force against whoever didn't accept the generous offer of Olmec protection; they would've been impossible just a while ago, but with the growth of the naval trade networks, a revolution in ship-building occured, and the Olmecs were able to combine that with their past Khuban experience to an impressive effect, building a great empire and virtually transforming the Carib Sea into an Olmec lake. Ofcourse, not all went well: Olmec authority in most of North Guangalia collapsed in 223 AD, just a few years after the second conquest (the first one too was long-lived, in the mid-2nd Century), and subsequent recovery attempts were all defeated, leaving the Olmecs with only the coastal areas. The Toltec War was a grinding conflict that took over a hundred years, as the Olmecs had to defeat tribe-by-tribe, and often also had to fight against the revolts in the previously-subjugated territories, the newly-arrived northern Nahuan tribes and the occasional united Toltec coalitions. Finally, resorting to genocide and mass enslavement (combined with deportation), the Olmecs managed to methodically subjugate and colonize the area, but the campaign took up great resources. Invasions of the far eastern Carib Islands and of inland Adena were also repulsed. Still, great gains had been made. At home, Olmecia too made much progress; roads and cities were built, the military was reformed, a cultural renaissance occured in the 3rd Century due to the flourishing of the new monotheism, and technology advanced too, with a reformed alphabet, superior engineering and shipbuilding and even the recent appearence of bronze-working.
Huancac's progress was somewhat less spectacular, but nevertheless, it did occur. Trade with the Olmecs flourished, and considerable expansion - both inland at the expense of the various Moche and Paraca tribes and northwards, harming Guangala (though ultimately failing to destroy it). The Huanc fleet grew in strenght; in the 270s, a naval war with the Olmecs resulted in a shocking Huancac victory (the Olmecs having badly underestimated their enemies) and the conquest of the contested archipelago. At home, the late 3rd/early 4th Century saw administrative reforms; still, it came too late as later in the 4th Century Huancac increasingly stagnated, being hemmed in between the vibrant younger empires of Guangala and Tiwanaku.
All that sounds rather idyllic until I mention the never-ending stream of provincial insurgencies the Olmecs had to deal with, not to mention the (initially dynastic, later social as one side received the backing of the military aristocracy, and the other - that of the old clergy and merchants) Olmec Civil War of 123-167 AD, which nearly destroyed the empire and forced the 21st Crown Prince (supported by the military and the reformer-monotheist priests), after his eventual victory, to introduce decentralization reforms and grant near-autonomy to the feudal realms at the empire's outer reaches. Even then, the later Crown Princes had to fight back quite a lot of feudal revolts due to later recentralization efforts, and peasant uprisings also grew frequent during the particularily destructive of those feudal wars. As for Huancac, in 222 AD a solar eclipse was combined with bad crops, disagreements in the upper echelons of power and the presence of a discontent, frustrated, ambitious general (Lupanca) and a charismatic prophet known only as The Truthbearer... The result was the Thirty Years Rebellion, an epic clash of military rebels and revolting peasants with the surprised Huancac theocrats and their loyalists. After the 239 Battle of Huamachuco (where Lupanca and the main rebel forces were slaughtered), the rebellion degenerated into a lenghty guerrila war; the Truthbearer's death only made things worse, as the remaining rebel communes lost all coordination and were gradually rooted out by the forces of the Face-of-the-Sun. That was only the largest rebellion, though - there had been others before and after, especially amongst the tribal vassals of Huancac, causing the bitter jungle campaigns of the 310s-330s, which had in the end allowed Huancac to incorporate the tribe lands into the Empire directly.
It was not without violence that the newer American states arose as well. This birth of a myriad of new empires was, in retrospect, a natural process, caused by the old empires directly (through their example, through the dissemination of their civilization via trade and through the military threat they had presented) as well as by other, more barbaric tribes that threatened the protocivilizations that had begun to emerge roughly around the Olmec and Huancac spheres. As numerous early city-states and states emerged, it was a survival of the fittest, and the luckiest; many would-be empires fell to barbarians, or to the Empires, or collapsed due to structural weakness - or, as was most common, were destroyed or subjugated by their competitors. Towards the 4th Century AD, four coherent empires (note: there are also several lesser city states and tribal leagues, but they aren't really worthy of mention - the former are too weak, the latter are too ephemeral and unstable) had emerged. The Nahuan people of Azteks, frustrated in their southwards expansion by the Olmecs and forced out of their native lands by the fleeing Toltecs, moved to the west (the Hakatai[5] basin) instead, subjugating the local cultures and city-states, and creating the Empire of Aztlan, under clear Olmec and Hakataian influence. Despite the difficult terrain (between the desert to the southeast and the mountains to the northwest), the Aztlanese had set themselves up quite well, creating a formidable (for the region) war machine, sbuduing vast territories and creating a highly-militarized society, not unlike the one existing in the Olmec frontier, only trully independent (and Nahuan, ofcourse). Another empire was that of Adena, created in response to Olmec agression (which ironically assisted the rise of an Adenan state; with the Olmec elimination or weakening of the other southern centers, Nanih Waiya was in perfect position to unite the nearby tribes). Though rather small, Upper Adena was fairly wealthy and had made good use of mercenaries from other tribes to ward off the Olmec attacks. In South America, Guangala was a product of never-ending military pressure from the north and the south. No longer having much to do with the original Guangala culture near Guayaquil (well, relatively - many local tribes were refugees that fled from the Huancac destruction of that culture, and their existing traditions soon mixed fruitfully with those of the local valley-folk), the tribes of what had become known as Guangala were brought together both by common trade ties (and thus, cultural ties as well) and by the need to form alliances against the other tribes and the Empires. Gradually, fortified settlements evolved into cities, which became increasingly united; the transformation of Guangala into an united empire was confirmed in 336 AD, with the victory of the forces of both key valleys over yet another Olmec invasion. Guangala itself resembles a less totalitarian, more primitive version of Huancac, though ofcourse that is a crude oversimplification. It can also be described as a simple alliance of city-states, and as such, it is quite fragile... Lastly, Tiwanaku was built by the Aymara people on the shores of Lake Titicaca; much like Huancac (indeed, exactly like Huancac - the Tiwanakans were excellent learners, especially as far as agricultural techniques went), the new state soon experienced a population boom and begun grabbing nearby lands, defeating both nearby tribes and the Huanc armies that tried to put an end to this, but found themselves weakened by decades of comparative peace and forced to fall back to the northwest. By 400 AD, though defeated in their attempted invasion of the Huanc heartlands, the Tiwanakans continue to threaten Huancac, even as their armies conquer more land to the south and as a rigid bureaucracy is set up.
One could also note that there are other peoples in the Americas that are presently in the proto-civilization, proto-state phase as well; something might come out of them, possibly very soon indeed.
In the late 4th Century, the Americas were shaken, for in 366 AD the first Nortuguese trade outpost had been set up far to the northeast, while the Nihonese explorers made first contact with Aztlan in 389 AD (later setting up some outposts further north) - and lastly, in 396, a Carthaginian expedition made contact with the surviving eastern Caribs... The Opening of the Americas had commenced - that alone inaguarated a whole new era in world history, like none before it, and that alone would've changed life in the Americas quickly. However, where it mattered the rumours of the strange seamen were chiefly dismissed for now. Even if they did exist, this wasn't the time to run around after some faraway traders or whatever they might be - no, this was the time to try and save Olmecia from the terrible epidemics that broke out all of the sudden, dealing a harsh blow to the Empire's demographics and economy, while for the Huancacs this was the time to take desperate actions in order to enforce some sort of a quarantine - actions that came too late. The diseases had hurt the barbaric tribes and the more primitive states too, but the densely-populated Olmec heartlands were the hardest-struck thus far. Social enthropy seems inevitable, and a political breakdown seems a possibility as well, while the vultures begin to gather... The future of Huancac is even more uncertain, though in a good way - perhaps parts of the empire's heartlands might yet be saved. Might.
Might shall make right, as a new Interesting Time like none before draws near...
Northern Europe[6]:
At the end of the First Northern War, the face of Northern Europe was changed radically, and unrecognizeably; and it is doubtless that the most shocking of all was the sudden transformation of Nortugal - for long preoccupied by internal strife and war with Ulaid tribes - into a colonial great power. Though frustrated and repulsed on several occassions when they tried to establish trade outposts, the Nortuguese won a sudden military victory by using the nascent Copenhagen's preoccupation in Germany to strike forth and conquer Copenhagen itself, expanding from there to new positions in the North and Baltic Seas. By the end of the 1st Century, Nortugal became a great power, on the regional scale at least; its fleets dominated the seas, its merchants took over the Amber Route (meaning in this case the naval trade route from Scandinavia to Iberia, over which amber, along with other goods, was transported), its trade centers flourished, its people set up new colonies and trade outposts... but most importantly, despite the systematic elimination of anything that might be classified as a religion, Nortugal not only was left alone, but even gained a grudging recognition from the Gaelic Empire of Aquitaine, whose Dumnorix went as far as to invite Nortuguese scholars to the Greek-style academias of Gaul. The common folk pretty much everywhere hated Nortugal, to say nothing of the clergy... yet while they hated, they also feared. This was especially true in the newly-annexed territories; there, however, hatred occassionally outweighed even fear, and ill-coordinated rebellions plagued Jutland from the very start of Nortuguese rule there.
Nortugal's status as a great power was to no small degree built on the foundation of the "oriental conquests", and the excellent strategic position gained there; however, the Copenhagener provinces lied far from Nord Lisbon, and to make things worse, there were three states, all with naval ambitions, in the path. So from the start, the Nortuguese rulers had certain designs in the regards of Alba; yet even though Cymru was weakened by endemic internal strife, it was compensated by an alliance with Aquitaine, which was now the strongest state in Northern Europe. So the Nortuguese decided to wait until the circumstances change in their favour; that wait was perhaps prolonged by the 120s grand traditionalist rebellion, after which what little tolerance for religionn was retained had disappeared. While the Nortuguese were busy burning the superstitious, they had missed a good opportunity - the dynastic crisis in Aquitaine after the death of Dumnorix Sativoleous. Though a civil war was avoided, the empire was nearly paralyzed in foreign affairs for four years, and even after that, the new dynasty (the Autonids) had to concede considerable power to the House of Lords and to deal with provincial uprisings. Still, even when Nortugal had recovered, Autonid Aquitaine clearly remained unstable, while in 157 AD, after the death of Owain II, Cymru erupted into a civil war. The Aquitainean-backed Solist claimant Gawain was routed in the Battle of Cotswold Hills (160) by the forces of his Druidist brother, Tudur I, who had succesfully gained popular support in Cymru due to a Druidist religious revival. Gawain's forces retreated southwards; Tudur pursued, and left Caerllion tragically undergarrisoned; and sensing his opportunity, Joaus I of Nortugal personally sailed with a large force across the Celtic Sea, landing near Caerllion and taking it in a surprise assault. The die was cast, and no doubt Joaus knew the extent of this risk - still, he also knew that if he were to wait for longer, the risks would only multiply. The Cymru-Aquitaine alliance was posed to severe the Nortuguese empire's vital communication routes; the dagger thus thrust at Nortugal's heart had to be removed...
As was expected, Aquitaine immediately protested this, and sent even more troops to help Gawain; as was at least suspected, Tudur succesfully invoked a secret alliance with Dal'Riata. However, the worst-case scenario - in which Tudur and the Aquitainians would've reconciled - had failed to occur; encouraged by this, the Nortuguese quickly occupied Cymru's heartlands with some additional landings, and advanced further inland, burning sacred groves and temples and killing druids and Solist priests alike as they went. In 168 Tudur had died fighting the Nortuguese at Mendip; the rest of his army soon defected to Gawain, but northern Cymru simply degenerated into chaos, while the Nortuguese consolidated their control of western and central Cymru. Also, sporadic raids were undertaken against Dal'Riata; but as the 170s begun, the Nortuguese had concentrated on naval affairs. Having already clashed with the Aquitainians in Alba and, indecisively, in the North Sea, the Nortuguese decided to neutralize Armorica as a threat. Having assembled a huge, yet quick (due to use of a special, Copenhagener-inspired design) fleet, the Nortuguese had surprised and destroyed most of the Armorican navy in a series of battles in the Gaelic Sea and the Alban Channel; supply routes to the armies in Alba were cut, and ambitious raids were launched; the peak of Nortuguese success was the Sack of Kemper, in 178. Still, as time went by the Aquitainians had learned to fight off most of the raids, while Gawain had defeated the Nortuguese on the Tamis, establishing control over eastern Cymru and, as it recovered, supplying the Aquitainian troops by himself. After the Tamis, indeed, the Nortuguese situation in Cymru turned more grim, with ever more widespread rebellions and the attack generally running out of steam. An invasion of Dal'Riata was repulsed, though just barely and very bloodily, by Duncan MacNess at Ayr. Northern Cymru was united by a local warlord, Mordrauth, who refused to recognize Gawain as his sovereign (instead proclaiming himself the Brenin of Brigantea), but at the same time fought back against the Nortuguese, allying with Duncan. And meanwhile, a whole new set of threats emerged in the "Orient" - the old alliance with Norge died out, as the Norsk warlord Knud the Cruel, who had previously united the southern tribes with blood and iron, now attacked and destroyed all the Nortuguese trade outposts in Norge and begun attacking the Amber Route, resorting to piracy, and in the meantime uprisings in Jutland were re-ignited. The Svears soon followed the Norge example, violating the Nortuguese border in Svearland. Bruno I, the founder of the Frankreich (a centralized empire created to replace the rag-tag Frankland, considerably influenced by Aquitaine and Dacia), had overran Nortugal's German territories, though in Jutland he was defeated, along with the rebels that sided with him, in the Battle of Haderslev. And lastly, Tarunia, the first and the greatest state of northeastern Europe, the great Finno-Ugric Tarunist Empire, the informal hegemon of the Baltic Sea after the fall of Copenhagen, soon decided to eliminate the Nortuguese threat as well; forces of the Holy Emperor Vielus II occupied southernmost Svearland and northern West Longumare[7], and from there struck towards Copenhagen itself. In a furious naval battle, the local Nortuguese fleet was defeated, and the garrison was slaughtered, as were the colonists. Tarunia was now trully in control of the Baltic Sea, having taken over the key western and eastern strategic points. Nortuguese presence thus only remained, by 190 AD, in Jutland itself...
It was now clear that the Nortuguese had unacceptably overestimated their forces, especially their size; the army proved simply not large enough to simultaneously control the "Orient" and conquer Alba. Still, the aging Joaus I refused to accept defeat; in 190, his forces had defeated Gawain's successor (Gawain having died back in 185), Meilyr I, in the Battle at Isca; most of Cymru's southern coast was captured soon after, but Meilyr's forces held out in the east. Seeking to deal a crippling blow on Aquitaine to force it out of the war, Joaus ordered a very ambitious two-pronged invasion along the Loire and the Seine. The rebuilt Aquitainian fleet was dispersed at Riduna; however, parts of it linked up with another Aquitainian fleet, and proceeded to destroy the Nortuguese fleet in the mouth of the Loire just as the troops begun to disembark; those that did were quickly slaughtered. The Seine invasion was far more succesful; the entirety of the river was secured quite quickly, the Aquitainian troops being surprisingly unready and also undersupplied due to the corruption and neglect in the highest echelons of government, which had by then clearly passed to the Lords. Unperturbed by the bad news from the mouth of the Loire, the Nortuguese then struck towards Aurelaeni. However, at the gates of the capital itself, they were faced by the militias and the troops of Dux Aemeleaus, a great Gaelic general, who routed the Nortuguese by making them bog down in his infantry mass and then striking at their flanks with his powerful heavy cavalry. By 192 AD, the Seine too was retaken and the last Nortuguese bid for victory had failed, especially as the Aquitainian navy rallied and defeated the Nortuguese fleet in the Isles of Scilly; an invasion of Nortugal itself was attempted, but the Nortuguese had repulsed it easily, having prepared well for such a possibility. Meanwhile, with the final collapse of Jutland (where a new, independent kingdom was set up in consensus between Frankreich and Tarunia) and the death of the overstressed Joaus I, the Nortuguese forces in Cymru grew demoralized. As the situation continued to detiriorate and Meilyr defeated the Nortuguese at Nuneaton, it became clear that retreat was the only option left. So in 197 AD, the remaining Nortuguese forces withdrew to their fortress-island, burning everything in their wake. They returned to civil war, as Joaus' son Arthuro II was assassinated and the enlightened "aristocrats" (in the most original meaning of the word) took power, setting up an oligarchy and introducing far-reaching reforms to build a rigidly-controlled utopia. Naturally, it all went wrong and a civil war ensued; this and the repulsion of several additional enemy attacks, during which however the Nortuguese fleet was damaged, caused the self-isolation of Nortugal and thus the end of the Second Northern War, as everyone held on to what he had grabbed in the process of Nortugal's partition.
