How would the world differ if ALL wars since say, the time of Christ, had gone the other way? Most particularly political boundries and the like? I realize certain wars would neve have been fought if another war went differently, i.e. WWII would’ve been unlikely had Germany won WWI.
General Questions is for questions that have factual answers. Great Debates is for open ended discussions.
I’ll move this to Great Debates for you.
Off to Great Debates.
DrMatrix - General Questions Moderator
We would all be Mesopotamian and it could very well be that the Duke of Savoy would have been emperor of the world at one point. More importantly we wouldn’t have to bother translating “Galia est omnes divisa in partes tres”.
Well, the first thing that would have happened if “all the wars” beginning at some point were won by the side we recognize as the losers, is that we would have no idea who fought what wars in the ensuing years.
Without going back 2,000 years, what would have happened if Napoleon had never been defeated? Ooops! First, what would have happened if he had never won in the first place? Or if the Republican armies had failed to stave off the Austrian coalition prior to Napoleon’s rise to power? We have to figure out whether Britain could have achieved all its power if France and Spain had not been reduced; (and whether the lands from Mexico south could have achieved independence from a Spain that had not been shattered by France); whether there would ever have been a unified Germany (without which, would there ever be a Franco-Prussian War, a WWI, or a WWII); and about two dozen other possible scenarios. Mind you, we are only talking about one series of wars in a twenty year period less than 225 years ago. How much energy do you want to expend to figure out how Europe would have turned out differently if Rome had won or lost a different set of wars with its Germanic, Parthian, Scythian, and other neighbors, leading to the unsuccessful (or differently successful) invasions by the Huns, Goths (East and West), Vandals and others. And we have not even begun looking at Persia/Iran, China, India, the Indochinese peninsula, the region of Africa where Ghana and Nigeria eventually arose, etc. Just changing which wars Mohammed lost (to say nothing of his successors–had there been any) radically alters the entire history of the Middle East, Europe, Northern (and some sub-Saharan) Africa, India, and the lands now known as Malaysia and Indonesia in ways that we cannot really guess at.
Your best bet would be to learn the history of a specific period, then draw your own conclusions and guesses as to how history would have been different. (I suppose you could ask Harry Turtledove to give you a hand.) Even then, there are so many small quirks that can change the outcomes of battles and wars that changing the winners of one tells you nothing of who would actually win the next.
Since the OP is impossible to answer or even debate, as Tom has shown, perhaps a different question though in the same vein, would be: Which war, had it gone differently, would have changed history the most? (or, Which war is most responsible for the current state of the world?) Obviously the same problems apply, but maybe to a lesser extent? Not sure any answer here could be anything more than total speculation.
WWII, but arguably it could be WWIII.
Yeah, but how do you say “Rome is divided into three parts” in Gaulish?
No need to translate, Rome wouldn’t have been divided what with beating the crap out of the Visigoths and the Vandals and what-not. Then again… Rome??
I interviewed a crackpot historian the other week that claimed the cow bell was brought to Europe by Hannibal, and that originally it was elephant bells. Apparently they found rests of said bells in the Brenner. He showed me a lump of metal as ‘proof’. It looked more like calcified elephant dung to me, but I’m no expert am I. So if this guy is right, all wars going the other way and hence Hannibal never arriving in Europe, we wouldn’t have cow bells and a whole industry in Tyrol and Bavaria would go to shits.
In the last century, the most important was WWI. In that war, the Battle of the Marne (1914 was the most significant event. Had the French & British lost, the Germans would have taken Paris, knocked France out of the war and driven Britain from continental Europe (familiar so far?). Russia would have been stuffed even more comprehensively in 1915 than it was in 1917. Without Hitler running the country, Britain would have negotiated a peace with Germany and the rest, as they say, is speculation.
People consider the Revolutionary/Napoleonic wars as major course of history changing events - I would argue they weren’t. In 1816, the Ancien Regime was back ruling France and the status quo ante pretty much restored. The changes brought about by the wars accelerated progress along a direction Europe was going anyway, rather than change it. Major events, yes, changing the course of history, no.
Niall Ferguson, in “Virtual History” (I think that’s the correct title) discusses WWI in detail.
Before the time of Christ the OP specified, but I’d argue the biggest change would have been if Persia had conquered Greece (a major upset in military history, after all; the Greeks were 20 point underdogs going in.) If Greek society had been nipped in the bud, ideas like democracy, republicanism, science, secular humanism, etc might have vanished with them.
I think the most significant war would be when proto-life No2 started grappling with proto-life No1 for resources. As for huma wars, I am guessing that if one of the ancient civilisations crumbled before it started, it would have meant that another different one would have risen and the world would be shaped radically dfferently.
Possibly true, although it ignores the amount of European/World power that France lost in the exchange, the ravaging of Spain (with Britain’s haste to fill both those power gaps), and the disruption of Austria that set the stage for the creation of Germany and Italy as nation states. It also avoids speculation as to whether the Latin American countries would have achieved independence without a weakened Spain and assumes that the revolutions of 1830 and 1848 would have continued even if the French Revolution was perceived (by Europeans) to have been a complete failure.
(Which is why all this stuff is a fun exercise with no possible resolution.)
