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Description

This is my entry in Round 2 of the B_Munro Cover Project. This map is not nearly as pretty as the maps other people made, but I hope the image alone tells a story and gives a good idea of what this world is like. I am not totally satisfied with this write-up and a longer one might come out at some point.

                                                                                                                                                          Khanates

The Mongol Conquests were the defining event of the second Christian millennium. Starting in 1206, when Genghis Khan united the Mongol tribes in their ancestral homeland, a series of related Mongol empires expanded to conquer much of Eurasia. From the Oder in the east to the Sea of Japan in the west and as far south as Arabia, a patchwork of Mongol-led states emerged which all paid homage to the Great Khan in Khanbaliq (formerly the Chinese northern capital) Within and without the Mongol empires, the ethnic and religious makeup of Eurasia changed dramatically. Loyal ethnic groups were resettled to positions advantageous to the Khans while disloyal provinces often saw depopulation. In addition, the coming of a Mongol horde often prompted mass migrations, and among three of the most prominent of these migrations were the voyages of the Europeans to New Europe, the Arabs to Africa, and the Chinese south into the islands of Nanyang.

    ·         The Mongol hordes have changed very much over the centuries. While in 1300 they were highly mobile absolute monarchies, the Chinese system of bureaucracy was adopted and has spread throughout all the Mongol states. Though they are not exactly centralized, they do have central governments. The Mongol language has become the language of government, culture, and commerce across Eurasia. Though the varieties spoken by the populace of the khanates differs, a trader from Lithuania could travel overland to China and have only minor language troubles. The Classical Mongol dialect (allegedly the form of the language spoken by Genghis Khan, but, more accurately, the Sinicized form spoken by his great-grandchildren) is found in courts across Eurasia and the Mongol literary canon is extensive.

    ·         Though the first Khanates were Tengrist, the Mongol Khans gradually converted to different faiths. Nestorian Christianity was first adopted by a Khan in Persia around 1375, and Nestorianism became the faith of the western hordes. Meanwhile, Vajrayana Buddhism caught on among the hordes in the east. In 1848, the Khanates all officially subscribe to one of these two religions, though the populations of the Khanates include other Christians, Muslims, all forms of Buddhists, and even some unconverted Tengrists.

    ·         The various Khans view each other as brothers, and the Great Khan as something between an elder brother and a father. Though the Great Khan has almost no influence over the day to day affairs of, say, Egypt, the prestige of the Great Khanate, who is viewed as a direct successor of Genghis, is immense. The current Great Khan, the elderly and infirm Rabban II, has no heirs, and his death will likely plunge the Great Khanate into civil war, something that will probably drag in every Mongol state.

    ·         The discovery of the continent of New Europe was prompted by the Mongol invasions of Europe between 1250 and 1325. The early years of the conquest saw thousands of refugees from the east flee into Germany, France, and the Low Countries, where they strained the economies and ultimately paved the way for the Mongols to conquer further west. Following the catastrophic Battle of Woppingen in 1308, which prompted fears that the Mongols would march all the way to the Atlantic, the then-French King made plans for a flight across the sea. In 1311, nearly 2,000 ships departed European ports and nearly two months later landed on the shores of New Europe. Over the next few decades, many more thousands of Europeans, primarily Germans, French, and Italians, fled to this new world. By 1500, the borders of Europe had stabilized and the Mongols had been pushed out of Germany and though immigration would continue across the ocean, it steeply declined, leaving Europe and New Europe to go separate directions.

    ·         Since then, Europe has undergone many changes and regions that were once insignificant have become powerful. The French Kingdom has shattered irreparably, and the Bretons have managed to conquer Normandy. Meanwhile, England’s massive naval expenditures during the 1400s allowed the Scots and Welsh to get a leg up, and polities exist in both those lands that are fervently anti-English. With the Mongols on the eastern border and a strong Muslim state in North Africa, Europe has long felt like a continent under siege, something that has led to heavy militarization and religious turmoils. The Jews were believed in the 16th century to be allies of the Mongols, something that led to their expulsion from nearly every European state in that century. The Jews either went to more tolerant Muslim or Mongol states or settled in Holland, where they eventually became the majority. In 1792, a priest in Baden broke with the Catholic Church, decrying it as overly focused on worldly affairs. He raised a peasant army and his sect of Christianity became known as Expeller Christianity, a comparison to Jesus’ expulsion of the moneylenders from the temple. After decades of peasant revolt, the Kingdom of Free Peasants, a theocratic Expeller republic, was established in Central Europe. Expeller Christianity remains popular among peasants outside the Kingdom and is an existential threat to the old order.