It was only in the late 3rd Century, when Nortugal, after decades of anarchy and ever-changing rulers, was reunited by a new king (Arthuro III, who claimed to be a distant descendant of the last king), that this isolation begun to end; still, the Nortuguese proved unable to recover their trade empire. That made the eventual solution inevitable; first, the island of Thule, lost during the Dark Age, was reclaimed, then outposts were set up in the great frostlands to the west, and finally, in 366, the first Nortuguese had reached the Americas...
In Alba, the post-Nortuguese era was also a one of chaos. With Caerllion and indeed all of the Cymru heartlands in ruins, and warlords and brigands wandering in the countryside, it took only Meilyr's death to throw the country into chaos. That allowed Mordrauth and his successors to secure independence for Brigantea, which became a fairly small, but prosperous realm with access to the Amber Route and retained Druidic traditions. The rest of Cymru was also balkanized, but gradually, an Iceni-led tribal coalition arose in the east; heavily influenced and assisted by Armorica, it (eventually transformed into the Iceni Empire) came to control most of the non-Brigantean post-Cymru lands, save for Cymru itself, which was united by a native warlord. The Iceni ascendancy, only recently cemented by the administrative reforms of Prasutagus IV, is not good news for Brigantea - especially as to the north, another strong state had arisen. The MacNess dynasty did not decline or lose power like many others all over the world did; instead, it remained quite vigorous, possibly due to its large size (it was, after all, a clan first and foremost) and the peculiar system of title rotation (when a ruler died, his eldest brother would inherit; the same went for the titles and lands of other, less important MacNesses). Though Caledonia too had some bad times in the 3rd Century, it in general had also prospered from the collapse of the Nortuguese commercial hegemony, and the dynastic intermarriage allowed the union of Dal'Riata and Pictavia in 275 AD. The northern Celtic tribes were also subdued in due time, and southwards expansion into chaos-gripped Cymru territory, though not as fruitful as it could have been due to Brigantean resistance, gained some ground too. Thus by the end of the 4th Century, Caledonia (as the union of Dal'Riata and Pictavia was called) had become a very significant regional power...
In Aquitaine, the inevitable had happened - the Autonid dynasty and the Lords alike were overthrown in a 198 military coup d'etat, led by Dux Aemeleaus, who took the title of Dumnorix and introduced absolute monarchic power, abolishing the House of Lords altogether, but still keeping the local-level councils. The Gaelic Empire ("of Aquitaine" was dropped by Aemeleaus, who said that "there are and there shall never be any other Gaelic Empires", making that concretization redundant) also saw more administrative reforms, a build-up of infrastructure, an evolution of the military (with a further heightened emphasis on the heavy cavalry) and a brutal twelve-years civil war between the local feudals that resisted Aemeleaus' reforms. In the end, they were ofcourse defeated, but this struggle and internal reforms took up virtually all of Aemeleaus' reign, forcing him to cancel his grandiose expansion plans. His successors, however, had more time for wars abroad... but that is a different story.
Norge was united and fell apart several times more during the 3rd Century, but in the end it was united for good under Beregnar I, who had adapted Tarunism and worked with the Tarunians against Berger the Mad, the Svear konung who had converted to Solism and tried to conquer the Tarunian colonies in Svearland. He was defeated, but the Svears fought back against foreign invaders before themselves overthrowing Berger and converting to Tarunism, in exchange for peace in pre-war borders. While Norge had become a typical feudal monarchy, Svearland had, after Berger, become a loose tribal/feudal confederation, and technically looks sure to collapse within the next few decades, though perhaps it might be replaced by a more tightly-knit nation. Jutland, meanwhile, too became Tarunist and became something of a Tarunian satellite state, though not controlled too tightly.
Frankreich, expanded greatly under Bruno and his immediate successors in the 3rd Century, grew increasingly decentralized, with feudals gaining great power, especially in the eastern frontier. Having failed to conquer the Slavs of Wenedia (on the Vistula), or to expel Tarunia from Longumare, Frankreich seems to have ran out of steam - but only seems, as it still has high potential and needs only luck and good leaders to become a significant regional power. Still, for now it remains an increasingly-unstable Solist Gaelic client state...
To the east, several new states arose; the aforementioned Wenedians had united under Frankish pressure, and created a very independent, but hemmed-in Slavic state on the Vistula (at present, it is a fairly centralized monarchy that still retains tribal elements; in some regards it is similar to Caledonia, having been born out of an alliance of the most powerful rods, i.e. clans). Further east, a Dacian ally state of Slavania came to be, highly influenced in all regards by Dacia, but still retaining Slavic cultural traits; it is a militaristic feudal state. To the north, some of the Balts had joined Tarunia, while others, more southern ones, created the decentralized Tarunist kingdom of Nadruvia, which however is now increasingly leaning towards cooperation with Wenedia rather than with Tarunia, due to the overland version of the Amber Route in which Wenedia served as a middleman.
Tarunia itself, ever more theocratic and imperialistic, had expanded by peace and war in virtually all directions possible; it is the true hegemon of the Baltic Sea. At home, it is a pious, mercantile and militaristic nation, with power increasingly in the hands of the Tarunist Monks, as opposed to the increasingly-senile Holy Emperor. As a sidenote, an unique architecture style arose in Tarunia as well, best-represented by the secluded, but still famous Mielus Mausoleum near the Ooninen Lake. In the Tarunian heartlands, to sum up, a completely unique urban Finno-Ugric civilization was created. Lastly, another Finno-Ugric state, also Tarunist, had emerged - the Mordvinian Empire, with the capital in Valdakva [8], is also Tarunist, but not theocratic and even increasingly heretical. A highly-militarized absolute monarchy, forged in the bloody wars with Hunnic and Slavic tribes, Mordvinia might become a regional, or even great, power if it plays all of its cards right.
Americas:
In the last decade of the 1st Century AD, the two worlds within what will become known as the New World made contact; the Huancac merchants first arrived at the (comparatively) great Olmec Pacific trade center of Cuzo in 92 AD, and a few more years later several Huancac officials arrived at Tlictato itself. There, a trade agreement was negotiated with the Olmecs (all too eager to get more cash); soon, undeterred by distances and weather, Huancac and Olmec ships begun to travel back and forth between Cuzo and Guayaquil, and as goods were exchanged, cultural influences, innovations and diseases soon followed. Thus the 2nd Century AD was indeed a whole new era for the megacontinent beyond the Oceans...
The Olmec Empire continued to flourish and expand; this was the culmination of centuries of hard, determined labour. The Olmec religion had slowly, but surely transformed into a monotheism (sped up by a falling-out between the Crown Prince and the conservative/polytheistic priesthood); accordingly, the Crown Prince, as the sole representative of The One, became even more of a central and absolute ruler than before, in theory at least. In practice, though Olmecia's heartlands (the Mexico Valley, Yucatan and Khuba) were succesfully brought under nearly-unchallenged central control, the outer regions tended to be near-autonomous possessions of the Olmec military aristocracy, which ofcourse had every right to those lands, having conquered, during the 2nd, 3rd and 4th Centuries, Toltecia [1], northern Guangalia [2], Lower Adena [3], Calusa [4] and a wide array of Carib lands (both in the Carib Sea itself and on its southern coasts). Those conquests in most cases started with cultural and economic infiltration, and ended with brute force against whoever didn't accept the generous offer of Olmec protection; they would've been impossible just a while ago, but with the growth of the naval trade networks, a revolution in ship-building occured, and the Olmecs were able to combine that with their past Khuban experience to an impressive effect, building a great empire and virtually transforming the Carib Sea into an Olmec lake. Ofcourse, not all went well: Olmec authority in most of North Guangalia collapsed in 223 AD, just a few years after the second conquest (the first one too was long-lived, in the mid-2nd Century), and subsequent recovery attempts were all defeated, leaving the Olmecs with only the coastal areas. The Toltec War was a grinding conflict that took over a hundred years, as the Olmecs had to defeat tribe-by-tribe, and often also had to fight against the revolts in the previously-subjugated territories, the newly-arrived northern Nahuan tribes and the occasional united Toltec coalitions. Finally, resorting to genocide and mass enslavement (combined with deportation), the Olmecs managed to methodically subjugate and colonize the area, but the campaign took up great resources. Invasions of the far eastern Carib Islands and of inland Adena were also repulsed. Still, great gains had been made. At home, Olmecia too made much progress; roads and cities were built, the military was reformed, a cultural renaissance occured in the 3rd Century due to the flourishing of the new monotheism, and technology advanced too, with a reformed alphabet, superior engineering and shipbuilding and even the recent appearence of bronze-working.
Huancac's progress was somewhat less spectacular, but nevertheless, it did occur. Trade with the Olmecs flourished, and considerable expansion - both inland at the expense of the various Moche and Paraca tribes and northwards, harming Guangala (though ultimately failing to destroy it). The Huanc fleet grew in strenght; in the 270s, a naval war with the Olmecs resulted in a shocking Huancac victory (the Olmecs having badly underestimated their enemies) and the conquest of the contested archipelago. At home, the late 3rd/early 4th Century saw administrative reforms; still, it came too late as later in the 4th Century Huancac increasingly stagnated, being hemmed in between the vibrant younger empires of Guangala and Tiwanaku.
All that sounds rather idyllic until I mention the never-ending stream of provincial insurgencies the Olmecs had to deal with, not to mention the (initially dynastic, later social as one side received the backing of the military aristocracy, and the other - that of the old clergy and merchants) Olmec Civil War of 123-167 AD, which nearly destroyed the empire and forced the 21st Crown Prince (supported by the military and the reformer-monotheist priests), after his eventual victory, to introduce decentralization reforms and grant near-autonomy to the feudal realms at the empire's outer reaches. Even then, the later Crown Princes had to fight back quite a lot of feudal revolts due to later recentralization efforts, and peasant uprisings also grew frequent during the particularily destructive of those feudal wars. As for Huancac, in 222 AD a solar eclipse was combined with bad crops, disagreements in the upper echelons of power and the presence of a discontent, frustrated, ambitious general (Lupanca) and a charismatic prophet known only as The Truthbearer... The result was the Thirty Years Rebellion, an epic clash of military rebels and revolting peasants with the surprised Huancac theocrats and their loyalists. After the 239 Battle of Huamachuco (where Lupanca and the main rebel forces were slaughtered), the rebellion degenerated into a lenghty guerrila war; the Truthbearer's death only made things worse, as the remaining rebel communes lost all coordination and were gradually rooted out by the forces of the Face-of-the-Sun. That was only the largest rebellion, though - there had been others before and after, especially amongst the tribal vassals of Huancac, causing the bitter jungle campaigns of the 310s-330s, which had in the end allowed Huancac to incorporate the tribe lands into the Empire directly.
It was not without violence that the newer American states arose as well. This birth of a myriad of new empires was, in retrospect, a natural process, caused by the old empires directly (through their example, through the dissemination of their civilization via trade and through the military threat they had presented) as well as by other, more barbaric tribes that threatened the protocivilizations that had begun to emerge roughly around the Olmec and Huancac spheres. As numerous early city-states and states emerged, it was a survival of the fittest, and the luckiest; many would-be empires fell to barbarians, or to the Empires, or collapsed due to structural weakness - or, as was most common, were destroyed or subjugated by their competitors. Towards the 4th Century AD, four coherent empires (note: there are also several lesser city states and tribal leagues, but they aren't really worthy of mention - the former are too weak, the latter are too ephemeral and unstable) had emerged. The Nahuan people of Azteks, frustrated in their southwards expansion by the Olmecs and forced out of their native lands by the fleeing Toltecs, moved to the west (the Hakatai[5] basin) instead, subjugating the local cultures and city-states, and creating the Empire of Aztlan, under clear Olmec and Hakataian influence. Despite the difficult terrain (between the desert to the southeast and the mountains to the northwest), the Aztlanese had set themselves up quite well, creating a formidable (for the region) war machine, sbuduing vast territories and creating a highly-militarized society, not unlike the one existing in the Olmec frontier, only trully independent (and Nahuan, ofcourse). Another empire was that of Adena, created in response to Olmec agression (which ironically assisted the rise of an Adenan state; with the Olmec elimination or weakening of the other southern centers, Nanih Waiya was in perfect position to unite the nearby tribes). Though rather small, Upper Adena was fairly wealthy and had made good use of mercenaries from other tribes to ward off the Olmec attacks. In South America, Guangala was a product of never-ending military pressure from the north and the south. No longer having much to do with the original Guangala culture near Guayaquil (well, relatively - many local tribes were refugees that fled from the Huancac destruction of that culture, and their existing traditions soon mixed fruitfully with those of the local valley-folk), the tribes of what had become known as Guangala were brought together both by common trade ties (and thus, cultural ties as well) and by the need to form alliances against the other tribes and the Empires. Gradually, fortified settlements evolved into cities, which became increasingly united; the transformation of Guangala into an united empire was confirmed in 336 AD, with the victory of the forces of both key valleys over yet another Olmec invasion. Guangala itself resembles a less totalitarian, more primitive version of Huancac, though ofcourse that is a crude oversimplification. It can also be described as a simple alliance of city-states, and as such, it is quite fragile... Lastly, Tiwanaku was built by the Aymara people on the shores of Lake Titicaca; much like Huancac (indeed, exactly like Huancac - the Tiwanakans were excellent learners, especially as far as agricultural techniques went), the new state soon experienced a population boom and begun grabbing nearby lands, defeating both nearby tribes and the Huanc armies that tried to put an end to this, but found themselves weakened by decades of comparative peace and forced to fall back to the northwest. By 400 AD, though defeated in their attempted invasion of the Huanc heartlands, the Tiwanakans continue to threaten Huancac, even as their armies conquer more land to the south and as a rigid bureaucracy is set up.
One could also note that there are other peoples in the Americas that are presently in the proto-civilization, proto-state phase as well; something might come out of them, possibly very soon indeed.
In the late 4th Century, the Americas were shaken, for in 366 AD the first Nortuguese trade outpost had been set up far to the northeast, while the Nihonese explorers made first contact with Aztlan in 389 AD (later setting up some outposts further north) - and lastly, in 396, a Carthaginian expedition made contact with the surviving eastern Caribs... The Opening of the Americas had commenced - that alone inaguarated a whole new era in world history, like none before it, and that alone would've changed life in the Americas quickly. However, where it mattered the rumours of the strange seamen were chiefly dismissed for now. Even if they did exist, this wasn't the time to run around after some faraway traders or whatever they might be - no, this was the time to try and save Olmecia from the terrible epidemics that broke out all of the sudden, dealing a harsh blow to the Empire's demographics and economy, while for the Huancacs this was the time to take desperate actions in order to enforce some sort of a quarantine - actions that came too late. The diseases had hurt the barbaric tribes and the more primitive states too, but the densely-populated Olmec heartlands were the hardest-struck thus far. Social enthropy seems inevitable, and a political breakdown seems a possibility as well, while the vultures begin to gather... The future of Huancac is even more uncertain, though in a good way - perhaps parts of the empire's heartlands might yet be saved. Might.
Might shall make right, as a new Interesting Time like none before draws near...
Northern Europe[6]:
At the end of the First Northern War, the face of Northern Europe was changed radically, and unrecognizeably; and it is doubtless that the most shocking of all was the sudden transformation of Nortugal - for long preoccupied by internal strife and war with Ulaid tribes - into a colonial great power. Though frustrated and repulsed on several occassions when they tried to establish trade outposts, the Nortuguese won a sudden military victory by using the nascent Copenhagen's preoccupation in Germany to strike forth and conquer Copenhagen itself, expanding from there to new positions in the North and Baltic Seas. By the end of the 1st Century, Nortugal became a great power, on the regional scale at least; its fleets dominated the seas, its merchants took over the Amber Route (meaning in this case the naval trade route from Scandinavia to Iberia, over which amber, along with other goods, was transported), its trade centers flourished, its people set up new colonies and trade outposts... but most importantly, despite the systematic elimination of anything that might be classified as a religion, Nortugal not only was left alone, but even gained a grudging recognition from the Gaelic Empire of Aquitaine, whose Dumnorix went as far as to invite Nortuguese scholars to the Greek-style academias of Gaul. The common folk pretty much everywhere hated Nortugal, to say nothing of the clergy... yet while they hated, they also feared. This was especially true in the newly-annexed territories; there, however, hatred occassionally outweighed even fear, and ill-coordinated rebellions plagued Jutland from the very start of Nortuguese rule there.
