Alternate history of cities

[The North One]

China had the world's largest navy at some point (shout out to the treasure ships) and they were basically set to take over the world, I think there was a change in power and they abandoned the whole thing. Our world would have looked completely different.

[lrt's friend]

Originally Posted by ue

What if the Quiet Revolution didn't happen? Would Quebec just be a late-blooming Louisiana? The corollary being that Montreal would've likely remained Canada's largest city and how would that have looked? Toronto wasn't that much smaller than Montreal, but it likely would've remained somewhat more provincial.

What if Toronto hadn't put a moratorium on apartments and "aesthetically" multifamily before WWII? Would it be like the Northeast Corridor and Quebec, lined with Victorian Bay-and-Gable rowhomes and apartment blocks? What if it surpassed Montreal earlier?

What if the Maritimes didn't decline post-Confederation vis-a-vis Central Canada? What if Halifax remained a major city, perhaps with over a million, maybe two, today? What if Saint John hadn't declined and remained the prime city for New Brunswick?

What if Newfoundland never joined Canada?

What if Quebec separated in 1980?

What if the head offices all concentrated in Edmonton (or stayed here, more accurately) instead of Calgary, and Edmonton remained the larger of the two, and Calgary perhaps no larger than K-W or Halifax today, with Edmonton perhaps close to Vancouver in population?

What if the entire Fraser Valley, down to Mt Vernon WA, was apart of Canada? Would Vancouver, Abbotsford, and Chilliwack have been so stringent on density control? Would it's housing issues be more fixable? Or what if Vancouver was simply more ok with building density in single-family neighbourhoods, not just on major transit and vehicle corridors? It would alleviate pressure for sure.

What if the Alaska Boundary dispute was settled in BC's favour?

What if the Klondike Gold Rush lasted a few more years?

What if Winnipeg never declined after the General Strike and was still the largest and most important city on the Prairies?

What if Northern Ontario wasn't difficult Canadian Shield geology, and more like Southern Manitoba, more arable?

What if Newfoundland had joined the United States instead of Canada?

What if Ottawa was not named capital of Canada? Which city would have become capital? What would Ottawa be like if not capital?

What if the St. Lawrence Seaway had not been built? I think this was a major factor in Toronto becoming bigger than Montreal as well the separatist political situation of the 60s and 70s.

A bigger consideration than the 1980 Quebec Referendum, was the 1995 referendum, which was so close. What would have happened if Parizeau had made a unilateral Declaration of Independence?

What would have happened if the United States had won the War of 1812?

What would have happened if the settlement of the War of 1812 included the founding of a separate country for native populations west of the Appalachians?

[ThePhun1]

Ottawa, I'm assuming would be like any of these other random Ontario areas like Kitchener/Waterloo or London. Imagine if there was a capital created from scratch, like Brasília. I'd imagine it'd be in Manitoba or more likely Saskatchewan.

[muppet]

Originally Posted by The North One

China had the world's largest navy at some point (shout out to the treasure ships) and they were basically set to take over the world,
I think there was a change in power and they abandoned the whole thing. Our world would have looked completely different.

Yep the pesky Mongols again. Perpetually living next to that country was major arse - the kind of people who would decapitate every man, woman, child, cat and dog in the
world's largest city (the world's cosmopolitan crossroads at Baghdad), and make a giant pyramid of 1 million heads outside the walls. Almost every city in the region
capitulated without a fight after that.

When they first laid siege to Beijing, the streets were caked in blood and slippery from human fat. Mongol children learned to ride before they walked, from the age of 2.
They also learned to kill - after the armies would ride through, it was the job of the old, infirm and the young to scatter over the fallen battlefield and kill the injured.
Mongols killed 5% of the world's population, enough to lower the carbon in the atmosphere - the Persian Empire's population fell by 90%, Rus Ukraine's by half -
and in one rout they wiped out 30 million Chinese peasants, considered the world's worst genocide. China's pre-war census of 120 million had fallen to 60 million
in the census after.