Let’s see…
If Charles Martel, King of the Franks, had been defeated at the Battle of Tours (732), a substantial part of Gaul might have become Muslim, and remained so permanently. England might have been invaded by Arabic-speaking Berbers, Arabs and Visigothic and Frankish converts to Islam, instead of Normans speaking their own French dialect.
Then again, if the Visigoths of Spain had beaten back the Muslim invasion of 711, Charles would’ve had no worries but Western Europe might not have ended up with the wealth of philosophical and scientific knowledge it gained after 1085 (annexation of Muslim Toledo by Alfonso VI of Leon-Castilla).
If Charlemagne’s forces (under Count Roland) hadn’t been routed by the Basques south of the Pyrenees in 778, this battle might not have been twisted into the unhistorical but epic struggle of Christians against Muslims (who were not involved in this battle) that we have in The Song of Roland, and so might not have served as a vehicle to crystallize the anti-Muslim zeal which fired – and justified – the Crusades. Think what it would mean today if the Crusades hadn’t happened.
How about if the Emperor Constantine had lost the battle in which he appealed to the Christian God for victory by adopting the Chi-Rho symbol as his device? He would not have converted, and Christianity might have remained a minority religion in a predominantly pagan world. How much of our Western culture resulted from the Christianization of Rome?
Sorry to be so Western and European in my focus, but this is where my small patches of expertise are.
How about this…
If Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castille had not succeeded in their war against Granada, uniting Spain as a single nation, they probably would not have sponsored Columbus’ voyage west. Spain would not have become a great colonial power, vastly altering our world today. Possibly Europeans would not have “discovered” America until much later…maybe by then the Aztecs would be ruled by someone with a less apocalyptic bent than Montezuma II, and would have put up more of a fight…
Yeah, it’s all pointless speculation, but it’s amusing.
Something that I thought my be interesting in reading this, is how wars in North and South America prior to Columbus may have shaped the modern makeup of this country. Could a battle between different central american civilizations have changed the course of the Spanish invasions?
Erek
All of Emperor Napoleon III’s advisors urged him not to attack Prussia in 1870, but he went ahead and did it anyway. Within three weeks, Prussian troops were marching through Paris. If France had avoided foolishly starting the Franco-Prussian War, European history would have been significantly altered. For one, France wouldn’t have been crippled by the crushing reparations it had to pay to Germany (née Prussia,) nor would it have had to hand Alsace-Lorraine over. Probably more significantly, French colonialism would have enjoyed the benefit of additional resources right from the start, giving it a much better shot at grabbing control of Egypt before Britain did, in 1881. Had France not been set back so drastically in the 1870s, it could have easily contested Britain for Egypt, or possibly have nudged Britain out altogether. With France already in control of Algeria, north African dominance would have been a cinch. France would likely have continued to take the vast tracts of northwest Africa that it actually did, plus it would have likely sewn up Fashoda, the Sudan and ruled north Africa clear to Somalia. The French would certainly have fared better in China and the Far East in general. Germany would have continued to be a great Continental power but a minor colonial power. Britain would still have been a major contender, but France would have been much stiffer competition. Russia would likely have enjoyed a freer hand in China, since French foreign policy has historically favored Russia much more than Britain’s has. An Anglo-German alliance would have been much more likely. World War I would probably have been fought early, with the sides matching up as follows: France, Italy, Russia, Serbia, Bulgaria and Greece against Britain, Turkey, Austria, Romania, Germany and possibly Spain. Other nations, like Japan, Belgium and the Netherlands, I’m unwilling to speculate on. The United States would likely never have gotten involved.
Of course, the continuation of the Second Empire would have not been such a good thing for France. After all, the Belle Époque was a time for great social change for France, and many reforms in education and the quality of life in general evolved at this time. With Napoleon III still in power, there would have been no Third Republic that fostered the Belle Époque. Of course, the changes of this era were necessary ones, and such changes have a way of happening, whether the standing government wants them to or not. The French people would surely have pressed for more autonomy and voting rights, and Napoleon’s government would have eventually been in no position to deny them.
What would World War II have been like and the world of today be like if this had been the way history turned out? Well, that all depends on who won World War I—also known as the Anglo-French War…
The New York Times ran a great article in July of '99 that described the possible scenerios that may have occured if the CSA had won the American Cival War.
A map of North America would be similar to a map of Europe; several smaller, weaker nations that would not have been able to defeat Germany or Japan.
Interesting reading for anyone who would like to dig through their archives.
The American Revolution was a big one, too. If it had never happened, then the United States would still be part of England and wouldn’t be the huge power that it is today. Then, many of the other wars would also have never have been backed by us, and might have lost.
Hmm… Australia became a seperate nation in 1901, 113 years after europeans first landed here. i doubt america would “still be part of England”. then again, just what form america would take could be interesting.
anyone who is more aware of u.s history able to tell me what america would look like had mexico won the war against the u.s in the 19th century? (sorry, i know next to nothing about it)
I recommend this fascinating book, calledWhat If?: The World’s Foremost Military Historians Imagine What Might Have Been.
As an aside, I’d like to commend all those historians, professional or not, who posted their opinions. I love this stuff, and am envious of your knowledge and insight.