Nortugal's status as a great power was to no small degree built on the foundation of the "oriental conquests", and the excellent strategic position gained there; however, the Copenhagener provinces lied far from Nord Lisbon, and to make things worse, there were three states, all with naval ambitions, in the path. So from the start, the Nortuguese rulers had certain designs in the regards of Alba; yet even though Cymru was weakened by endemic internal strife, it was compensated by an alliance with Aquitaine, which was now the strongest state in Northern Europe. So the Nortuguese decided to wait until the circumstances change in their favour; that wait was perhaps prolonged by the 120s grand traditionalist rebellion, after which what little tolerance for religionn was retained had disappeared. While the Nortuguese were busy burning the superstitious, they had missed a good opportunity - the dynastic crisis in Aquitaine after the death of Dumnorix Sativoleous. Though a civil war was avoided, the empire was nearly paralyzed in foreign affairs for four years, and even after that, the new dynasty (the Autonids) had to concede considerable power to the House of Lords and to deal with provincial uprisings. Still, even when Nortugal had recovered, Autonid Aquitaine clearly remained unstable, while in 157 AD, after the death of Owain II, Cymru erupted into a civil war. The Aquitainean-backed Solist claimant Gawain was routed in the Battle of Cotswold Hills (160) by the forces of his Druidist brother, Tudur I, who had succesfully gained popular support in Cymru due to a Druidist religious revival. Gawain's forces retreated southwards; Tudur pursued, and left Caerllion tragically undergarrisoned; and sensing his opportunity, Joaus I of Nortugal personally sailed with a large force across the Celtic Sea, landing near Caerllion and taking it in a surprise assault. The die was cast, and no doubt Joaus knew the extent of this risk - still, he also knew that if he were to wait for longer, the risks would only multiply. The Cymru-Aquitaine alliance was posed to severe the Nortuguese empire's vital communication routes; the dagger thus thrust at Nortugal's heart had to be removed...
As was expected, Aquitaine immediately protested this, and sent even more troops to help Gawain; as was at least suspected, Tudur succesfully invoked a secret alliance with Dal'Riata. However, the worst-case scenario - in which Tudur and the Aquitainians would've reconciled - had failed to occur; encouraged by this, the Nortuguese quickly occupied Cymru's heartlands with some additional landings, and advanced further inland, burning sacred groves and temples and killing druids and Solist priests alike as they went. In 168 Tudur had died fighting the Nortuguese at Mendip; the rest of his army soon defected to Gawain, but northern Cymru simply degenerated into chaos, while the Nortuguese consolidated their control of western and central Cymru. Also, sporadic raids were undertaken against Dal'Riata; but as the 170s begun, the Nortuguese had concentrated on naval affairs. Having already clashed with the Aquitainians in Alba and, indecisively, in the North Sea, the Nortuguese decided to neutralize Armorica as a threat. Having assembled a huge, yet quick (due to use of a special, Copenhagener-inspired design) fleet, the Nortuguese had surprised and destroyed most of the Armorican navy in a series of battles in the Gaelic Sea and the Alban Channel; supply routes to the armies in Alba were cut, and ambitious raids were launched; the peak of Nortuguese success was the Sack of Kemper, in 178. Still, as time went by the Aquitainians had learned to fight off most of the raids, while Gawain had defeated the Nortuguese on the Tamis, establishing control over eastern Cymru and, as it recovered, supplying the Aquitainian troops by himself. After the Tamis, indeed, the Nortuguese situation in Cymru turned more grim, with ever more widespread rebellions and the attack generally running out of steam. An invasion of Dal'Riata was repulsed, though just barely and very bloodily, by Duncan MacNess at Ayr. Northern Cymru was united by a local warlord, Mordrauth, who refused to recognize Gawain as his sovereign (instead proclaiming himself the Brenin of Brigantea), but at the same time fought back against the Nortuguese, allying with Duncan. And meanwhile, a whole new set of threats emerged in the "Orient" - the old alliance with Norge died out, as the Norsk warlord Knud the Cruel, who had previously united the southern tribes with blood and iron, now attacked and destroyed all the Nortuguese trade outposts in Norge and begun attacking the Amber Route, resorting to piracy, and in the meantime uprisings in Jutland were re-ignited. The Svears soon followed the Norge example, violating the Nortuguese border in Svearland. Bruno I, the founder of the Frankreich (a centralized empire created to replace the rag-tag Frankland, considerably influenced by Aquitaine and Dacia), had overran Nortugal's German territories, though in Jutland he was defeated, along with the rebels that sided with him, in the Battle of Haderslev. And lastly, Tarunia, the first and the greatest state of northeastern Europe, the great Finno-Ugric Tarunist Empire, the informal hegemon of the Baltic Sea after the fall of Copenhagen, soon decided to eliminate the Nortuguese threat as well; forces of the Holy Emperor Vielus II occupied southernmost Svearland and northern West Longumare[7], and from there struck towards Copenhagen itself. In a furious naval battle, the local Nortuguese fleet was defeated, and the garrison was slaughtered, as were the colonists. Tarunia was now trully in control of the Baltic Sea, having taken over the key western and eastern strategic points. Nortuguese presence thus only remained, by 190 AD, in Jutland itself...
It was now clear that the Nortuguese had unacceptably overestimated their forces, especially their size; the army proved simply not large enough to simultaneously control the "Orient" and conquer Alba. Still, the aging Joaus I refused to accept defeat; in 190, his forces had defeated Gawain's successor (Gawain having died back in 185), Meilyr I, in the Battle at Isca; most of Cymru's southern coast was captured soon after, but Meilyr's forces held out in the east. Seeking to deal a crippling blow on Aquitaine to force it out of the war, Joaus ordered a very ambitious two-pronged invasion along the Loire and the Seine. The rebuilt Aquitainian fleet was dispersed at Riduna; however, parts of it linked up with another Aquitainian fleet, and proceeded to destroy the Nortuguese fleet in the mouth of the Loire just as the troops begun to disembark; those that did were quickly slaughtered. The Seine invasion was far more succesful; the entirety of the river was secured quite quickly, the Aquitainian troops being surprisingly unready and also undersupplied due to the corruption and neglect in the highest echelons of government, which had by then clearly passed to the Lords. Unperturbed by the bad news from the mouth of the Loire, the Nortuguese then struck towards Aurelaeni. However, at the gates of the capital itself, they were faced by the militias and the troops of Dux Aemeleaus, a great Gaelic general, who routed the Nortuguese by making them bog down in his infantry mass and then striking at their flanks with his powerful heavy cavalry. By 192 AD, the Seine too was retaken and the last Nortuguese bid for victory had failed, especially as the Aquitainian navy rallied and defeated the Nortuguese fleet in the Isles of Scilly; an invasion of Nortugal itself was attempted, but the Nortuguese had repulsed it easily, having prepared well for such a possibility. Meanwhile, with the final collapse of Jutland (where a new, independent kingdom was set up in consensus between Frankreich and Tarunia) and the death of the overstressed Joaus I, the Nortuguese forces in Cymru grew demoralized. As the situation continued to detiriorate and Meilyr defeated the Nortuguese at Nuneaton, it became clear that retreat was the only option left. So in 197 AD, the remaining Nortuguese forces withdrew to their fortress-island, burning everything in their wake. They returned to civil war, as Joaus' son Arthuro II was assassinated and the enlightened "aristocrats" (in the most original meaning of the word) took power, setting up an oligarchy and introducing far-reaching reforms to build a rigidly-controlled utopia. Naturally, it all went wrong and a civil war ensued; this and the repulsion of several additional enemy attacks, during which however the Nortuguese fleet was damaged, caused the self-isolation of Nortugal and thus the end of the Second Northern War, as everyone held on to what he had grabbed in the process of Nortugal's partition.
It was only in the late 3rd Century, when Nortugal, after decades of anarchy and ever-changing rulers, was reunited by a new king (Arthuro III, who claimed to be a distant descendant of the last king), that this isolation begun to end; still, the Nortuguese proved unable to recover their trade empire. That made the eventual solution inevitable; first, the island of Thule, lost during the Dark Age, was reclaimed, then outposts were set up in the great frostlands to the west, and finally, in 366, the first Nortuguese had reached the Americas...
In Alba, the post-Nortuguese era was also a one of chaos. With Caerllion and indeed all of the Cymru heartlands in ruins, and warlords and brigands wandering in the countryside, it took only Meilyr's death to throw the country into chaos. That allowed Mordrauth and his successors to secure independence for Brigantea, which became a fairly small, but prosperous realm with access to the Amber Route and retained Druidic traditions. The rest of Cymru was also balkanized, but gradually, an Iceni-led tribal coalition arose in the east; heavily influenced and assisted by Armorica, it (eventually transformed into the Iceni Empire) came to control most of the non-Brigantean post-Cymru lands, save for Cymru itself, which was united by a native warlord. The Iceni ascendancy, only recently cemented by the administrative reforms of Prasutagus IV, is not good news for Brigantea - especially as to the north, another strong state had arisen. The MacNess dynasty did not decline or lose power like many others all over the world did; instead, it remained quite vigorous, possibly due to its large size (it was, after all, a clan first and foremost) and the peculiar system of title rotation (when a ruler died, his eldest brother would inherit; the same went for the titles and lands of other, less important MacNesses). Though Caledonia too had some bad times in the 3rd Century, it in general had also prospered from the collapse of the Nortuguese commercial hegemony, and the dynastic intermarriage allowed the union of Dal'Riata and Pictavia in 275 AD. The northern Celtic tribes were also subdued in due time, and southwards expansion into chaos-gripped Cymru territory, though not as fruitful as it could have been due to Brigantean resistance, gained some ground too. Thus by the end of the 4th Century, Caledonia (as the union of Dal'Riata and Pictavia was called) had become a very significant regional power...
In Aquitaine, the inevitable had happened - the Autonid dynasty and the Lords alike were overthrown in a 198 military coup d'etat, led by Dux Aemeleaus, who took the title of Dumnorix and introduced absolute monarchic power, abolishing the House of Lords altogether, but still keeping the local-level councils. The Gaelic Empire ("of Aquitaine" was dropped by Aemeleaus, who said that "there are and there shall never be any other Gaelic Empires", making that concretization redundant) also saw more administrative reforms, a build-up of infrastructure, an evolution of the military (with a further heightened emphasis on the heavy cavalry) and a brutal twelve-years civil war between the local feudals that resisted Aemeleaus' reforms. In the end, they were ofcourse defeated, but this struggle and internal reforms took up virtually all of Aemeleaus' reign, forcing him to cancel his grandiose expansion plans. His successors, however, had more time for wars abroad... but that is a different story.
Norge was united and fell apart several times more during the 3rd Century, but in the end it was united for good under Beregnar I, who had adapted Tarunism and worked with the Tarunians against Berger the Mad, the Svear konung who had converted to Solism and tried to conquer the Tarunian colonies in Svearland. He was defeated, but the Svears fought back against foreign invaders before themselves overthrowing Berger and converting to Tarunism, in exchange for peace in pre-war borders. While Norge had become a typical feudal monarchy, Svearland had, after Berger, become a loose tribal/feudal confederation, and technically looks sure to collapse within the next few decades, though perhaps it might be replaced by a more tightly-knit nation. Jutland, meanwhile, too became Tarunist and became something of a Tarunian satellite state, though not controlled too tightly.
Frankreich, expanded greatly under Bruno and his immediate successors in the 3rd Century, grew increasingly decentralized, with feudals gaining great power, especially in the eastern frontier. Having failed to conquer the Slavs of Wenedia (on the Vistula), or to expel Tarunia from Longumare, Frankreich seems to have ran out of steam - but only seems, as it still has high potential and needs only luck and good leaders to become a significant regional power. Still, for now it remains an increasingly-unstable Solist Gaelic client state...
To the east, several new states arose; the aforementioned Wenedians had united under Frankish pressure, and created a very independent, but hemmed-in Slavic state on the Vistula (at present, it is a fairly centralized monarchy that still retains tribal elements; in some regards it is similar to Caledonia, having been born out of an alliance of the most powerful rods, i.e. clans). Further east, a Dacian ally state of Slavania came to be, highly influenced in all regards by Dacia, but still retaining Slavic cultural traits; it is a militaristic feudal state. To the north, some of the Balts had joined Tarunia, while others, more southern ones, created the decentralized Tarunist kingdom of Nadruvia, which however is now increasingly leaning towards cooperation with Wenedia rather than with Tarunia, due to the overland version of the Amber Route in which Wenedia served as a middleman.
Tarunia itself, ever more theocratic and imperialistic, had expanded by peace and war in virtually all directions possible; it is the true hegemon of the Baltic Sea. At home, it is a pious, mercantile and militaristic nation, with power increasingly in the hands of the Tarunist Monks, as opposed to the increasingly-senile Holy Emperor. As a sidenote, an unique architecture style arose in Tarunia as well, best-represented by the secluded, but still famous Mielus Mausoleum near the Ooninen Lake. In the Tarunian heartlands, to sum up, a completely unique urban Finno-Ugric civilization was created. Lastly, another Finno-Ugric state, also Tarunist, had emerged - the Mordvinian Empire, with the capital in Valdakva [8], is also Tarunist, but not theocratic and even increasingly heretical. A highly-militarized absolute monarchy, forged in the bloody wars with Hunnic and Slavic tribes, Mordvinia might become a regional, or even great, power if it plays all of its cards right.
das
Regeneration In Process
Transpoenic-Mediterranean[6]:
In the end of the 1st Century AD and in the wake of the Fourth Transpoenic War, the whole region was in ruins. The Dacian-Illyrian Empire and Carthaginian Italy were particularily devastated, but other regions were often not better off at all, if only because all sides made liberal use of scorched earth tactics during the Fourth Transpoenic War. The regional trade was nearly crippled by war and piracy. Still, recovery occured; though very slow at times, it still was inevitable. And as both cities and trade networks were rebuilt, the Carthaginians celebrated victory; for what had seemed a pyrrhic victory had transformed, in the eyes of the new, triumphant generation, into a decisive and succesful war; and indeed, the cycle of Transpoenic Wars was over, and the Transpoenic Sea was transformed into a Carthaginian lake at last. Trade was picking up, administrative reforms made the running of the empire easier, and the Carthaginian fleet was strenghthened and rebuilt. It soon begun projecting power well outside of the Transpoenic basin; in particular, a 131 AD expedition had succesfully circumnavigated Africa, though this was of little practical utility due to the distances involved. It also quite ironic that later in the century, the Carthaginians had begun planning an expedition against their former Egyptian allies, to force them to open up to trade again (Egypt's high tariffs transformed into complete isolation - in theory at least - under the reign of Ramses IV), and in particular to allow them passage through the Sile Canal; however, they were preempted by the Kalingans, that launched their own expedition in 186 AD. What followed was the Sile War, of which more is told later. Here, it would be sufficient to say that after Ramses IV's death, the new Egyptian government decided to revive the alliance with Carthage, fearing Kalingan conquest; a gruelling war ensued and spread, but in the end, in 212 AD, the Carthaginians had won and threw the Kalingans out of the Mediterranean Sea. However, THAT victory was trully pyrrhic - the Carthaginian fleet was decimated in the fighting, and the economy, only recently recovered to pre-FTW levels, was badly overstrained the drawn-out campaigns involved, especially as they were combined with a Cimbrian uprising and Berber raids (or, rather, to the response to both). When in 213 AD the long-reigning Emperor Hannibal Barcelona III, who, after a brief democratic/councillar interlude, concentrated much power directly in his hands and proclaimed himself a living god (initiating a new stage in the development of the Carthaginian Empire Cult), had finally died, the ravens begun to gather.