The siege of Baghdad



When they took over Moscow the invaders made a tent and log platform over the king and the holy patriarch, then proceeded to party, slowly crushing them to death
beneath. The rest of Europe was only saved, at the gates of Vienna, by Genghis Khan dying back in Mongolia, and the armies returning to the homeland, then to divide
up the empire with his sons and heirs.

The fall of Hungary and Muscovy (Russia) in the march into Europe



The failed invasion of Japan (a typhoon - the divine wind aka kamikaze - sunk 4,400 Mongolian ships)


http://www.mfa.org/collections/objec...i-no-zu-465071
www.mfa.org


So yep, in short China sent out vast armadas - the biggest ever, with the world's largest pre-industrial ships (court records say the largest were 600ft, designed to intimidate
- but they wouldn't have been seaworthy. Historians downscaled them to 440ft, but the discovery in 2015 of the longjiang shipyards, revealed the mystery - British
historians found the hulls were lined with concrete, and made rigid, which could well have meant ships of that size. So far only rudders and outlines fitting the size of the
ships have been found, but no ships themselves survived of course). They sailed in a flotilla carrying 23,000 sailors to set up vassals states and trading colonies in Africa, the
Middle East, the Indian subcontinent, SE Asia, the Pacific and Australia.

However 50 years later the Mongols threatened again, and the funds were diverted into protecting the land borders rather than expanding seaword. The new emperor burned
the entire fleet and made it a capital offence to go to sea.


http://herbkanehawaii.com, www.newworldencyclopedia.org


www.personal.psu.edu

https://cdnb.artstation.com

[dc_denizen]

most estimates put the Chinese and early roman imperial GDP (at say 14 AD) at about the same (I've heard 25 billion in 1990 dollars). Rome would probably be higher later on (say when Trajan conquered Dacia, Nabataea and Mesopotamia).

the notion that 2000 years ago India and China were the bulk of world GDP is nonsense. Rome (which at this point included the Hellenistic world, highly developed ancient Egypt, north Africa, etc), China and India were all (comparatively) developed civilizations, and Rome was certainly the most technologically advanced, although India (maybe?) had a higher population.

this is a good read:

India's 'stolen' GDP conundrum

The GDP figure used all over the web is high because of India's enormous population of farmers, not because India's civilization was advanced or better developed. **

"India's economy was one of the largest in the world before the British robbed her of her wealth" is one of the most common claims made by users from all ends of the intelligence spectrum here on Quora. The claim has shot up since the Economist published this chart using data from Angus Maddison's papers. Because for once the qualitative claim made taught to generations of Indian and Chinese was quantified, everyone harped on to share this picture without for once thinking about the dubious research that underlies it.

Angus Maddison's estimates according to Angus Maddison himself are 'mere conjecture'. Most peer reviewed evaluation of Angus Maddison's study have dubbed them 'nothing more than an educated guess' or at best 'far fetched speculation'. [1]

[chris08876]

^^^^^

I particularly like this illustration



China and India returning to the historical trend of being 1st/2nd)

I wonder how long India will take to replace the U.S. at the 2nd place position? China is bound to be 1st (I believe it's already economically speaking). GDP PPP that is.

[dc_denizen]

^^^ yes but my point is that that chart has been misused by people with an anti-western axes to grind. Chinese supremacists and Indian anti-UK grudge holders.

On that chart, it doesnt make any sense to show China, India and Italy 1 AD. Back then Italy controlled (except for Parthia) the entire oldest parts of the civilized world in Europe and western Asia, via the Roman Empire!!! Why doens't that chart show ancient Rome or Parthia? kind of weird.

ancient Rome was at least China and India's equal in GDP; it certainly was in population, and it beat those rivals in technology (India did have a lot of valuable spices and lots of subsistence farmers, but its science and city building was primitive compared to china and Rome).

By 150 ad, Rome was #1 due to Dacia (valuable gold mines) and the conquest of Mesopotamia which gave it Babylon, Ctseiphon etc (albeit briefly).

[MolsonExport]

anti-western axes to grind

that's a bit rich, coming from the guy who clearly has an anti-Canadian axe to grind.

