Recent content by Duncan

We're allowed (albeit not encouraged) to have a pre-1700 POD, so what if the Three Feudatories successfully established independent states in the 1680s, and these subsequently fragmented further? Might let colonial powers nibble up the south, at least, piecemeal.

But could quite easily have been restored as part of the peace settlement. I don't think Elba was a sovereign state before 1814, but in his exile Napoleon was - nominally! - the ruler of an independent Elba.

Exile Napoleon there, as Grand Duke of Ragusa, instead of to Elba in 1814.

One possibility was discussed on this old thread: https://www.alternatehistory.com/discussion/printthread.php?t=1099

Typo of the Day After the Haiti/Hatti joke went down like a lead balloon, maybe I shouldn't post this, but I can't resist it: "If the Burundians are in Gaul, what happened to the Rwandans?" sorry, Duncan

There's quite a strong opinion - http://www.chinahistoryforum.com/index.php?showtopic=725 - that Talas doesn't really decide much at all. No territory changes hands, even the defecting Qarluqs are paying lip-service to Chinese overlordship again a few years later. The Islamisation of Central...

Obviously the Hittites discovered America.

The obvious answer is to postpone the expulsion of the Mongols and the founding of the Ming, so alt-Ming is simply running a generation or two behind schedule.

We don't really know what proportion of the Carthaginian armed forces were in Sicily. It seems unlikely that they'd leave Africa undefended a mere 30-odd years after Agathokles had pulled the African invasion trick. Nor does it seem all that likely that Carthage's allies would be keen to support...

It is one book, and was originally published in one volume in the UK. It was broken up into four for the US market.

But you asked for a POD after 700, and the Celtic Church is already coming into alignment with Rome by then - the work of Addamnan and so on. I suppose the process wasn't completed, though.

No, I think that you don't quite understand. Or, oerhaps, you just aren't quite pessimistic enough.

Exactly - it's not dystopia, just journalism.

They essentially ceased to be nomads with the 9th-century settlement. They fought with Chinggis mostly as peasant infantry levies - one of the Islamic historians, Juvaini I think, explicitly contrasts the Uighur "army of peasants" with the Qarluq Turk "army of horsemen". It's still not...

For an Uighur kingdom that far south, probably the 9th century.