The reinvigoration of Gaul under the new Aemelid dynasty, just to the north from Carthage's Gaelic provinces, was already described; now we must mention the 2nd Century in Dacia's history, the century of recovery, the century of strife. Devastated and weakened by the defeat in the Third Transpoenic War and by the Hunnic invasion, the DIE did benefit from that latter event and the social instability that occured in its wake, for it had trully brought Dacia and Illyria together, causing unprecedented, lingering national unity; it must also be observed that the destruction of virtually all the major cities apart from Burebistatuza had preconditioned the comparative easiness in the centralization of the realm, as in the early Recovery phase, at least, Dacia remained quite monopolar and what resistance WAS mounted against Burebistatuza's leadership happened to be weak, uncoordinated and utterly futile. However, that is about all the silver lining one could find; the country was still in ruins, and its recovery was interrupted in the 120s by Slavic and Germannic invasions across the poorly-guarded northern border. In a controversial decision, Leo III the Wise, who was looking for ways to replenish the badly-diminished Dacian manpower, had agreed to let them settle in the Dacian lands in exchange for pledging allegience to its rulers; as wide territores were yet to be resettled, there was plenty of place to placate the barbarians with. Leo III did not get his epithet for nothing, ofcourse; a few generations later, the new settlers were integrated into Dacia politically, socially and culturally; though retaining some tribal priveleges and many elements of their old cultures, they became in many regards "more Dacian than the Dacians themselves", and it was from a mixed Daco-Slavic marriage that Chief Minister Velisar came. Under Leo III's less-than-wise descendants, Velisar took over many matters of state, and presided over the revival of Dacian commerce, developing Illyria, building new cities and constructing a grand Dacian fleet. Velisar died in 188 AD, but DIE continued to look to the sea; and there, it saw naval and commercial predominance of Carthage. A predominance that was shaken by the Sile War... As for the Gauls, they had already satisfied their expansionism in the east, and attained a victory of some sort in the north; it was only natural that Dumnorix Gaelateaus I should now look to the south, where Gaul was denied a Transpoenic coastline, despite ancient claims to it; the wealthy Gaelic merchants looked in the same direction, seeking to join the grand trade network of the Transpoenic-Mediterranean, and promised to help finance a purchase or a war. The purchase proposal was notoriously rejected by Carthage... Lastly, it is noteworthy that Gaul, having received a certain influx of Roman refugees over the times and undergone a certain Latin cultural influence (as evidenced by the Gaelic names and the evolution of their language; the Gauls even used a Latin-like alphabet since the days of Sativoleous, and their state language was, by the 3rd Century, an eerie mix of Latin and Gaelic, though the latter elements still were far prevalent in the provinces); and the Aemelids, despite rejecting the ideals of republicanism, still did increasingly propagate the ideal of Aurelaeni as a "Second Rome"; inspired by the famous ballad about the Roman general Julius Caeser, Gaelateaus was particularily enthusiastic about this Roman ideology, and thus saw avenging Rome and fighting Carthage as his duty.
As for Luca, more shall be mentioned about it later; but having allied with Kalinga in the Sile War and suffered for it, the Lucans were further outraged - and frightened - by increasing Carthaginian ties with old Phoenicia. Due to political instability and the Parhaen threat on its eastern border, Luca was unable to properly participate in the new anti-Punic coalition, but its contributions still were quite significant, especially on the diplomatic front; combined Lucan and Dacian diplomatic pressure forced Hellas to accept grudging neutrality in the war, while a Lucan-incited crisis in Byblos (featuring an undeclared, sporadic civil war and lots of assassinations and intrigues) resulted in the rise to power of a new dynasty, that of Jerubal I; the new ruler was more preoccupied with internal affairs, and thus preffered to retain neutrality in the Fourth Transpoenic War.
That war begun in 218; two years earlier, the Cimbrian warlord Marbod, who united most Cimbrian tribes and other Germannics that moved over from Frankreich and even points east during the great Germannic southwards migration (the same one that gave Dacia its Germannic segment) and led them to one last war against the Carthaginians (during which he surprised the enemy by the surprisingly good organization and disciplinne of his troops, before finally being forced back by a fresh influx of Carthaginian forces), fought his desperate last stand at his Alpine stronghold of Kriegstadt, near the Wodenhard Pass. Even though all seemed bleak, as the Carthaginians kept coming in a never-ending black stream, a sudden rear attack by more Germannic troops and Gaelic "mercenaries" turned the battle into a rout, as the Carthaginian army was trapped in the narrow pass and subsequently slaughtered. The Cimbrians soon struck back and not only retook most of their country, but even begun advancing into Italy. Though the Carthaginians had prevented a breakthrough, this unexpected stroke of luck inspired Gaelateaus to sped up his preparations. In 218, Gaul officially allied with the Marbod, and the Sol Dragonii crossed the Garonne, soon securing Gaelic Empire's first Transpoenic port, Argel [9]. Considerable gains were made, and virtually all the Carthaginian territory north of Pyrenees was captured with only minor fighting; however, soon after that, the Gaelic offensive had stalled, despite attempts to invade Iberia; the vanguard of one invasion force was repulsed at the Carthaginian fortress of Andorra, while a few years later, after crossing the Pyrenees in the west with the help from the native Celtiberians, the Gaelic army was betrayed and hemmed in between Carthaginians and Celtiberians. None survived, not even Prinx Daedaelus; the Carthaginians took no prisoners. This was, ofcourse, the tragic Battle of Roncevallus... The Carthaginians were pushed out from former western Cimberland with more success (the Cimbrians had abandoned those lands long ago and now promised them to the Gauls), but the Gaelic siege of Didonia was unsuccesful due to Carthaginian naval supply system; that siege eventually had to be abandoned.
Meanwhile, however, the rebuilt Dacian fleet carried the day in the Battle of Rizuta, defeating the weakened enemy fleet and launching an amphibious invasion of Italy. Landing all over the eastern coast, the Dacians encountered fierce Punic resistance, but at the same time were welcomed by the Etruscans and Greeks, both being quite annoyed at the Carthaginian Poenification policies. Marbod also joined the invasion, and combined Dacian, Etruscan and Cimbrian forces had defeated the Carthaginians at Felegaria, soon reaching the shores of the Ligurian Sea. Despite the Carthaginian land victories at Matera and Irpino that denied the invaders south Italy, and the defeat of the Dacian invasion of the thoroughly-Poenicized Sicily, Carthaginian reign in Italy soon collapsed; rebellions spread, and garrisons were expelled. Still, Emperor Naples II refused to acknowledge defeat, and rejected the peace terms that demanded, amongst other things, the recreation of the city-state of Rome (to be granted to the descendants of the Romans that had settled in Gaul). The Carthaginians fought on for another decade, with skirmishes, failed counterattacks and succesful defenses; gradually, however, they were forced back in Italy, retreating into Calabria. On the sea, the Gaelic fleet was defeated at Gades and again at Argel (where the would-be "Transpoenic Fleet" was destroyed), but then a large Carthaginian fleet was destroyed by the Dacians at Syracuse, from where the Dacians went on to once more, as in the Fourth Transpoenic War, attack the vital Carthaginian communication routes and raid North Africa itself. Dissent grew, economy begun to shake and with the death of Naples II, his pro-peace brother Gisco Hannibal IV immediately started peace negotiations, lest Carthage again undergo such economic damage as was suffered in the previous war. The eventual Treaty of Didonia acknowledged the Carthaginian defeat, but at the same time minimalized it; though all lands north of the Pyrenees were conceded to Gaul, these underdevelopped, untenable territories never were particularily wealthy; all claims to Cimberland were abandoned as well, ofcourse, but Didonia and the surrounding territories were retained. Even in Italy, several Carthaginian possessions were retained - Calabria, Liguria and Pisae, plus some other western swathes, controversially including the ruins of Rome, which however was now rebuilt as a Carthaginian city of Italcart (the strategic position was too good not to use). In Italy's north, independent Etruscan city states arose, though not even the diplomatic genius of Gisco Hannibal could prevent the formation of the Padanian League and its alliance with Dacia. And lastly, considerable portions of eastern Italy went over to Dacia.
What was mostly hurt here was Carthage's pride; in truth, it retained all the key strategic positions, and though the Gauls now gained an access to the Transpoenic Sea, it remained firmly in control of Carthage's merchants and sailors, especially as the fleet underwent a major modernization. The collapse of Carthage's influence in the Mediterranean caused by this war's defeat was a more serious consequence, but both it and the clear impossibility of expansion in Europe proved to be beneficial: Carthage once more turned to the south and the west, where great success was achieved. After the 241 AD peaceful annexation of Garamantes, the Carthaginians built up a considerable "fleet" of the "ships of the desert" - the Imperial Camelry advanced southwards, securing key oases and with them - the nascent trans-Saharan trade routes. Also, diplomatic contact was established with the Mande peoples; however, by then the Carthaginians had overstretched themselves too far, and conquest plans had to be aborted. Instead, the Carthaginians consolidated their gains from the Berber Wars, and instead restarted their naval operations. Several colonies and trade outposts in West Africa were established, and trade ties with the Mande kingdom of Wagadou. Though in late 3rd-early 4th Centuries Carthage saw some political and social instability that paralyzed it for a while, even then Carthaginian merchants and explorers wandered further and further, again circumnavigating Africa in 295. Permanent trade outposts were established as far south as the Congo, though contact with those southern outposts was very unreliable. And in the late 4th Century, a Carthaginian expedition to the west had discovered some new, uncharted island chain - with an advanced and numerous population (by comparison with other people that lived in Atlantic islands). Who knows what might come out of that...
Italy's Padanian League proved quite unstable, with rebellions and wars being quite widespread due to the mixed ethnic stock (Germannics, Greeks, Etruscans, Samnites and Latins alike could be found in its cities) and the essentially-fragile state of that very loose coalition. Meanwhile, to the north, the Kingdom of Cimberland emerged under distant relativse of Marbod and begun to increasingly clash with Dacia and Padania; Gaelic support for Solist (after 278) Cimberland caused the Gaelo-Dacian alliance to fall apart, though open warfare was avoided until 365 when Konig Alarich II used Padania's final degeneration into chaos to invade northern Italy, with support from several Etruscan city states and factions. In the ensuing Padanian War, Dacians intervenned on the side of Aquilea and Arretium, the two city-states that headed the anti-Cimbrian coalition, but as the Cimbrians received Gaelic assistance (in the form of advisors, weapons, siege specialists and funds, and later on Gaelic troops), Arretium was razed, and most of Padania surrendered; Daco-Aquilean forces were defeated at Ticinum in 374 and at Tarvisium in 376. Though Aquilea lingered on and became a semi-autonomous part of Dacia, the Cimbrians besieged it again in 385, and eventually took it in a bloody street battle. Dacia had to withdraw its claims from Aquilea, but retained its direct Italian holdings; this war had illustrated the decay of Dacian land army since the 3rd Century's triumphs. Cimberland now became a regional power in its own right; as the capital was moved to the more central location of Mantua, an unique Germanno-Etruscan civilization begun to emerge, though the Konig had also inherited Padania's ethnic and interurban problems not easily resolved.
The DIE after the Fourth Transpoenic War continued to recover, and soon enough became the leading trade power in the Mediterranean, as Egypt, though opened up, had very bad relations with both Carthage and Kalinga. Dacian merchants - and diplomats - quickly rose to great prominence in Egypt, displacing Carthaginian ones, and some ventured further still - the great Dacian traveller Fudegista took part in a Hong Kee diplomatic mission in Nihon, though ofcourse his role wasn't terribly significant. Aside from that, DIE had from the start of the 2nd Century contributed to the downfall of the Hunnish Empire. After the death of Shilla in 102, and his son Bleda in 137, the Hunnish Empire, once seemingly poised to overrun Eastern Europe, fell into dynastic and tribal strife, though still managing to launch occassional raids against its neighbours, expanding at Slavic expense and occassionally fighting their way over the Nistru, though eventually Dacian fortifications there grew too powerful to be cracked. As the situation detiriorated, the tables were turned; Lucans and Dacians begun raiding back and capturing border territories, and in 235 knyaz Shek had united the surviving East Slavic tribes into a Dacian-backed state of Slavania, which soon mounted an invasion of key western Hunnish lands. That invasion was assisted by the Dacians, who had advanced beyond the Dnieper, and the Lucans, who recaptured Bosporan. The Huns went down fighting; their last ruler, Ardapa, had succeeded in rallying them and even scoring several victories against the invaders, but after his death the Huns, exhausted from the fighting, retreated to the Itil and reverted to barbarism. But even as the Dacian colonization of the fertile Dnieper valley begun, while Slavanians and the Mordvins begun fighting in the north, a new steppe people was en route to fill in the power vacuum - the Bulghars. They assimilated the broken Huns, and built a new civilization on the Itil, creating the Onoghur Empire. Though somewhat more peaceful and sedentary, the Onoghur Bulghars soon gave the Dacians a rude awakening - in 319 AD, a well-trained, combined-arms army routed the Dacians on the Tanais[10]. Having secured Tanais as well as Itil, the Bulghars had built a well-ordered empire, considerably influenced by the Parhaen and perhaps Chinese bureaucracy. It remains unclear whether they would remain content with their present gains or seek to conquer more, but at present, the latter option seems more likely: Bulghar raids already reached the Dnieper on several occassions...
Lastly, Hellas, surrounded by a (perceivedly, but that perception wasn't far from truth) hostile world, grew paranoid, entrenched and xenophobic. Solism was particularily repressed. The country's increasing isolation caused some revolts, especially in the mercantile Athens, but the rebels were, ofcourse, crushed and the cities razed (later rebuilt and settled by loyal people). Meanwhile, a Hellenic nationalism grew and was greatly encouraged by the state; the defeat of the rebels helped root out regionalism and polisism, and along with them regional cults. The nationalist, absolutist ideology soon influenced religion, and by the 3rd Century, with state backing, a new religion arose - Hellenism, a monotheistic religion based around a deification/personification of Hellas - Hellena. The religion also adapted elements similar to those of the "Punic Imperial" ethics. Under this banner, further centralization took place, and Hellas became a trully absolute monarchy. In foreign policies, all the while, the Hellenes were and still are waiting for opportunities, especially opportunities to get back at the Lucans. Perhaps Hellas will simply linger on as now, an isolated, hated state in the middle of the Mediterranean; perhaps it will be destroyed by its neighbours; but perhaps, it will revive the ancient Spartan Empire and become hegemon of the Eastern Mediterranean...
Indian Ocean[6]:
With the partition of Sinhala, the destruction of Bactrasha, the humbling of Israel and the defeat of the Sino-Rising Sunite (i.e. Nihonese) invasion of Khmeria (a key ally, after all), it seemed that a Kalingan golden age was at hand. Indeed, was it not in control over the Indian Ocean trade? Was it not on the forefront of technologic development? Was it not a religious and cultural center of the civilized world? Was its fleet not the largest in the world? Was it not ruled by the most just laws and the wisest rulers? Was it not allied with the only nation that could be considered its equal - Khmeria? Yet everything was not quite as it seemed... Kalinga was indeed on the top now, but that meant that it soon lost much of the stimulus for further progress, and instead begun to stagnate (although that doesn't mean that technological progress grounded to a halt - rather, it slowed down, plus the Kalingan government grew increasingly sceptical of new technologies, due to the unprecedented rise of charlatanism that early encouragement of that provoked). Indian Ocean trade suffered from the resurgence of piracy and the complete isolation of Egypt in the early 2nd Century. Though still a center of Hinduism, Kalinga faced difficulty in expanding its reach further, as other organized religions already came into existance and begun to effectively compete against Hinduism; an exception was in the comparatively-backwards Africa, though even then, Egypt was (officially) denied to the Hinduist missonaries; another problem lie in the increasing autonomy and syncretization; the Bantu Hinduism, for instance, had little, except for some of the basics, in common with the original version. Kalinga's fleet was powerful, but tragically, its creators had overestimated its power. As for Khmeria, it increasingly distanced itself from Kalinga - there wasn't any real falling-out, but Kalingan and Khmer interests were simply too different, and neither side wanted to jeopardize its position in its own respective influence sphere by assisting the other to any real degree (the old example of Khmer Persian Gulf expedition had transformed from a symbol of friendship into a perfect argument against it - for while the Khmers were burning Isfahan, the Rising Sunites were burning Vyadhapura...). And lastly, though officially equality and social mobility were still encouraged, they gradually became less practicable; in the words of some of the more dogmatic Hindu preachers, Kalinga was corrupted by gold, which gave ascendance to a powerful middle class, which defended its admittedly hard-won status with zeal. The rich got richer, the poor got poorer, and the latter got increasingly unhappy about it. New cults arose, such as Nevasanghism - a far more militant, active, "democratic" (i.e. appealing to the masses) version of the original. Still, it failed to get a large following in Kalinga itself...