[balletomane]

Had Winnipeg grown like projected in the Pre-WW1 era, it would be the same size as Montreal (this is what the city planners were projecting at the time).
Winnipeg's boom era nickname, "Chicago of the North" would still be fitting, and there was also a plan to beautify the city with great monuments built of limestone as the City Beautiful Movement was spreading to Canada.

Unbuilt HBC Flagship Store:

http://cargocollective.com/wpghbc/C-1-1

Unbuilt City Hall design:

http://archiseek.com/2012/1913-unbui...hall-winnipeg/

Reflecting the optimism of the times, Churchill was meant to be a city of 500,000...

http://www.mhs.mb.ca/docs/mb_history...blincity.shtml

[muppet]

India was not just a bunch of subsistence farmers aargh, it had been fractured after the fall of the last empire (which had given rise to the world's largest city, Pataliputra in
300 BC, vying with Babylon, Carthage and Akexandria at the time, aswell as sister cities of Sravastri and Radragriha which were the worlds largest 200 years earlier), but by
300 AD was reunited again, and kickstarted its Golden Age in the form of the Gupta Empire, when the arts, culture, sciences, technology and city building flourished. They
would however succumb to the White Huns, the remains of the ousted Han Dynasty from China.

India chose to build many of its monuments in stone, unlike China which preferred brick bases and wood (due to the earthquake zones), so far more is extant - although
a large amount of the ornate wooden screens and balconies that made up the middle class merchant homes have rotted away. -Also it didn't go through the devastating two
centuries of continuous war and revolution that China did.


http://slideplayer.com


Shravasti had a population of 900,000 in 479 BC


www.burmese-art.com


Pataliputra had a moated city wall with 570 towers and 54 gates, and a population of 500,000 (1 in every 200 people on earth). It was renowned by visitors from Constantinople
and the Middle East for its beautiful and meticulous buildings, then forming the capital of the Mauryan Empire.


http://worldhhistory.weebly.com


The last great empire (before the 300 year long year piecemeal dismantling and bribery by the European powers), was the Muslim empire of the Moghuls -descended from
an offbranch of the Mongol empire, India's third and final gilded age. They topped their new styles of architecture with domes, echoing the shape of Mongolian yurt tents,
as they also did in Russia.


https://focuztours.files.wordpress.com


Lorded over by 500 of the worlds largest castles to guard the Hindu majority (although several are larger than the current record holder, Hradcany in Prague, they had soldiers
stationed there so count as 'forts' - go figure). In this time the imperial capitals of Agra and Delhi became the world's largest cities during the 1600s, vying with Ming Beijing
and Ottoman Istanbul.


http://pixeldo.com









www.xcitefun.net

www.ezeeholiday.com



https://media.cntraveller.in


www.wikimedia.org

www.airpano.ru


www.visittnt.com

And of course its equally famed palaces, hundreds of them catering to princes and private fiefs




http://discoverbangladeshltd.com

www.wikimedia.org

www.happytrips.com

www.mandirpalace.com, www.levoyageur.net

www.friendlyplanet.com, www.tradeindia.net

http://mediaresources.idiva.com

http://tourism.rajasthan.gov.in

http://jaisalmertourpackage.in


And huge temple complexes for the Hindus and Sikhs



Srirangam Temple is about 45% larger than the Vatican City





Anamalaiyar Temple




Meenakshi Temple's Thousand Pillar Hall






And of course the Islamic mosques and shrines for the Muslim elite


http://fatsaloon.com

www.99acres.com

www.airpano.ru

http://cdn.tourism-of-india.com



http://visitpak.com

[muppet]

Scenes from the remnants of Mughal India. Under the Mughals India overtook China as the world's richest country for centuries, a time
when even the poor wore gold and jewels. The mughals were a line of imperial Muslim rulers descended from Genghis Khan (hence
Mughal= Mongol, and the preponderence of Khan as a surname). With the fall of the Mughals came slow, creeping colonialism that took
piecemeal advances on fractured Indian lands for the next 110 years through bribery and war, and the subsequent downfall of the Indian
economy after that. The work of Edwin Lord Weeks on the 19th Century coast and imperial Rajasthan captures the swansong of the era before
the Raj. Society flourished but abided to the caste system, working on millennia of trade through the Indian Ocean, China, Central Asia and
the Middle East, whose cultural influences are still evident in the paintings, from the differing styles of dress, architecture, objects and mix of
religions. At times Arabesque, Oriental or Occidental.

