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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Umbran" data-source="post: 8103123" data-attributes="member: 177">This sentence came out a bit hashed up.  I'll note that in the Far East, gunpowder came about in the 9th century.  The fall of Rome is in the 4th and 5th centuries.  So, there's some significant argument that adoption of Christianity played a significant part in the Fall of Rome.  It led to yet another power structure adding to the internal squabbles, and also changed how Rome dealt with its client states.  Pre-Christian Rome was expansionist, but not so autocratic.  If you paid your taxes and made the required trade goods available, Rome was okay with allowing much local governance.  This falls away as the empire starts trying to also force a religion on its client states, and made those states notably more difficult to govern.  That's part of why I suggested taking Constantine I out of the picture.  The Empire is politically more stable if it isn't trying to force religion on people.  Let us roll this forward somewhat.  Rome does not fall in the 5th century.  If we also don't have the Christian Church enforcing certain orthodoxy of thought, the end result is... no Dark Ages.  Maybe not an instant Renaissance, but no gread fall into ignorance either.  Rome increases in size, it holds the entire Mediterranean basin, and most of Europe (more on some parts of Europe later).  The Pax Romana settles in - without constant internecine wars, and an actual planning structure behind agriculture, the population of Europe and the Roman Empire rises...... and Rome ends up with the same problem China had - a population that stretches the ability of the information-handling and communication of the time to manage.  It becomes the China of the West, really.  For a time, its expansion stalls, much like China's, and it spends some centuries simply managing itself, likely enhancing its own bureaucracy - again, much like China.  Nice parallel there.So, for reasons of my own (which may become apparent later), I'm going to brainstorm this way -   Rome gets most of Europe, but not all of it. Scandanavia of the 5th to 11th centuries doesn't hold a lot of interest for Rome, and it is terrain in which Roman military tactics start to fail.  So,while there are attempts, Rome fails to dominate Scandanavia in the Medieval period. Now, let us talk about technology for a moment - specifically sail.  In our world, the Renaissance saw a massive growth in sailing technology, not just because of growth of knowledge, but because of competing European countries squeezing each other, all looking for paths of least resistance to wealth and power off the European continent.Rome doesn't have that competition.  Nobody is squeezing it.  It has issues maintaining itself, and it has secure trade routes throughout the Empire.  It doesn't need sail power all that much.  It also does not need firearms, again, much like China -There's a Pax Romana, and without the incessant competition among the nation states of Europe, weapons technology does not leap forward as much as civil engineering and medical knowledge.Who is getting squeezed in this picture, and who also had the edge in ship technology in Medieval Europe?  Scandanavia.  But, instead of using it to raid the European coastline (which doesn't work well, because the place has Roman levels of protection).  While they may have some success expanding east and down the Volga river, that way is also populated with folks who are pressed by Rome.  With sail, they have the option to go westward.   Eric the Red comes early, and there's economic reasons to follow up on him more aggressively than in our world.  The Baltic States, Scandanavia, and Great Britain become a sailing power bloc across the northern Atlantic.And, in this way, they reach and establish a beachhead in North America.  They don't have the technology to dominate the continent, but they don't need to - they develop settlements and notable trade for valuable resources of lumber and furs with the Native Americans.  And this becomes very important.  The Native Americans are exposed to European diseases 500 or so years earlier, and not while dealing with a power that can dominate their land successfully.  They are hurt, but recover, and develop resistance.Eventually, the wealth of the North Atlantic grows, not enough to nearly rival Rome, fo course, but enough to get noticed.  Rome catches up in sailing tech and communication and management (the printing press helps here).  But, when they finally arrive in North America, they are facing a population that hasn't been recently decimated by disease.  It has a population more like the population of our Medieval Europe, and they've learned how to forge metals from the Scandinavians, and aren't as vulnerable as they were in our world.  They are not unified as a single nation, but it will be some time before any of them can be conquered.The result is, coming into what we consider the time of the Renaissance, several power blocks, mostly separated by continent.  Earth avoids a lot of the colonialism that dominated our Renaissance, and Early Modern periods.</blockquote>

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