Still, during the 2nd Century Kalinga ruled supreme in the Indian Ocean, and the underlying weaknesses remained hidden. The trade network expanded, and the conquest of Africa gradually moved along, despite logistical problems; by 180 AD, the Cushans were mostly crushed, and the Malawi Bantus were forced to submit or flee; still, the Kalingan conquest was comparatively unbrutal, in part due to missionary efforts. Also at the time Israel fell apart, and the Kalingans quickly secured the southern coast and the key cities there. All this was soemthing of a preparation for the attack on Egypt; in fact, it was planned long ago, and a "diplomatic" expedition occured back in 156 AD, but the Kalingans were surprised by the Egyptian resolve and turned back after a while. In 186 AD, the Kalingans had finally become fed up with the Egyptian stubborness; when the Kalingan fleet at the southern end of the Sile Canal was refused and fired at by coastal archers, they had decided to launch an all-out invasion. Kalingan marines (modelled on the Khmer Imperial Marines) secured the Sile Canal after surprisingly fierce fighting, while another Kalingan army crossed the border from Kalingan Cush into the Egyptian one. At the other end of the Nile, the Kalingans quickly dispersed the Egyptian fleet and soon were at the gates of Akam, the old capital. The Nile Delta was secured quickly. Ramses IV, however, refused to surrender, and ordered a general levy of the Egyptian male population. However, the Nubians were unwilling to fight for Egypt and rose up in response, allying with Kalinga; this allowed a swift southern advance. But Ramses' measure didn't backfire in the north - the Kalingans were halted in the great battle at Heracleopolis (they technically won it, but suffered unacceptable casualties), and had to deal with an uprising behind their lines. Meanwhile, the Kalingo-Nubian force had outran its supply routes and was defeated by Ramses IV himself at Idfu. These victories however cost Egypt even more than they cost the Kalingans, and so in 191 AD the offensive operations were resumed. Ramses IV, who by then had moved northwards with many troops, confronted the Kalingans in the decisive battle at Menat Khufu. The Egyptian army outnumbered the Kalingans, though not by all that much (the Kalingans too had been getting reinforcements), and it was entirely cut down, with only a few fleeing fast enough to survive. Ramses IV did not flee fast enough; or rather, he fled in the opposite direction, flew in his chariot to a glorious and senseless death. He had no son.
As for his brother Sesostris, he didn't seem particularily interested in taking power, and in any case was considered a non-entity by the key Egyptian officials. In the best traditions of the Lucan invasion, those officials formed a provisional government - first in Thebes, then, after the fall of nearby Luxor, in Athribis. Fortunately, the Kalingans were also tired and had to deal with continued popular uprisings behind their lines. That gave the provisional government some time to organize and to contact Carthage. Fearing that the Kalingans would not be contented by simple reopening to trade, the government instead offered that to Carthage. The Carthaginians, who in any case were VERY alarmed by the Kalingan presence in the Mediterranean, had quickly allied with Egypt. The Sile War was now trully on.
Naturally, the first battle occured at the sea, at the mouth of the Nile. The Carthaginians had commited a huge fleet, but quantity wasn't their only advantage. Their commander, Mago of Didonia, was a military genius. More importantly, their ships were built for the Transpoenic-Mediterranean Seas, while the Kalingan ships were ones of Indian Ocean; likewise, the Carthaginians were more experienced in fighting in the more narrow Mediterranean, as opposed to the wide open areas of the Indian Ocean; thus, they were worse at maneuver and better at boarding action, and as their numbers and Kalingan arrogance allowed the Punic admiral to pin the Kalingans down at the coast, it was clear that the Carthaginian experience proved more valuable. Still, the Kalingans sold their naval supremacy dearly; though their break-out attempt had failed and their reinforcement fleet was driven off by a succesful blocking action, they inflicted horrific damage on the Carthaginians, especially by their use of incendiary arrows. In the end, the Kalingan ships were all sunk, burned or captured, except for the aforementioned reinforcements that fell back to the Sile Canal. The Kalingas in the Nile Delta braced themselves, but the Carthaginians didn't attack them yet; instead, they sailed to Byblos and there meddled in the confusing Phoenician politics. On the next day, Ahiram III was declared King of Phoenicia (which was previously a mercantile oligarchic republic), and himself then declared Punic solidarity. Phoenicia allied with Carthage, allowed its fleet to restock in its ports and quickly invaded Sinai. Carthaginians then attacked the Sile Canal; there, some trully brutal fighting ensued as the Kalingan ships and land defenders fought back against the seemingly-suicidal Carthaginian attack; but as it was supported by Phoenicians and Carthaginian Stormtroopers that helped secure the Canal, the Kalingans were forced to fall back under an endless barrage of incendiary arrows and Byblos fire. The Kalingans were soon expelled from the Mediterranean. As for Egypt, the Upper Egyptian Kalingan force was definitely doomed; hemmed in between the rebuilt Egyptian army and the Carthaginians that had severed their supply routes, the Kalingans fell back, losing battle after battle, city after city. Still, it was a drawn-out campaign; the Kalingan forces inflicted large casualties on their enemies, and prolonged the fighting for long, winning time for the forces in Nubia. These had chased the Egyptian provisional government further north, capturing some of it at Athribis. In the meantime, the aforementioned Sesostris unexpectedly made quite a name for himself, becoming Egypt's greatest war hero and one of the foremost commanders; he was eventually crowned in the recaptured Akam, and reconfirmed the alliance with Carthage. Military reorganization took place, the last Kalingan garrison surrendered at Heliopolis and so in 205 AD the Carthaginian, Phoenician and Egyptian forces went in a new offensive southwards. The battle at Caene, en route to Luxor, was a draw; the Kalingans retreated, but later struck back with reinforcements in the Second Battle of Caene, and threw the attackers back; the war here thus bogged down. Meanwhile, the Carthaginian fleet advanced into the Red Sea, attacking Kalingan Cush and surprising the coastal garrisons. Belatedly, the Kalingan fleet reacted; and another great naval battle occured at Gwardafay. This time, the Kalingans were both more numerous (though barely) and in their natural element; but Mago had gained considerable experience of their ways of fighting, and also made good use of fireships. The battle was long and brutal, and in the end, the Carthaginian fleet's remnants fled; but the Kalingan casualties were great, allowing both sides to claim victory. And in the meantime, another naval battle raged in the east...
In the end of the 1st Century AD and in the wake of the Fourth Transpoenic War, the whole region was in ruins. The Dacian-Illyrian Empire and Carthaginian Italy were particularily devastated, but other regions were often not better off at all, if only because all sides made liberal use of scorched earth tactics during the Fourth Transpoenic War. The regional trade was nearly crippled by war and piracy. Still, recovery occured; though very slow at times, it still was inevitable. And as both cities and trade networks were rebuilt, the Carthaginians celebrated victory; for what had seemed a pyrrhic victory had transformed, in the eyes of the new, triumphant generation, into a decisive and succesful war; and indeed, the cycle of Transpoenic Wars was over, and the Transpoenic Sea was transformed into a Carthaginian lake at last. Trade was picking up, administrative reforms made the running of the empire easier, and the Carthaginian fleet was strenghthened and rebuilt. It soon begun projecting power well outside of the Transpoenic basin; in particular, a 131 AD expedition had succesfully circumnavigated Africa, though this was of little practical utility due to the distances involved. It also quite ironic that later in the century, the Carthaginians had begun planning an expedition against their former Egyptian allies, to force them to open up to trade again (Egypt's high tariffs transformed into complete isolation - in theory at least - under the reign of Ramses IV), and in particular to allow them passage through the Sile Canal; however, they were preempted by the Kalingans, that launched their own expedition in 186 AD. What followed was the Sile War, of which more is told later. Here, it would be sufficient to say that after Ramses IV's death, the new Egyptian government decided to revive the alliance with Carthage, fearing Kalingan conquest; a gruelling war ensued and spread, but in the end, in 212 AD, the Carthaginians had won and threw the Kalingans out of the Mediterranean Sea. However, THAT victory was trully pyrrhic - the Carthaginian fleet was decimated in the fighting, and the economy, only recently recovered to pre-FTW levels, was badly overstrained the drawn-out campaigns involved, especially as they were combined with a Cimbrian uprising and Berber raids (or, rather, to the response to both). When in 213 AD the long-reigning Emperor Hannibal Barcelona III, who, after a brief democratic/councillar interlude, concentrated much power directly in his hands and proclaimed himself a living god (initiating a new stage in the development of the Carthaginian Empire Cult), had finally died, the ravens begun to gather.
The reinvigoration of Gaul under the new Aemelid dynasty, just to the north from Carthage's Gaelic provinces, was already described; now we must mention the 2nd Century in Dacia's history, the century of recovery, the century of strife. Devastated and weakened by the defeat in the Third Transpoenic War and by the Hunnic invasion, the DIE did benefit from that latter event and the social instability that occured in its wake, for it had trully brought Dacia and Illyria together, causing unprecedented, lingering national unity; it must also be observed that the destruction of virtually all the major cities apart from Burebistatuza had preconditioned the comparative easiness in the centralization of the realm, as in the early Recovery phase, at least, Dacia remained quite monopolar and what resistance WAS mounted against Burebistatuza's leadership happened to be weak, uncoordinated and utterly futile. However, that is about all the silver lining one could find; the country was still in ruins, and its recovery was interrupted in the 120s by Slavic and Germannic invasions across the poorly-guarded northern border. In a controversial decision, Leo III the Wise, who was looking for ways to replenish the badly-diminished Dacian manpower, had agreed to let them settle in the Dacian lands in exchange for pledging allegience to its rulers; as wide territores were yet to be resettled, there was plenty of place to placate the barbarians with. Leo III did not get his epithet for nothing, ofcourse; a few generations later, the new settlers were integrated into Dacia politically, socially and culturally; though retaining some tribal priveleges and many elements of their old cultures, they became in many regards "more Dacian than the Dacians themselves", and it was from a mixed Daco-Slavic marriage that Chief Minister Velisar came. Under Leo III's less-than-wise descendants, Velisar took over many matters of state, and presided over the revival of Dacian commerce, developing Illyria, building new cities and constructing a grand Dacian fleet. Velisar died in 188 AD, but DIE continued to look to the sea; and there, it saw naval and commercial predominance of Carthage. A predominance that was shaken by the Sile War... As for the Gauls, they had already satisfied their expansionism in the east, and attained a victory of some sort in the north; it was only natural that Dumnorix Gaelateaus I should now look to the south, where Gaul was denied a Transpoenic coastline, despite ancient claims to it; the wealthy Gaelic merchants looked in the same direction, seeking to join the grand trade network of the Transpoenic-Mediterranean, and promised to help finance a purchase or a war. The purchase proposal was notoriously rejected by Carthage... Lastly, it is noteworthy that Gaul, having received a certain influx of Roman refugees over the times and undergone a certain Latin cultural influence (as evidenced by the Gaelic names and the evolution of their language; the Gauls even used a Latin-like alphabet since the days of Sativoleous, and their state language was, by the 3rd Century, an eerie mix of Latin and Gaelic, though the latter elements still were far prevalent in the provinces); and the Aemelids, despite rejecting the ideals of republicanism, still did increasingly propagate the ideal of Aurelaeni as a "Second Rome"; inspired by the famous ballad about the Roman general Julius Caeser, Gaelateaus was particularily enthusiastic about this Roman ideology, and thus saw avenging Rome and fighting Carthage as his duty.
As for Luca, more shall be mentioned about it later; but having allied with Kalinga in the Sile War and suffered for it, the Lucans were further outraged - and frightened - by increasing Carthaginian ties with old Phoenicia. Due to political instability and the Parhaen threat on its eastern border, Luca was unable to properly participate in the new anti-Punic coalition, but its contributions still were quite significant, especially on the diplomatic front; combined Lucan and Dacian diplomatic pressure forced Hellas to accept grudging neutrality in the war, while a Lucan-incited crisis in Byblos (featuring an undeclared, sporadic civil war and lots of assassinations and intrigues) resulted in the rise to power of a new dynasty, that of Jerubal I; the new ruler was more preoccupied with internal affairs, and thus preffered to retain neutrality in the Fourth Transpoenic War.
That war begun in 218; two years earlier, the Cimbrian warlord Marbod, who united most Cimbrian tribes and other Germannics that moved over from Frankreich and even points east during the great Germannic southwards migration (the same one that gave Dacia its Germannic segment) and led them to one last war against the Carthaginians (during which he surprised the enemy by the surprisingly good organization and disciplinne of his troops, before finally being forced back by a fresh influx of Carthaginian forces), fought his desperate last stand at his Alpine stronghold of Kriegstadt, near the Wodenhard Pass. Even though all seemed bleak, as the Carthaginians kept coming in a never-ending black stream, a sudden rear attack by more Germannic troops and Gaelic "mercenaries" turned the battle into a rout, as the Carthaginian army was trapped in the narrow pass and subsequently slaughtered. The Cimbrians soon struck back and not only retook most of their country, but even begun advancing into Italy. Though the Carthaginians had prevented a breakthrough, this unexpected stroke of luck inspired Gaelateaus to sped up his preparations. In 218, Gaul officially allied with the Marbod, and the Sol Dragonii crossed the Garonne, soon securing Gaelic Empire's first Transpoenic port, Argel [9]. Considerable gains were made, and virtually all the Carthaginian territory north of Pyrenees was captured with only minor fighting; however, soon after that, the Gaelic offensive had stalled, despite attempts to invade Iberia; the vanguard of one invasion force was repulsed at the Carthaginian fortress of Andorra, while a few years later, after crossing the Pyrenees in the west with the help from the native Celtiberians, the Gaelic army was betrayed and hemmed in between Carthaginians and Celtiberians. None survived, not even Prinx Daedaelus; the Carthaginians took no prisoners. This was, ofcourse, the tragic Battle of Roncevallus... The Carthaginians were pushed out from former western Cimberland with more success (the Cimbrians had abandoned those lands long ago and now promised them to the Gauls), but the Gaelic siege of Didonia was unsuccesful due to Carthaginian naval supply system; that siege eventually had to be abandoned.
Meanwhile, however, the rebuilt Dacian fleet carried the day in the Battle of Rizuta, defeating the weakened enemy fleet and launching an amphibious invasion of Italy. Landing all over the eastern coast, the Dacians encountered fierce Punic resistance, but at the same time were welcomed by the Etruscans and Greeks, both being quite annoyed at the Carthaginian Poenification policies. Marbod also joined the invasion, and combined Dacian, Etruscan and Cimbrian forces had defeated the Carthaginians at Felegaria, soon reaching the shores of the Ligurian Sea. Despite the Carthaginian land victories at Matera and Irpino that denied the invaders south Italy, and the defeat of the Dacian invasion of the thoroughly-Poenicized Sicily, Carthaginian reign in Italy soon collapsed; rebellions spread, and garrisons were expelled. Still, Emperor Naples II refused to acknowledge defeat, and rejected the peace terms that demanded, amongst other things, the recreation of the city-state of Rome (to be granted to the descendants of the Romans that had settled in Gaul). The Carthaginians fought on for another decade, with skirmishes, failed counterattacks and succesful defenses; gradually, however, they were forced back in Italy, retreating into Calabria. On the sea, the Gaelic fleet was defeated at Gades and again at Argel (where the would-be "Transpoenic Fleet" was destroyed), but then a large Carthaginian fleet was destroyed by the Dacians at Syracuse, from where the Dacians went on to once more, as in the Fourth Transpoenic War, attack the vital Carthaginian communication routes and raid North Africa itself. Dissent grew, economy begun to shake and with the death of Naples II, his pro-peace brother Gisco Hannibal IV immediately started peace negotiations, lest Carthage again undergo such economic damage as was suffered in the previous war. The eventual Treaty of Didonia acknowledged the Carthaginian defeat, but at the same time minimalized it; though all lands north of the Pyrenees were conceded to Gaul, these underdevelopped, untenable territories never were particularily wealthy; all claims to Cimberland were abandoned as well, ofcourse, but Didonia and the surrounding territories were retained. Even in Italy, several Carthaginian possessions were retained - Calabria, Liguria and Pisae, plus some other western swathes, controversially including the ruins of Rome, which however was now rebuilt as a Carthaginian city of Italcart (the strategic position was too good not to use). In Italy's north, independent Etruscan city states arose, though not even the diplomatic genius of Gisco Hannibal could prevent the formation of the Padanian League and its alliance with Dacia. And lastly, considerable portions of eastern Italy went over to Dacia.