Loose, rule of thumb, the Muslims (mostly) cover themselves in robes (or see-through cloth), the Hindus bare all:

a street in Jodhpur





Barbers, Saharanpore




open air kitchen, Lahore




Craftsmen selling cases, by a teak wood building, Ahmedabad




a royal walkabout led traditionally by Sikh soldiers (Hindus, Buddhists and the Muslim elite disavowed violence)




festival at the Fatehpur Sikhri shrine:



Upper caste wedding procession:




the holy city of Varanasi, its Hindu shrines by the sacred Ganges topped by a mosque




the Pearl Mosque, Agra




Women's Bathing pool, opposite the floating palaces of Udaipur






Taj Mahal gardens, Agra







leaving for a hunt at Gwalior fort




Dancing Nautch girl at Gwalior fort (the world's largest castle)




Two nautch girls




a Buddhist temple with erotic carvings




a perfumers shop, Bombay




Royalty passing the Jumna Masjid mosque




Nautch girls emerging from the Taj Mahal




Elephants in a courtyard, Agra




bathing at the Ghats, Mathura




Moghul soldiers returning from the Great Mosque in Agra







Metalsmith's shop




The Persian stables, Mumbai




Moti mosque




Merchants at the Bazaar




the Mogul's royal elephant





Arrival of the prince at the Palace of Amber



A Royal Procession

[dc_denizen]

Originally Posted by muppet

India was not just a bunch of subsistence farmers aargh, it had been fractured after the fall of the last empire (which had given rise to the world's largest city, Pataliputra in 300 BC, vying with Babylon, Carthage and Akexandria at the time, as well as sister cities of Sravastri and Radragriha which were the worlds largest 200 years earlier), but by 300 AD was reunited again, and kickstarted its Golden Age in the form of the Gupta Empire, when the arts, culture, sciences, technology and city building flourished. They would however succumb to the White Huns, the remains of the ousted Han Dynasty from China.

India chose to build many of its monuments in stone, unlike China which preferred brick bases and wood (due to the earthquake zones), so far more is extant - although a large amount of the ornate wooden screens and balconies that made up the middle class merchant homes have rotted away. -Also it didn't go through the devastating two centuries of continuous war and revolution that China did.

those are beautiful pictures, and there is no doubt that the 16th century mughal palaces of Rajastan and elsewhere are beautiful and impressive.

Of course, in India at the time, science, technology and learning were stagnating compared to the west. Europe invested in ships, cannons, new technologies, universities...maybe India just invested in palaces?

By the time the UK began to conquer/co-opt India, the scientific gulf was colossal between Europe and India. despite smaller population UK had the advantage, no matter how much gold and jewels the Indians had.

Science in the Age of Enlightenment

but let's return to 2000 years ago - the claim that was being made was that Rome (the generator of western civilization) was somehow not as economically important or politically powerful as ancient China and India.

Can we just agree that this is inaccurate?

[muppet]

I totally agree it's inaccurate, Rome was definitely a great power at the time - the smaller rival to China's Han Dynasty, did have much more roads for example, and Rome at it's height was the more populous city (though much smaller in terms of built environment due to the large amount of slaves). The Han were great at war and subduing the populace, standardising everything etc but not so hot in PR, which was why their capital was periodically looted by their own populace, and finally kicked out into Central Asia by 220 AD beyond their own Great Wall (where they became the scourge of Europe, ME and India as the Huns). Although The Han didn't use slavery to the extent of the Romans (perhaps their mistake), they treated their citizens terribly, living in a fascist state and killing them by the millions whenever a great wall or canal or new country needed to be built or overtaken.




