What If?
In case none of you have noticed, I really, really like alternate universes. I think the idea of the South winning the Civil War or the Axis winning World War II is really interesting, and the idea of what society would be like today under those circumstances is even more so.
But there are a few that get really overused. The ones I listed above, in particular, are typical (think “City on the Edge of Forever”) of the genre. There’s nothing wrong with that; I’ve actually seen it pulled of really well more oten than not. But I begin to wonder about something more original than that.
Today I was browsing the ‘Kipedia and reading about Rome. I followed the link trail to the Roman military, and then Roman military campaigns, and then the Punic Wars, when Rome crushed its elder, Carthage.
Carthage. That hit me like a thunderbolt. What if the Carthaginians had smashed this young upstart empire and really gotten their act together? They were just one of many colonies that the Phoenicians had scattered around the Mediterranean and the eastern Atlantic. The Phoenician trade empire stretched as far west as the Straits of Gibraltar and western Spain. They had a veritable empire already, but their colonies were just colonies. They weren’t united as anything other than a loose network of trading outposts.
But if Carthage had had a ruler as strong as Hannibal, he (or she, considering the Carthaginian tradition of queens) could have could have united the Phoenicians into a cohesive empire. However, I’m going to assume that Carthage would wait to unify its brother colonies until they had destroyed Rome.
Carthage had an immensely strong navy that the Romans defeated because of the corvus, a boarding bridge that would be wedged between the ships, allowing infantry to storm the opposing ship. The Romans developed this after realizing how weak their navy was compared to the Carthaginians’, and how they could only really win if they could engage with infantry.
Carthage, however, didn’t outfit their ships with better guards or train better infantry, which was the reason they lost so badly in the First Punic war. Assuming they had, they could easily have fought the Romans back.
Let’s say that after the Romans added the corvus and won a few battles around Sicily, the Carthaginians adopted a rigorous infantry training procedure. They pulled their fleet back periodically, and when they counterattacked, the Romans were taken completely off guard by the new, more homogenous, disciplined Carthaginian infantry. The Carthaginians used ther numerical and technological ship advantage to overwhelm the Roman navy, fighting them away from Sicily and seizing most of Calabria (the “toe” of Italy).
The second Punic War consisted of a Roman resistance to the Carthaginian occupation. Hannibal was sent over by ship to quell the uprising, and, reinforced by fresh, well-trained troops, he advanced up Italy to Latium itself. Finally, the armies of Carthage brought Rome crumbling to the ground.
Carthage, by this point, had done away with its weaker, more vulnerable mercenary army and replaced them with a civilian and then professional force, more similar in design to the Legions. The mercenaries were revolt-prone, which was another reason Carthage was destroyed in reality.
Afterwards, I’ll say Hannibal became the ruler of Carthage, elected by the Carthaginian Senate in defiance of heredity, due to his actions as commander. He then adopted an aggressive unification policy, traveling to other Phoenician cities and allowing them the chance to join the newly-founded Phoenician Empire. If they refused, he muscled them into it. Finally, the Phoenicians stabilized their territories in Spain, Italy and expanded until they controlled the entire Arabian peninsula, much of Central Asia, Greece, Asia Minor and fringes of France and Germany.
But, similarly to its counterpart, it fell after a long while. Tribesmen from Africa, Arabian raiders and, of course, the Mongols all eventually caused it to splinter until it had been reduced to a scintilla of its former self. Soon, Carthage itself was sacked, and the reign of Carthage as the greatest empire in the world came to a close.
And what goes after that? Well, changes would definitely be made.
First, rather than being a monotheistic world, we would be polytheistic. I’m not going to add any kind of Christ figure popularizing Christianity. I can just say he was never born. The obvious counterpart is Muhammad, making the world Islamic, but I’ll say he wasn’t born either. So we’d have an enforced, modified Canaanite religion going on, with Ba’al, Astarte, Tanit and the rest, obviously in changed forms. Another interesting facet of Phoenician religion is that they believe that gods literally lived in their temples, and that the statue of the god housed them. Also, the Carthaginians sacrificed their youngest-born in times of strife or in the event of a stillbirth. I’m going to remove that practice.
Second, it appears the Carthaginians were, if not matriarchal, very egalitarian. Women didn’t serve in their armies, but they seemed to have a lot of power, because Queen Elissar and Queen Dido are the two most well-known Carthaginian queens, and also because the mother of a pantheon of gods had the most power. That would certainly have an impact on the present day, and it would be a stark contrast to the Roman “women are objects” philosophy.
Third, and most importantly, the world would be Afrocentric. The Punic Wars essentially shifted the focus of the world towards Europe, and if the Romans had lost, trade and imperial power would shift to the Africans. In the present day, the Germans, British and French would be the ones in the middle of horrible terrorist wars and the North African countries would be the ones with all the power. They’d be the remnants of their own great empires, possibly a resurgent Egypt or Numidia. They would have different place names, different heroes and different events, all because it was an African world.
I really like this setting. Not only does it seem like a fantastically innovative AU, but I can use it to make allegories about current politics without being too overt.
By the way, I started writing this at eleven. Therefore, no matter what the post date says, it dates to December 27. I ahve upheld my promise.
I demand more.