What was mostly hurt here was Carthage's pride; in truth, it retained all the key strategic positions, and though the Gauls now gained an access to the Transpoenic Sea, it remained firmly in control of Carthage's merchants and sailors, especially as the fleet underwent a major modernization. The collapse of Carthage's influence in the Mediterranean caused by this war's defeat was a more serious consequence, but both it and the clear impossibility of expansion in Europe proved to be beneficial: Carthage once more turned to the south and the west, where great success was achieved. After the 241 AD peaceful annexation of Garamantes, the Carthaginians built up a considerable "fleet" of the "ships of the desert" - the Imperial Camelry advanced southwards, securing key oases and with them - the nascent trans-Saharan trade routes. Also, diplomatic contact was established with the Mande peoples; however, by then the Carthaginians had overstretched themselves too far, and conquest plans had to be aborted. Instead, the Carthaginians consolidated their gains from the Berber Wars, and instead restarted their naval operations. Several colonies and trade outposts in West Africa were established, and trade ties with the Mande kingdom of Wagadou. Though in late 3rd-early 4th Centuries Carthage saw some political and social instability that paralyzed it for a while, even then Carthaginian merchants and explorers wandered further and further, again circumnavigating Africa in 295. Permanent trade outposts were established as far south as the Congo, though contact with those southern outposts was very unreliable. And in the late 4th Century, a Carthaginian expedition to the west had discovered some new, uncharted island chain - with an advanced and numerous population (by comparison with other people that lived in Atlantic islands). Who knows what might come out of that...
Italy's Padanian League proved quite unstable, with rebellions and wars being quite widespread due to the mixed ethnic stock (Germannics, Greeks, Etruscans, Samnites and Latins alike could be found in its cities) and the essentially-fragile state of that very loose coalition. Meanwhile, to the north, the Kingdom of Cimberland emerged under distant relativse of Marbod and begun to increasingly clash with Dacia and Padania; Gaelic support for Solist (after 278) Cimberland caused the Gaelo-Dacian alliance to fall apart, though open warfare was avoided until 365 when Konig Alarich II used Padania's final degeneration into chaos to invade northern Italy, with support from several Etruscan city states and factions. In the ensuing Padanian War, Dacians intervenned on the side of Aquilea and Arretium, the two city-states that headed the anti-Cimbrian coalition, but as the Cimbrians received Gaelic assistance (in the form of advisors, weapons, siege specialists and funds, and later on Gaelic troops), Arretium was razed, and most of Padania surrendered; Daco-Aquilean forces were defeated at Ticinum in 374 and at Tarvisium in 376. Though Aquilea lingered on and became a semi-autonomous part of Dacia, the Cimbrians besieged it again in 385, and eventually took it in a bloody street battle. Dacia had to withdraw its claims from Aquilea, but retained its direct Italian holdings; this war had illustrated the decay of Dacian land army since the 3rd Century's triumphs. Cimberland now became a regional power in its own right; as the capital was moved to the more central location of Mantua, an unique Germanno-Etruscan civilization begun to emerge, though the Konig had also inherited Padania's ethnic and interurban problems not easily resolved.
The DIE after the Fourth Transpoenic War continued to recover, and soon enough became the leading trade power in the Mediterranean, as Egypt, though opened up, had very bad relations with both Carthage and Kalinga. Dacian merchants - and diplomats - quickly rose to great prominence in Egypt, displacing Carthaginian ones, and some ventured further still - the great Dacian traveller Fudegista took part in a Hong Kee diplomatic mission in Nihon, though ofcourse his role wasn't terribly significant. Aside from that, DIE had from the start of the 2nd Century contributed to the downfall of the Hunnish Empire. After the death of Shilla in 102, and his son Bleda in 137, the Hunnish Empire, once seemingly poised to overrun Eastern Europe, fell into dynastic and tribal strife, though still managing to launch occassional raids against its neighbours, expanding at Slavic expense and occassionally fighting their way over the Nistru, though eventually Dacian fortifications there grew too powerful to be cracked. As the situation detiriorated, the tables were turned; Lucans and Dacians begun raiding back and capturing border territories, and in 235 knyaz Shek had united the surviving East Slavic tribes into a Dacian-backed state of Slavania, which soon mounted an invasion of key western Hunnish lands. That invasion was assisted by the Dacians, who had advanced beyond the Dnieper, and the Lucans, who recaptured Bosporan. The Huns went down fighting; their last ruler, Ardapa, had succeeded in rallying them and even scoring several victories against the invaders, but after his death the Huns, exhausted from the fighting, retreated to the Itil and reverted to barbarism. But even as the Dacian colonization of the fertile Dnieper valley begun, while Slavanians and the Mordvins begun fighting in the north, a new steppe people was en route to fill in the power vacuum - the Bulghars. They assimilated the broken Huns, and built a new civilization on the Itil, creating the Onoghur Empire. Though somewhat more peaceful and sedentary, the Onoghur Bulghars soon gave the Dacians a rude awakening - in 319 AD, a well-trained, combined-arms army routed the Dacians on the Tanais[10]. Having secured Tanais as well as Itil, the Bulghars had built a well-ordered empire, considerably influenced by the Parhaen and perhaps Chinese bureaucracy. It remains unclear whether they would remain content with their present gains or seek to conquer more, but at present, the latter option seems more likely: Bulghar raids already reached the Dnieper on several occassions...
Lastly, Hellas, surrounded by a (perceivedly, but that perception wasn't far from truth) hostile world, grew paranoid, entrenched and xenophobic. Solism was particularily repressed. The country's increasing isolation caused some revolts, especially in the mercantile Athens, but the rebels were, ofcourse, crushed and the cities razed (later rebuilt and settled by loyal people). Meanwhile, a Hellenic nationalism grew and was greatly encouraged by the state; the defeat of the rebels helped root out regionalism and polisism, and along with them regional cults. The nationalist, absolutist ideology soon influenced religion, and by the 3rd Century, with state backing, a new religion arose - Hellenism, a monotheistic religion based around a deification/personification of Hellas - Hellena. The religion also adapted elements similar to those of the "Punic Imperial" ethics. Under this banner, further centralization took place, and Hellas became a trully absolute monarchy. In foreign policies, all the while, the Hellenes were and still are waiting for opportunities, especially opportunities to get back at the Lucans. Perhaps Hellas will simply linger on as now, an isolated, hated state in the middle of the Mediterranean; perhaps it will be destroyed by its neighbours; but perhaps, it will revive the ancient Spartan Empire and become hegemon of the Eastern Mediterranean...
Indian Ocean[6]:
With the partition of Sinhala, the destruction of Bactrasha, the humbling of Israel and the defeat of the Sino-Rising Sunite (i.e. Nihonese) invasion of Khmeria (a key ally, after all), it seemed that a Kalingan golden age was at hand. Indeed, was it not in control over the Indian Ocean trade? Was it not on the forefront of technologic development? Was it not a religious and cultural center of the civilized world? Was its fleet not the largest in the world? Was it not ruled by the most just laws and the wisest rulers? Was it not allied with the only nation that could be considered its equal - Khmeria? Yet everything was not quite as it seemed... Kalinga was indeed on the top now, but that meant that it soon lost much of the stimulus for further progress, and instead begun to stagnate (although that doesn't mean that technological progress grounded to a halt - rather, it slowed down, plus the Kalingan government grew increasingly sceptical of new technologies, due to the unprecedented rise of charlatanism that early encouragement of that provoked). Indian Ocean trade suffered from the resurgence of piracy and the complete isolation of Egypt in the early 2nd Century. Though still a center of Hinduism, Kalinga faced difficulty in expanding its reach further, as other organized religions already came into existance and begun to effectively compete against Hinduism; an exception was in the comparatively-backwards Africa, though even then, Egypt was (officially) denied to the Hinduist missonaries; another problem lie in the increasing autonomy and syncretization; the Bantu Hinduism, for instance, had little, except for some of the basics, in common with the original version. Kalinga's fleet was powerful, but tragically, its creators had overestimated its power. As for Khmeria, it increasingly distanced itself from Kalinga - there wasn't any real falling-out, but Kalingan and Khmer interests were simply too different, and neither side wanted to jeopardize its position in its own respective influence sphere by assisting the other to any real degree (the old example of Khmer Persian Gulf expedition had transformed from a symbol of friendship into a perfect argument against it - for while the Khmers were burning Isfahan, the Rising Sunites were burning Vyadhapura...). And lastly, though officially equality and social mobility were still encouraged, they gradually became less practicable; in the words of some of the more dogmatic Hindu preachers, Kalinga was corrupted by gold, which gave ascendance to a powerful middle class, which defended its admittedly hard-won status with zeal. The rich got richer, the poor got poorer, and the latter got increasingly unhappy about it. New cults arose, such as Nevasanghism - a far more militant, active, "democratic" (i.e. appealing to the masses) version of the original. Still, it failed to get a large following in Kalinga itself...
Still, during the 2nd Century Kalinga ruled supreme in the Indian Ocean, and the underlying weaknesses remained hidden. The trade network expanded, and the conquest of Africa gradually moved along, despite logistical problems; by 180 AD, the Cushans were mostly crushed, and the Malawi Bantus were forced to submit or flee; still, the Kalingan conquest was comparatively unbrutal, in part due to missionary efforts. Also at the time Israel fell apart, and the Kalingans quickly secured the southern coast and the key cities there. All this was soemthing of a preparation for the attack on Egypt; in fact, it was planned long ago, and a "diplomatic" expedition occured back in 156 AD, but the Kalingans were surprised by the Egyptian resolve and turned back after a while. In 186 AD, the Kalingans had finally become fed up with the Egyptian stubborness; when the Kalingan fleet at the southern end of the Sile Canal was refused and fired at by coastal archers, they had decided to launch an all-out invasion. Kalingan marines (modelled on the Khmer Imperial Marines) secured the Sile Canal after surprisingly fierce fighting, while another Kalingan army crossed the border from Kalingan Cush into the Egyptian one. At the other end of the Nile, the Kalingans quickly dispersed the Egyptian fleet and soon were at the gates of Akam, the old capital. The Nile Delta was secured quickly. Ramses IV, however, refused to surrender, and ordered a general levy of the Egyptian male population. However, the Nubians were unwilling to fight for Egypt and rose up in response, allying with Kalinga; this allowed a swift southern advance. But Ramses' measure didn't backfire in the north - the Kalingans were halted in the great battle at Heracleopolis (they technically won it, but suffered unacceptable casualties), and had to deal with an uprising behind their lines. Meanwhile, the Kalingo-Nubian force had outran its supply routes and was defeated by Ramses IV himself at Idfu. These victories however cost Egypt even more than they cost the Kalingans, and so in 191 AD the offensive operations were resumed. Ramses IV, who by then had moved northwards with many troops, confronted the Kalingans in the decisive battle at Menat Khufu. The Egyptian army outnumbered the Kalingans, though not by all that much (the Kalingans too had been getting reinforcements), and it was entirely cut down, with only a few fleeing fast enough to survive. Ramses IV did not flee fast enough; or rather, he fled in the opposite direction, flew in his chariot to a glorious and senseless death. He had no son.
As for his brother Sesostris, he didn't seem particularily interested in taking power, and in any case was considered a non-entity by the key Egyptian officials. In the best traditions of the Lucan invasion, those officials formed a provisional government - first in Thebes, then, after the fall of nearby Luxor, in Athribis. Fortunately, the Kalingans were also tired and had to deal with continued popular uprisings behind their lines. That gave the provisional government some time to organize and to contact Carthage. Fearing that the Kalingans would not be contented by simple reopening to trade, the government instead offered that to Carthage. The Carthaginians, who in any case were VERY alarmed by the Kalingan presence in the Mediterranean, had quickly allied with Egypt. The Sile War was now trully on.
Naturally, the first battle occured at the sea, at the mouth of the Nile. The Carthaginians had commited a huge fleet, but quantity wasn't their only advantage. Their commander, Mago of Didonia, was a military genius. More importantly, their ships were built for the Transpoenic-Mediterranean Seas, while the Kalingan ships were ones of Indian Ocean; likewise, the Carthaginians were more experienced in fighting in the more narrow Mediterranean, as opposed to the wide open areas of the Indian Ocean; thus, they were worse at maneuver and better at boarding action, and as their numbers and Kalingan arrogance allowed the Punic admiral to pin the Kalingans down at the coast, it was clear that the Carthaginian experience proved more valuable. Still, the Kalingans sold their naval supremacy dearly; though their break-out attempt had failed and their reinforcement fleet was driven off by a succesful blocking action, they inflicted horrific damage on the Carthaginians, especially by their use of incendiary arrows. In the end, the Kalingan ships were all sunk, burned or captured, except for the aforementioned reinforcements that fell back to the Sile Canal. The Kalingas in the Nile Delta braced themselves, but the Carthaginians didn't attack them yet; instead, they sailed to Byblos and there meddled in the confusing Phoenician politics. On the next day, Ahiram III was declared King of Phoenicia (which was previously a mercantile oligarchic republic), and himself then declared Punic solidarity. Phoenicia allied with Carthage, allowed its fleet to restock in its ports and quickly invaded Sinai. Carthaginians then attacked the Sile Canal; there, some trully brutal fighting ensued as the Kalingan ships and land defenders fought back against the seemingly-suicidal Carthaginian attack; but as it was supported by Phoenicians and Carthaginian Stormtroopers that helped secure the Canal, the Kalingans were forced to fall back under an endless barrage of incendiary arrows and Byblos fire. The Kalingans were soon expelled from the Mediterranean. As for Egypt, the Upper Egyptian Kalingan force was definitely doomed; hemmed in between the rebuilt Egyptian army and the Carthaginians that had severed their supply routes, the Kalingans fell back, losing battle after battle, city after city. Still, it was a drawn-out campaign; the Kalingan forces inflicted large casualties on their enemies, and prolonged the fighting for long, winning time for the forces in Nubia. These had chased the Egyptian provisional government further north, capturing some of it at Athribis. In the meantime, the aforementioned Sesostris unexpectedly made quite a name for himself, becoming Egypt's greatest war hero and one of the foremost commanders; he was eventually crowned in the recaptured Akam, and reconfirmed the alliance with Carthage. Military reorganization took place, the last Kalingan garrison surrendered at Heliopolis and so in 205 AD the Carthaginian, Phoenician and Egyptian forces went in a new offensive southwards. The battle at Caene, en route to Luxor, was a draw; the Kalingans retreated, but later struck back with reinforcements in the Second Battle of Caene, and threw the attackers back; the war here thus bogged down. Meanwhile, the Carthaginian fleet advanced into the Red Sea, attacking Kalingan Cush and surprising the coastal garrisons. Belatedly, the Kalingan fleet reacted; and another great naval battle occured at Gwardafay. This time, the Kalingans were both more numerous (though barely) and in their natural element; but Mago had gained considerable experience of their ways of fighting, and also made good use of fireships. The battle was long and brutal, and in the end, the Carthaginian fleet's remnants fled; but the Kalingan casualties were great, allowing both sides to claim victory. And in the meantime, another naval battle raged in the east...
das
Regeneration In Process
Parhae had emerged as a surprisingly strong empire in the wake of the Bactrashan collapse. Already under Taraxes, its size was quickly doubled and remarkable military and bureaucratic efficiency was achieved. Taraxes' successors not only retained his achievements, but also brought Parhae closer together through centralization-aimed administrative reforms, and at the same time expanded, chiefly at the expense of the Charatian League, which was decisively defeated at Dandapur in 153 AD, and later lost Mandalaputra, disintegrating into separate principalities. Having taken over much of the southern half of Charatia, the Parhaens eventually turned to the west. In the very late 2nd Century, for instance, Central Arabia was subdued, in name at least, after a series of campaigns during which good use was made of Parhae's famous cavalry and camelry. Encouraged by their successes, the Parhaens now increasingly clashed with Kalinga, if only because the Kalingans begun propping up the buffer Charatian statelets, fearing that Parhae might become a new Bactrasha. The Parhaens, in turn, feared that the Kalingans will try and destroy them; and the events in Egypt only worsened those fears... Similarily, the Parhaens increasingly clashed with Luca - a historical enemy that had greatly contributed to the fall of the first Parhae, not to mention a natural, geographic enemy of the second one. The Lucans were building up their military, and clearly they were up to something... As both Luca and Kalinga were enemies of Carthage (Luca jumped into the Sile War in 200 AD, but too late to save the Kalingan fleet), it was only natural that Parhae should ally with it. And so it did; Parhaen troops and Bedouin vassal tribes overran most of Kalinga's Arabian possessions, another Parhaen army occupied the Charatian buffer states, and the main Parhaen army attacked Luca. Although that army was defeated at Melitene early on, the Parhaens soon regained their balance and secured Mesopatamia, skillfully advancing to the Black Sea from there. The Lucans were defeated at Trapezus. Meanwhile, the Lucan fleet was defeated by the Carthago-Hellene one at Thera. As the Kalingans were clearly too busy to help them, the Lucans decided to cut their losses; they dropped out of the war, ceding Caucasian and Mesopatamian territories to the Parhaens in exchange for a monetary compensation; Hellas had to content with itself with Euboea (naturally, its initial demands were far more ambitious, but neither Carthage nor Parhae wanted to fight on with Luca, and the Greeks didn't feel ready to fight the Lucans one-on-one). So the Parhaens were soon capable to turn around and face Kalinga; they defeated a Kalingan invasion force at Sharak, and launched a naval attack of their own. That one was however defeated in the Battle of Hasab, rather anticlimatically. But the Sile War had overstretched the Kalingan naval resources badly, which was especially noticeable with the loss of the Mediterranean fleet. At the same time, piracy rose even more than before, as did privateering. Kalinga was shocked by its defeats, and at the same time faced with an incoming economic crisis.