- Also bear in mind the graph you posted that purports this inaccuracy also points out this is based on present day country boundaries - thus Italy rather than its Roman Empire is measured. Also this would also exclude the Mongol, Ottoman, Persian, Arab Empires too as they were likewise flash-in-the-pan territories in terms of millennia. It even applies to India and China - much of the Qing Empire, that would almost double China's size today, not to mention India's loss of Eastern Persia, Afghanistan, and its richest provinces that now lie in Pakistan and Bangladesh.

But yes, it would be inaccurate to somehow dismiss the entire Roman Empire in that graph, no matter how short lived it was compared to the others.

However fighting imagined slander with slander is starting to get all ad hominem.

Look at the history of the Moghul Empire and how it rose and fell - to say there was a massive gulf in tech and economy, and all they did was build palaces and invest in jewels, or that the country/ economy was made up of subsistence farmers - without even checking it out - sounds like arrogance to me.

The Moghuls spanned 4 million sq km, and was the largest economic power, with 24.4% of the global economy. It was also the world leader in manufacturing, producing 25% of global industrial output until the 18th Century, and also one of the three Islamic Gunpowder Empires (the others being the Ottomans and the Persian Saffavids) - notably the Brits found out when the Mysorean Dynasty used the first iron cased military rockets against them to defeat the British Army (when the Brits finally took over the house of Mysore, they inherited the technology and developed the Congreve rocket 25 years later). Mughal India grew to house one quarter of the worlds population with a GDP of over $90 billion.

The Moghuls ultimately fell as - similar to the Qing Empire in China - they were a foreign invasive dynasty themselves, who would succumb to native rebellion. The 18th Century is when the tide turned - losing many provinces, including the richest ones of Punjab and Bengal to the native Maratha armies, which was followed up with declarations of independence from several breakaway states across the empire. In 1739 the Moghuls were defeated by the Persians at the Battle of Karnal, and the capital Delhi sacked and looted, drastically accelerating their decline. At this time the smaller states and fiefdoms soon started coming under the influence of the European trading powers, slowly leading to bribery or outright war against the princes to give up their lands (helping with 'protection'). By 1839 the last Mughal emperor had only control of Shahjahanabad, the old walled city in the capital, while Indian princelings and European trading companies controlled the rest in multiple states.

Fragmentation of the empire:





Battle of Karnal



Persians versus Indians


the mass use of the zamburak, a portable early artillery gun popular in the mountains of Iran (where canonry would be hard to move) helped to defeat 300,000 Mughal troops. They would later be mounted as the 'camel gun'.





Sacking and massacre of Delhi




Although briefly uniting as one in the Indian Mutiny of 1857, after 130 years of fragmentation, a year later Britain formally took over the lands accumulated by the British East India Company and started the Raj.

.

[muppet]

This is kinda cool, Mughal attack elephants - height giving good range, the elephants carry sharpened metal tusk ends to butcher, or blunted tusks to maim and batter. They're trained to swing their chain laden trunks causing maximum, sweeping damage, and to runover the enemy through crowds (despite the warning bells on their sides).





The original can be gleaned from the Mongol cavalry, covered in steel lamellar armoury. Mongol horses were small, fast and very strong.




The Mauryan Empire, 1300 years earlier, employed 21,000 war elephants

[sopas ej]

Originally Posted by Pavlov's Dog

I often wonder how different the world might have been had Napoleon chosen not to continue expanding eastward in Europe and into Iberia but instead taking firm control of the Mediterranean together with Spain.

And I often wonder how different the world would be if Christianity never happened. So many cultures were destroyed by it.

[MonkeyRonin]

Originally Posted by sopas ej

And I often wonder how different the world would be if Christianity never happened. So many cultures were destroyed by it.

So many cultures have been destroyed by so many civilizations and religions. Such as noted above, when the Mongols laid waste to Baghdad and burned its libraries, murdered its intellectuals & scholars, scarred its agricultural land for generations, and single-handedly brought about the end of the Islamic Golden Age - they weren't doing it for Jesus. And likewise, the Muslims who came before them did so at the expense of now long-lost Polytheistic Arab faiths.