And while all that occured, the Nevasanghists rose up. Not in India - they failed to gain a significant following there. Instead, they rose in Madagascar, or Dukunnugeya, which had by then become something of a second Sinhala; while the home island was being increasingly colonized and assimilated, the more distant Dukunnugeya was under lesser Kalingan influence... and easier to detach from the empire, as the Nevasanghists, who had many converts amongst the poorer settlers of Dukunnugeya. Merged with Sinhalese separatism, the Nevasanghists soon befriended the local Sinhalese elite as well, and as the Kalingan Empire seemed to be on the brink of collapse, the banner of revolt was raised, led by one of the most radical Nevasanghist leaders, Devatissa. As the Kalingans had rather neglected Madagascar of late, the revolt encountered both support from most of the populace (even many of the Kalingan colonists, who ofcourse were scarcely Kalingan at all, being born on Madagascar) and rather weak, half-hearted resistance. While the Kalingans were fighting in the north, the Kingdom of Dukunnugeya was established under Mahetissa's nephew Rajanampiya, who built up a fairly strong fleet and secured several nearly Kalingan colonies, especially African ones (where chaos reigned in the wake of the loss of Madagascar and the rise of piracy). The Kalingans mounted a very weak (due to delayed reports, the Kalingans considered the rebels to be an ordinary ill-organized Sinhalese mob, like the previous ones, and also were unable to commit any more serious forces there) punitive expedition in 207; it was easily defeated, but the Kalingans didn't particularily care. Far worse news were coming; the Carthaginian-led armies had finally broken the Kalingans at Thebes, and now advanced up along the Nile. At least the Carthaginians that had landed in Cush were defeated, and their fleet was again defeated at Cape Ra. Sadly, the Kalingans couldn't allow themselves the luxury of chasing the Carthaginians beyond the Sile Canal, and the situation remained generally grim, especially as Sampa was still in shock, with scapegoatings, intrigues and assassinations. In the countryside, dissent grew, but not too much; in the cities, which depended on sea trade, there was public outrage, often spilling out into genuine uprisings. After the death of Kavi III - probably by poisoning, as his epithet of "the Cruel" was not an affectionate one, especially in Kalinga - his successor Ashoka II decided to seek a peace with "honour" - restoring status quo belle ante, but opening up the Sile Canal, and also recognizing the Parhaen gains (apart from those in southern Arabia - the Kalingan lands were duly returned). Just as exhausted, Kalinga's enemies accepted peace.
After the peace, a very strange time came in Kalinga; after the early death of Ashoka II in a hunting accident, the rather mediocre, easily-influenced Narasimha I became king. Despite cries for reform, the Kalingan political elite proved somehow detached from reality, intending to rule on as if nothing had changed. The Kalingan navy was built up again and used in the never-ending wars with the pirates, who had used the chaos to set up lots of bases, sometimes capturing entire colonial cities or island chains, and developed a good system of hideouts. Though not a match for the Kalingan navy even in its weakened state, the pirates were simply too many to hunt down efficiently, and to make things worse some of them had apparently developed quite good coordination, sometimes eliminating the smaller Kalingan squadrons in well-planned ambushes. Thus the Pirate Wars took over two decades, and even after that, some pirate nests remained. At the same time, several attempts were made to reconquer Dukunnugeya; but the Dukunnugeyans had developed a pretty good fleet of their own, having "somehow" acquired Byblos fire, and used underhanded tactics to drive off attack after attack; on those occassions when the Kalingans did land, they found themselves unable to conquer Dukunnugeya for good due to its difficult terrain and the unconventional tactics of its defenders. Eventually the Kalingans ran out of supplies and had to withdraw. Although Zanzibar and some other islands had been recaptured, Dukunnugeya itself remained impregnable, perhaps because the Kalingans never did concentrate particularily strong forces against it (as that still would've been an overkill unacceptable in those dangerous times).
In 276, Narasimha I died, and a civil war soon followed - the new successor, Bhoj I, had great reform plans, and from the start rather unwisely revealed his plans to the courtiers and the advisors, who quickly concluded that he was mad. After several failed assassination attempts (even as Narasimha was on the deathbed), they advised Bhoj to hide in Mumbai, for his own safety. With him out of the way, Kavi IV, another puppet, was crowned instead. Outraged, Bhoj soon reminded the courtiers that they had forgotten a crucial detail - he had lots of supporters in the army, and the Dravidians too liked him greatly. Both the military and the Dravidians thus rose up in his support, and Bhoj officially declared Mumbai his capital - the capital of a new state, Aryavarta (as Kalinga had apparently rejected him). At first thinking this to be a separatist rebellion, the Kalingans threw a loyal army at it; poorly-led, that army was annihilated at Nasik, and many prisoners joined Bhoj's army as he marched to the northeast. Garrisons and troops defected en masse; panicking, Sampa requested Khmer assistance. After pondering on the issue some, the Khmers agreed, in exchange for the cession of Burma, the population of which was naturally leaning towards their cultural brethren and trade partners. At the price of alienating their own supporters, the courtiers accepted that too. By then most of India, apart from Kalinga Proper and the mouth of Ganges was either neutral, either Bhojist; still, a last Kalingo-Khmer army did make a stand at Sampa itself. The outcome was never in doubt, even with the Khmer intervention; the numerically-superior, high-spirited Bhojists outflanked and overwhelmed their enemies. Kalinga was dead; Aryavarta came into being, and all of India Proper soon swore allegience, followed by the colonized Sinhala, Cush and the Arabian possessions.
Bhoj remained unrepentant in his desire to move the capital to Mumbai; there, he set up a new court, surrounding himself with like-minded reformists. Trade taxes increased to keep the merchants in check, administrative and military reforms were introduced, past experience was taken into account, and great building projects were undertaken. The country was generally reinvigorated. In foreign policies, things were more confusing; the Khmers not only held on to Burma, but even repulsed all attacks there, having fortified well. Not wishing for a drawn-out war over a province that in any case was irrelevant for his plans (and fearing that a full war with Khmers will bury Aryavarta's naval power), Bhoj eventually decided to sign peace, getting recognition in exchange for ceding Burma. To compensate, he forced through an union with Bod, rounding out Aryavarta's eastern border. Dukunnugeya was also irrelevant, but not really worth a peace treaty; naval skirmishes went on, but nothing beyond was attempted yet. Instead, Bhoj concentrated his attention on the west, where new opportunities appeared...
To be brief: after a brief resurgence under Sesostris I, Egypt flew back into instability and mismanagement, with sporadic rebellions and civil wars, while in Parhae, after Darius II died in 265, the situation was also unclear; Alans attacked from the north, while a pseudo-Judaistic religious revival in Arabia spilled out into the rise of the Israfanid theocratic empire around Yamama, in Central Arabia. Not only with Parhaen control collapse there, but the Israfanids soon advanced further; barely checked in Iraq and Phoenicia, they still did take over Hejjaz and the remaining Parhaen territories in Arabia. Using both situations, the Aryavatrans conquered Egyptian Cush and forced the new ruler to recognize that, while raiding Hormuz and advancing into Central Asia, where the Aryavatrans were enthusiastically supported by the Charatians. The eventual peace treaty left both Hormuz and Mandalaputra in Parhaen hands, but the border was moved westwards and the Aryavatran merchants gained considerable privileges.
The 4th Century was a fairly quiet time of internal development and minor colonial expansion for Aryavatra. None of Bhoj's successors had quite the same strong vision, though reforms continued by inertia, while technologic progress once more sped up (Byblos fire was adapted and perfected, for instance, and great advances were made in metallurgy, astronomy and medicine). Dukunnugeya remained defiant; meanwhile, it too begun building a colonial empire. Egypt begun to recover from yet another round of fighting, now under a Berber dynasty (one should never trust cheap mercenaries...). The Israfids brooded, and continued raiding. In Luca, a new dynasty introduced an Empire Cult and introduced very far-reaching military reforms, militarizing the society itself to a large extent; preparations for revanche were ongoing. Parthia too recovered from the turmoil; Taraxes II rebuilt the country and its military, and improved relations with the Bulghars beyond the Caspian Sea. Two new empires emerged: a spiritual, surprisingly advanced Turanese one in northern Central Asia and a warlike Khoisan one in South Africa, both influenced by Kalinga/Aryavarta, but only slightly.
It was a quiet before the storm.
Pacific Ocean[6]:
The long-ruling Han-Choson dynasty of China finally fell into a definite decline after the disastrous war with Khmeria. For much of the 2nd Century, the situation detiriorated; the country stagnated, the court was filled with shameless charlatans and corrupt ministers who pretended, with considerable success, to be brilliant alchemists and visionary reformers respectively, and the Turkic incursions proved harder and harder to repulse. The only trully part of China that was moving forward was Hong Kong; but it was increasingly detached from the country in all regards. Taxes grew to a ridicilous level, to fund experiments and building projects, cover military expenses and support the luxurious court. Peasant revolts spread. To put them down, taxes had to be increased further...
However, the Yuanti Emperor, who ruled in the early 3rd Century, realized that course to be suicidal, and instead decided to reinstate direct Han rule in Hong Kong, so that its money could be used instead. This decision didn't doom the dynasty; it was already doomed, so ultimately it merely sped things up. In 214 AD, the Hong Kee Governor-General rejected the Emperor's demands for imposition of standard Imperial taxes on the HK SAR, and the Hong Kee Independence War begun. The poorly-supplied northerner armies pillaged through northern Hong Kee territories, gradually overruning the militias which however inflicted terrible casualties on the invaders - the long preparations for such a struggle were not in vain. Even though the Han advance bogged down halfway to Hong Kong itself, while the Han fleet was destroyed altogether, the Emperor conscripted more and more troops, and threw them all at Hong Kee defenses. Finally, despairing, the Governor-General Lee Chao proclaimed the Hong Kee Republic, which was immediately joined by Dian, and then contacted the Khmers. After some negotiations, the Hong Kees agreed to cede western Dianese territories in exchange for Taiwan and military assistance. Hong Kee militias and kis, reinforced by the Khmers, soon won the key Battle of Shaozhou, and elsewhere broke several Han sieges. A major counteroffensive broke the Han army, though Hong Kee casualties were also high. After that, all hell broke loose. Even as the Hong Kees regained lost ground and advanced beyond, to restore the VERY old borders, north of the Yangtze chaos raged; peasants rose up, generals too took the initiative, and dynastic interfighting occured too. The Hong Kees set up their Republic (essentially a mercantile/guild-based republic), restored historic borders and begun the ardous process of consolidating gains and reversing the Hanification.
In the north, chaos raged for nearly a century. Gradually, key princely states and warlord factions were consolidated, but most of them didn't outlive their founders - who themselves tended to die violent deaths, in battle or from assassins. Turks raided freely, though failing to mount any actual invasions. However, towards 308, a new unifying force appeared; ironically, it was even more Chosen than the previous one. The Chosen settlements in the north retained considerable solidarity and thus the far north remained comparativelly peaceful and united. Its unity was confirmed when in 299, a Chosen general best known as "Taedi" proclaimed the Tieh Dynasty and declared his claim to the throne. The powerful Chosen cavalry easily routed most northern warlords, but had failed to conquer Suzhou itself, which, along with surroundings, became a semi-theocratic Sanghist kingdom, backed by Hong Kong. Unperturbed, Taedi built a new capital, Jingjing, in northern China Proper, and turned his reformed army around to face the Turks. After some extensive campaigning that continued well after his death, the Tieh Chinese forces had conquered vast territories, sending the Turks fleeing westwards, to destroy the Xiong-nu and their relatives and then replace them as the masters of the western steppe... Also succesful campaigns against the Tungus took place. In the meantime, a highly-militarized society was built back at home, with a powerful military bureaucracy and a more stable, functional conscription system. Conflict between Tieh China and Hong Kong seems inevitable, the former having exhausted their northern expansion opportunities and the latter facing heavy Khmer and Nihonese competition in commerce. Then again, perhaps something else entirely will happen...
The Empire of Choson itself remained unsurprisingly (all things considered) hostile to Tieh China, and allied with Hong Kong. At home, there is not much noteworthy about Choson, apart from some technologic progress, commercial ties with the same Hong Kong and worsened relations with Nihon, including repressions against the Shintoists.
Nihon (as the state that used to be the Rising Sun Empire was renamed, as the Sun had apparently set, while Nagasaki, another name used for the state, had been burned by the Khmers) itself was also very unstable. Civil wars and recurring dynastic changes only came to an end in 289 AD, when yet another, Ryusakid, dynasty came to power and created an absolute monarchy with mercantile influence. The capital was moved to the newly-built city of Kaikyo, and a new fleet (both war and trade) was built up. At last in peace, the Nihonese competed aggressively in all of East Asian trade centers, while conquering first Karafuto, and then several island chains in the Great Ocean - for the Nihonese were now even more obsessed with it than before. Having perfected the arts of navigation and developed superior shipbuilding techniques, the Nihonese sailed on eastwards against all adversity, eventually establishing trade outposts far, far to the east. Perhaps it was a fool's errand. Then again, perhaps it would make Nihon a great power...
Lastly, Khmeria underwent reconstruction; the rebuilt Vyadhapura was a masterpiece of engineering, the most modern city in the world. Though Khmer trade declined somewhat due to the warfare and instability all around it, it still remained quite strong. Aside from the already mentioned foreign wars, the Khmers chiefly concentrated on the colonization of Papua and New Khmeria, with considerable, though still limited, success. Khmeria also suffered from the same problem as Kalinga earlier in the era; having climbed to the top, it lost some of the stimulus for further progress, though strong Hong Kee and Nihonese competition in technology as well as in economy spurred it on. Still, its technologic edge is not quite as great as it used to be. Khmeria is arguably the strongest Asian power for now, but its future isn't exactly guaranteed.
OOC:
[1] Toltecia=northern OTL Mexico.
[2] Lower Adena=OTL southern Louisiana. Yes, I know this usage of Adena makes no real sense. However, I couldn't find any better substitutes, so you'll have to live with this.
[3] Calusa=OTL peninsular Florida.
[4] Guangala=OTL Colombia.
[5] Hakatai=OTL Colorado River.
[6] Northern Europe in this world means, more or less, Europe north of the Pyrenees, the Alpes and the Danube (as opposed to the Transpoenic-Mediterranean).
The Transpoenic-Mediterranean includes not just the coasts and areas related to those coasts of the two great seas, but also the Black Sea, Carthage's Atlantic coasts and West Africa.
The Indian Ocean region includes, in addition to India and East Africa (including some inland areas), all of the Middle East and Central Asia, but excluding OTL East Indies and Australia.
The Pacific Ocean includes, in addition to the Pacific Ocean itself and its non-American coastlines, the inland Far East and all of South-East Asia apart from Kalingan Burma.
The above divisions are preconditioned by the increasing division of the civilized world into these three economic and cultural regions, with their own more-or-less specific trade networks (though tied with other ones) and thus the exchanged cultural influences (again, ofcourse, the three regions DO influence each other culturally, for instance Khmeria is ofcourse influenced by Kalingan religious thought, though not nearly as much as the Kalingans would've liked it); that division, in turn, is caused by geography. Meanwhile, each region underwent in this period its own more-or-less separate series of political interactions, although certainly there had been clashes and cooperation between representatives of different regions. That is now increasingly on the rise due to the arrival of the (second) Golden Age of Navigation, and the related surge of commercial and colonial expansion.
This comment might as well be ignored; really, the regional division is rather overstated there, things are far more ambigous than that, but it is something to keep in mind and certainly does help me.
[7] Longumare=OTL Pommerania.
[8] Valdakva=appr. OTL Moscow.
[9] Near OTL Perpignan.
[10] Tanais=Don River.
I really am ashamed at how long it took - though technically that's mostly because of Thursday and Friday being even more loaded than usual. Also sorry about the comparative lack of detail on the Far East - I just figured that working into Sunday just wouldn't be worth it.
Note that the map is rather rudimentary - no trade centers, no barbarian differentiation, plus there might be some other minor changes to it later.
And while all that occured, the Nevasanghists rose up. Not in India - they failed to gain a significant following there. Instead, they rose in Madagascar, or Dukunnugeya, which had by then become something of a second Sinhala; while the home island was being increasingly colonized and assimilated, the more distant Dukunnugeya was under lesser Kalingan influence... and easier to detach from the empire, as the Nevasanghists, who had many converts amongst the poorer settlers of Dukunnugeya. Merged with Sinhalese separatism, the Nevasanghists soon befriended the local Sinhalese elite as well, and as the Kalingan Empire seemed to be on the brink of collapse, the banner of revolt was raised, led by one of the most radical Nevasanghist leaders, Devatissa. As the Kalingans had rather neglected Madagascar of late, the revolt encountered both support from most of the populace (even many of the Kalingan colonists, who ofcourse were scarcely Kalingan at all, being born on Madagascar) and rather weak, half-hearted resistance. While the Kalingans were fighting in the north, the Kingdom of Dukunnugeya was established under Mahetissa's nephew Rajanampiya, who built up a fairly strong fleet and secured several nearly Kalingan colonies, especially African ones (where chaos reigned in the wake of the loss of Madagascar and the rise of piracy). The Kalingans mounted a very weak (due to delayed reports, the Kalingans considered the rebels to be an ordinary ill-organized Sinhalese mob, like the previous ones, and also were unable to commit any more serious forces there) punitive expedition in 207; it was easily defeated, but the Kalingans didn't particularily care. Far worse news were coming; the Carthaginian-led armies had finally broken the Kalingans at Thebes, and now advanced up along the Nile. At least the Carthaginians that had landed in Cush were defeated, and their fleet was again defeated at Cape Ra. Sadly, the Kalingans couldn't allow themselves the luxury of chasing the Carthaginians beyond the Sile Canal, and the situation remained generally grim, especially as Sampa was still in shock, with scapegoatings, intrigues and assassinations. In the countryside, dissent grew, but not too much; in the cities, which depended on sea trade, there was public outrage, often spilling out into genuine uprisings. After the death of Kavi III - probably by poisoning, as his epithet of "the Cruel" was not an affectionate one, especially in Kalinga - his successor Ashoka II decided to seek a peace with "honour" - restoring status quo belle ante, but opening up the Sile Canal, and also recognizing the Parhaen gains (apart from those in southern Arabia - the Kalingan lands were duly returned). Just as exhausted, Kalinga's enemies accepted peace.
After the peace, a very strange time came in Kalinga; after the early death of Ashoka II in a hunting accident, the rather mediocre, easily-influenced Narasimha I became king. Despite cries for reform, the Kalingan political elite proved somehow detached from reality, intending to rule on as if nothing had changed. The Kalingan navy was built up again and used in the never-ending wars with the pirates, who had used the chaos to set up lots of bases, sometimes capturing entire colonial cities or island chains, and developed a good system of hideouts. Though not a match for the Kalingan navy even in its weakened state, the pirates were simply too many to hunt down efficiently, and to make things worse some of them had apparently developed quite good coordination, sometimes eliminating the smaller Kalingan squadrons in well-planned ambushes. Thus the Pirate Wars took over two decades, and even after that, some pirate nests remained. At the same time, several attempts were made to reconquer Dukunnugeya; but the Dukunnugeyans had developed a pretty good fleet of their own, having "somehow" acquired Byblos fire, and used underhanded tactics to drive off attack after attack; on those occassions when the Kalingans did land, they found themselves unable to conquer Dukunnugeya for good due to its difficult terrain and the unconventional tactics of its defenders. Eventually the Kalingans ran out of supplies and had to withdraw. Although Zanzibar and some other islands had been recaptured, Dukunnugeya itself remained impregnable, perhaps because the Kalingans never did concentrate particularily strong forces against it (as that still would've been an overkill unacceptable in those dangerous times).
In 276, Narasimha I died, and a civil war soon followed - the new successor, Bhoj I, had great reform plans, and from the start rather unwisely revealed his plans to the courtiers and the advisors, who quickly concluded that he was mad. After several failed assassination attempts (even as Narasimha was on the deathbed), they advised Bhoj to hide in Mumbai, for his own safety. With him out of the way, Kavi IV, another puppet, was crowned instead. Outraged, Bhoj soon reminded the courtiers that they had forgotten a crucial detail - he had lots of supporters in the army, and the Dravidians too liked him greatly. Both the military and the Dravidians thus rose up in his support, and Bhoj officially declared Mumbai his capital - the capital of a new state, Aryavarta (as Kalinga had apparently rejected him). At first thinking this to be a separatist rebellion, the Kalingans threw a loyal army at it; poorly-led, that army was annihilated at Nasik, and many prisoners joined Bhoj's army as he marched to the northeast. Garrisons and troops defected en masse; panicking, Sampa requested Khmer assistance. After pondering on the issue some, the Khmers agreed, in exchange for the cession of Burma, the population of which was naturally leaning towards their cultural brethren and trade partners. At the price of alienating their own supporters, the courtiers accepted that too. By then most of India, apart from Kalinga Proper and the mouth of Ganges was either neutral, either Bhojist; still, a last Kalingo-Khmer army did make a stand at Sampa itself. The outcome was never in doubt, even with the Khmer intervention; the numerically-superior, high-spirited Bhojists outflanked and overwhelmed their enemies. Kalinga was dead; Aryavarta came into being, and all of India Proper soon swore allegience, followed by the colonized Sinhala, Cush and the Arabian possessions.
Bhoj remained unrepentant in his desire to move the capital to Mumbai; there, he set up a new court, surrounding himself with like-minded reformists. Trade taxes increased to keep the merchants in check, administrative and military reforms were introduced, past experience was taken into account, and great building projects were undertaken. The country was generally reinvigorated. In foreign policies, things were more confusing; the Khmers not only held on to Burma, but even repulsed all attacks there, having fortified well. Not wishing for a drawn-out war over a province that in any case was irrelevant for his plans (and fearing that a full war with Khmers will bury Aryavarta's naval power), Bhoj eventually decided to sign peace, getting recognition in exchange for ceding Burma. To compensate, he forced through an union with Bod, rounding out Aryavarta's eastern border. Dukunnugeya was also irrelevant, but not really worth a peace treaty; naval skirmishes went on, but nothing beyond was attempted yet. Instead, Bhoj concentrated his attention on the west, where new opportunities appeared...
To be brief: after a brief resurgence under Sesostris I, Egypt flew back into instability and mismanagement, with sporadic rebellions and civil wars, while in Parhae, after Darius II died in 265, the situation was also unclear; Alans attacked from the north, while a pseudo-Judaistic religious revival in Arabia spilled out into the rise of the Israfanid theocratic empire around Yamama, in Central Arabia. Not only with Parhaen control collapse there, but the Israfanids soon advanced further; barely checked in Iraq and Phoenicia, they still did take over Hejjaz and the remaining Parhaen territories in Arabia. Using both situations, the Aryavatrans conquered Egyptian Cush and forced the new ruler to recognize that, while raiding Hormuz and advancing into Central Asia, where the Aryavatrans were enthusiastically supported by the Charatians. The eventual peace treaty left both Hormuz and Mandalaputra in Parhaen hands, but the border was moved westwards and the Aryavatran merchants gained considerable privileges.
The 4th Century was a fairly quiet time of internal development and minor colonial expansion for Aryavatra. None of Bhoj's successors had quite the same strong vision, though reforms continued by inertia, while technologic progress once more sped up (Byblos fire was adapted and perfected, for instance, and great advances were made in metallurgy, astronomy and medicine). Dukunnugeya remained defiant; meanwhile, it too begun building a colonial empire. Egypt begun to recover from yet another round of fighting, now under a Berber dynasty (one should never trust cheap mercenaries...). The Israfids brooded, and continued raiding. In Luca, a new dynasty introduced an Empire Cult and introduced very far-reaching military reforms, militarizing the society itself to a large extent; preparations for revanche were ongoing. Parthia too recovered from the turmoil; Taraxes II rebuilt the country and its military, and improved relations with the Bulghars beyond the Caspian Sea. Two new empires emerged: a spiritual, surprisingly advanced Turanese one in northern Central Asia and a warlike Khoisan one in South Africa, both influenced by Kalinga/Aryavarta, but only slightly.
It was a quiet before the storm.
Pacific Ocean[6]:
The long-ruling Han-Choson dynasty of China finally fell into a definite decline after the disastrous war with Khmeria. For much of the 2nd Century, the situation detiriorated; the country stagnated, the court was filled with shameless charlatans and corrupt ministers who pretended, with considerable success, to be brilliant alchemists and visionary reformers respectively, and the Turkic incursions proved harder and harder to repulse. The only trully part of China that was moving forward was Hong Kong; but it was increasingly detached from the country in all regards. Taxes grew to a ridicilous level, to fund experiments and building projects, cover military expenses and support the luxurious court. Peasant revolts spread. To put them down, taxes had to be increased further...
However, the Yuanti Emperor, who ruled in the early 3rd Century, realized that course to be suicidal, and instead decided to reinstate direct Han rule in Hong Kong, so that its money could be used instead. This decision didn't doom the dynasty; it was already doomed, so ultimately it merely sped things up. In 214 AD, the Hong Kee Governor-General rejected the Emperor's demands for imposition of standard Imperial taxes on the HK SAR, and the Hong Kee Independence War begun. The poorly-supplied northerner armies pillaged through northern Hong Kee territories, gradually overruning the militias which however inflicted terrible casualties on the invaders - the long preparations for such a struggle were not in vain. Even though the Han advance bogged down halfway to Hong Kong itself, while the Han fleet was destroyed altogether, the Emperor conscripted more and more troops, and threw them all at Hong Kee defenses. Finally, despairing, the Governor-General Lee Chao proclaimed the Hong Kee Republic, which was immediately joined by Dian, and then contacted the Khmers. After some negotiations, the Hong Kees agreed to cede western Dianese territories in exchange for Taiwan and military assistance. Hong Kee militias and kis, reinforced by the Khmers, soon won the key Battle of Shaozhou, and elsewhere broke several Han sieges. A major counteroffensive broke the Han army, though Hong Kee casualties were also high. After that, all hell broke loose. Even as the Hong Kees regained lost ground and advanced beyond, to restore the VERY old borders, north of the Yangtze chaos raged; peasants rose up, generals too took the initiative, and dynastic interfighting occured too. The Hong Kees set up their Republic (essentially a mercantile/guild-based republic), restored historic borders and begun the ardous process of consolidating gains and reversing the Hanification.
In the north, chaos raged for nearly a century. Gradually, key princely states and warlord factions were consolidated, but most of them didn't outlive their founders - who themselves tended to die violent deaths, in battle or from assassins. Turks raided freely, though failing to mount any actual invasions. However, towards 308, a new unifying force appeared; ironically, it was even more Chosen than the previous one. The Chosen settlements in the north retained considerable solidarity and thus the far north remained comparativelly peaceful and united. Its unity was confirmed when in 299, a Chosen general best known as "Taedi" proclaimed the Tieh Dynasty and declared his claim to the throne. The powerful Chosen cavalry easily routed most northern warlords, but had failed to conquer Suzhou itself, which, along with surroundings, became a semi-theocratic Sanghist kingdom, backed by Hong Kong. Unperturbed, Taedi built a new capital, Jingjing, in northern China Proper, and turned his reformed army around to face the Turks. After some extensive campaigning that continued well after his death, the Tieh Chinese forces had conquered vast territories, sending the Turks fleeing westwards, to destroy the Xiong-nu and their relatives and then replace them as the masters of the western steppe... Also succesful campaigns against the Tungus took place. In the meantime, a highly-militarized society was built back at home, with a powerful military bureaucracy and a more stable, functional conscription system. Conflict between Tieh China and Hong Kong seems inevitable, the former having exhausted their northern expansion opportunities and the latter facing heavy Khmer and Nihonese competition in commerce. Then again, perhaps something else entirely will happen...
The Empire of Choson itself remained unsurprisingly (all things considered) hostile to Tieh China, and allied with Hong Kong. At home, there is not much noteworthy about Choson, apart from some technologic progress, commercial ties with the same Hong Kong and worsened relations with Nihon, including repressions against the Shintoists.
Nihon (as the state that used to be the Rising Sun Empire was renamed, as the Sun had apparently set, while Nagasaki, another name used for the state, had been burned by the Khmers) itself was also very unstable. Civil wars and recurring dynastic changes only came to an end in 289 AD, when yet another, Ryusakid, dynasty came to power and created an absolute monarchy with mercantile influence. The capital was moved to the newly-built city of Kaikyo, and a new fleet (both war and trade) was built up. At last in peace, the Nihonese competed aggressively in all of East Asian trade centers, while conquering first Karafuto, and then several island chains in the Great Ocean - for the Nihonese were now even more obsessed with it than before. Having perfected the arts of navigation and developed superior shipbuilding techniques, the Nihonese sailed on eastwards against all adversity, eventually establishing trade outposts far, far to the east. Perhaps it was a fool's errand. Then again, perhaps it would make Nihon a great power...
Lastly, Khmeria underwent reconstruction; the rebuilt Vyadhapura was a masterpiece of engineering, the most modern city in the world. Though Khmer trade declined somewhat due to the warfare and instability all around it, it still remained quite strong. Aside from the already mentioned foreign wars, the Khmers chiefly concentrated on the colonization of Papua and New Khmeria, with considerable, though still limited, success. Khmeria also suffered from the same problem as Kalinga earlier in the era; having climbed to the top, it lost some of the stimulus for further progress, though strong Hong Kee and Nihonese competition in technology as well as in economy spurred it on. Still, its technologic edge is not quite as great as it used to be. Khmeria is arguably the strongest Asian power for now, but its future isn't exactly guaranteed.
OOC:
[1] Toltecia=northern OTL Mexico.
[2] Lower Adena=OTL southern Louisiana. Yes, I know this usage of Adena makes no real sense. However, I couldn't find any better substitutes, so you'll have to live with this.
[3] Calusa=OTL peninsular Florida.
[4] Guangala=OTL Colombia.
[5] Hakatai=OTL Colorado River.
[6] Northern Europe in this world means, more or less, Europe north of the Pyrenees, the Alpes and the Danube (as opposed to the Transpoenic-Mediterranean).
The Transpoenic-Mediterranean includes not just the coasts and areas related to those coasts of the two great seas, but also the Black Sea, Carthage's Atlantic coasts and West Africa.
The Indian Ocean region includes, in addition to India and East Africa (including some inland areas), all of the Middle East and Central Asia, but excluding OTL East Indies and Australia.
The Pacific Ocean includes, in addition to the Pacific Ocean itself and its non-American coastlines, the inland Far East and all of South-East Asia apart from Kalingan Burma.
The above divisions are preconditioned by the increasing division of the civilized world into these three economic and cultural regions, with their own more-or-less specific trade networks (though tied with other ones) and thus the exchanged cultural influences (again, ofcourse, the three regions DO influence each other culturally, for instance Khmeria is ofcourse influenced by Kalingan religious thought, though not nearly as much as the Kalingans would've liked it); that division, in turn, is caused by geography. Meanwhile, each region underwent in this period its own more-or-less separate series of political interactions, although certainly there had been clashes and cooperation between representatives of different regions. That is now increasingly on the rise due to the arrival of the (second) Golden Age of Navigation, and the related surge of commercial and colonial expansion.
This comment might as well be ignored; really, the regional division is rather overstated there, things are far more ambigous than that, but it is something to keep in mind and certainly does help me.
[7] Longumare=OTL Pommerania.
[8] Valdakva=appr. OTL Moscow.
[9] Near OTL Perpignan.
[10] Tanais=Don River.
I really am ashamed at how long it took - though technically that's mostly because of Thursday and Friday being even more loaded than usual. Also sorry about the comparative lack of detail on the Far East - I just figured that working into Sunday just wouldn't be worth it.
Note that the map is rather rudimentary - no trade centers, no barbarian differentiation, plus there might be some other minor changes to it later.
das
Regeneration In Process
alex994
Hail Divine Emperor!
Excellent BT, though technology and progress seems a bit hurried. And Tieh China? Metal China?
And Jingjing, capitol of capitols? An interesting concept indeed.... Though it seems strange how a certain seemed to come out of nearly unscarred
EDIT: I am of course taking Tieh China
And Jingjing, capitol of capitols? An interesting concept indeed.... Though it seems strange how a certain seemed to come out of nearly unscarred
EDIT: I am of course taking Tieh China
tossi
Der kleine Prinz
No reservations, right?
alex994
Hail Divine Emperor!
Technically no, but of course, if my nation is taken the player will pay! 
Oruc
Reactionary
I thought the old players could take the countries they had before?
Similar threads
- user746383
- Civ7 - General Discussions