If it's not Christians erasing other cultures, it'll be someone else. And realistically, whether they followed Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Paganism, or anything else, the most recent & currently relevant generation of European colonizers still would have conquered big chunks of the world and spread whatever religion they so happened to prefer.

[sopas ej]

Originally Posted by MonkeyRonin

So many cultures have been destroyed by so many civilizations and religions. Such as noted above, when the Mongols laid waste to Baghdad and burned its libraries, murdered its intellectuals & scholars, scarred its agricultural land for generations, and single-handedly brought about the end of the Islamic Golden Age - they weren't doing it for Jesus. And likewise, the Muslims who came before them did so at the expense of now long-lost Polytheistic Arab faiths.

If it's not Christians erasing other cultures, it'll be someone else. And realistically, whether they followed Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Paganism, or anything else, the most recent & currently relevant generation of European colonizers still would have conquered big chunks of the world and spread whatever religion they so happened to prefer.

But Christianity continues its path of destruction, and it's becoming more global. Example, because of American Protestant Evangelical missionaries, many African countries have been making homosexuality illegal and punishable when it wasn't an issue before among African cultures. And Christianity is a proselytizing religion---that's why some of its adherents feel it needs to be spread.

So going by that, if Christianity didn't exist, the world would be a far different place.

[jtown,man]

Originally Posted by sopas ej

But Christianity continues its path of destruction, and it's becoming more global. Example, because of American Protestant Evangelical missionaries, many African countries have been making homosexuality illegal and punishable when it wasn't an issue before among African cultures. And Christianity is a proselytizing religion---that's why some of its adherents feel it needs to be spread.

So going by that, if Christianity didn't exist, the world would be a far different place.

And the exact same can be said of Muslims in Africa. I never understood how such 'worldly' people could be so euro/American centric in their views. You dislike Christianity because you live in a Christian nation. Don't let that blind your hate, you really hate Islam and Christianity.

Let the hate out. But I know only one is popular to hate, the other one must be protected, says the PC police.

Both are good. Both are bad.

[The North One]

If racism and slavery didn't exist in the US we would have a totally different country today.

[Mister F]

Originally Posted by muppet

Although The Han didn't use slavery to the extent of the Romans (perhaps their mistake)

It's a double edged sword. The Romans' use of slavery helped their rise to power, but their dependence on slavery and loot from their constant conquests was ultimately unsustainable. Once the empire stopped expanding it started to have economic problems and started to decline. The fall of Rome, at least in the form it took at the time, was pretty much inevitable. That said, their dominance wasn't as brief as your characterization. Between Rome and Constantinople they had the largest cities in the world for 600-700 years.

Speaking of alternate histories, a good what-if scenario is what if emperor Justinian had never tried to re-conquer the west? The Eastern Roman (Byzantine) Empire survived the turmoil that sunk Rome itself and emerged as the most powerful entity in the region, with Constantinople the world's largest city. But Justinian wanted to reunite the empire and tried to do it by force. The west was ruled by various barbarian tribes that had largely Romanized. Western Europe and Africa still had Roman culture, language, religion, and government institutions. There was no Western Roman Empire anymore but the people still thought of themselves as Roman. It's been said that Italy was self-sufficient in this era for the first time in centuries.

The war between east and west lasted decades, devastating and depopulating the western heartland. It could be argued that this was the real fall of Rome, ironically brought about by fellow Romans. It also drained the resources of the east and the Persians took advantage and invaded, so Constantinople found itself financially drained and fighting a war on two fronts. The Arabs were expanding at this time and invaded the worn down Persian and both Roman empires. Persia was conquered completely. The Eastern Roman empire lost its richest provinces and was never a superpower again. The Western empire became a distant memory as the African provinces were conquered and western Europe sank into the dark ages. The Arabs were the big beneficiaries of all this, creating one of the largest empires in history. Their civilization was more advanced than Europe for centuries.

In an alternate history if the Eastern invasion had never happened, the barbarian rulers would have fully assimilated into Roman culture much like the Norman invaders eventually became British. In this scenario the empire might have eventually reunited in some form and the history of the Mediterranean world would have been completely different.