    ·         The League of New Europe encompasses almost all of the states established by Europeans fleeing across the Atlantic. The League’s central government is comprised of delegates from all constituent kingdoms, and directs major policy. Though in theory the League Council’s decrees are not binding, a culture of compliance has grown up. Though it is linguistically diverse, with representation of most European languages and numerous indigenous languages, the League functions smoothly and internal disputes rarely end in bloodshed. Religiously, most of the League is New World Catholic, an offshoot of Roman Catholicism that had its start when a contingent of cardinals from New Europe arrived in the Papal Seat of Canterbury for a conclave only to find a new Pope had already been elected. They returned to New Europe and elected their own Pope, hoping that would be a symbol to Europe, but the rift never healed and two separate churches developed. One of the biggest differences between these two churches is that the New World Catholics allow mass to be performed in any language, while Old Catholics still use Latin.

    ·         When the Mongols conquered the Middle East, a great many Arabs fled to East Africa and Muslim regions of Central and West Africa. In the following centuries, the center of the Muslim world shifted from Arabia and the Levant to the cities of the Niger and the ports of the Swahili Coast. Mali, which became the nucleus of a large empire, was a hub of Islamic scholarship. Islam would penetrate further down the African coasts and into the interior while the seafaring Muslim powers of the Neo-Idrisids and Mali would voyage across the Atlantic and settle the imaginatively-named continent of New Africa. Islam would have a rupture in 1579 when, in reaction to the decline of the prominence of the Arabs in the Islamic world, the Quran was translated into Swahili. In the next few centuries, Sunni Islam was divided into “Vulgar” and “Pure” factions which supported translation of the Quran and opposed it, respectively. Vulgar Sunnism has become predominant throughout much of Africa and New Africa, though many Old Sunnis still exist and practice their faith. These days parts of Africa are among the most technologically advanced, which is interesting, as there are other parts of Africa that are still populated by hunter-gatherers.

    ·         New Africa is divided between Idrisid and Malian colonies in the east and independent indigenous empires in the west. Almost all of New Africa, including the empires that have never come under direct Old World control, have been converted to Islam. While most of these Muslims are Vuglar Sunnis, an Old Sunni state was established after a revolt in the Moroccan colony of New Palestine. In the south, the Aymara Empire, a massive state that revolted from the decaying Tawantinsuyu, follows its own brand of Sunniism that labels the Aymara people as the chosen and Aymara as the language of God.

    ·         The Indian subcontinent has been forced to focus southwards since the Mongols conquered the north and boxed them in. Indian ships can be found sailing between Nanyang, Kumari Kandam, and East Africa, something that has made the Indian states very rich. These states have some overseas colonies but more recently have made peace with the Red Horde and increased trade with them.

    ·         The Chinese Empire in exile is run from Shuijing (water capital, in reference to its position on the sea) on the coast of Borneo. The Chinese flight from the Mongols was massive, and ethnic Chinese overran much of the Philippines, Nanyang, and portions of Indochina. The population these days is a mixture of natives and Chinese, though power is concentrated in the hands of Chinese. Interestingly, TTLs Chinese is much more influenced by Yue, Hakka, and Min, as people from the south were heavily represented in the flight. Though the descendants of the Europeans and Arabs that fled before the Mongols have settled in and consider New Europe and Africa their homelands, respectively, the Chinese still consider China proper their homeland, and their current residences as temporary lodgings until their ancestral homeland is reconquered.

    ·         South of Nanyang, the continent known as Nandao, Kumari Kandam, and Whenua o Iwi Puri is divided between three different colonial powers and the pre-industrial natives. The Chinese and Indian colonies in the north and west are focused on resource extraction (though this has not gone especially well) while the Māori colonies in the east are the result of migration from their homeland. The Māori have managed to become a major Pacific Empire under the United Iwi. The United Iwi serves as a federation to coordinate the various Iwi (a form of organization with aspects of clan and kingdom) and under the United Iwi, the Māori have expanded throughout the Pacific as far as Hawai’i, which has fallen under the sway of the iwi of Ngāti Whātua.

    ·         Technologically, this world stagnated sometime after the Mongol conquests. Though most of the world has technology analogous to the OTL year of 1700, portions of Africa, New Europe, and Nanyang are further ahead and perhaps on the verge of an industrial revolution.

Description

This is my entry in Round 2 of the B_Munro Cover Project. This map is not nearly as pretty as the maps other people made, but I hope the image alone tells a story and gives a good idea of what this world is like. I am not totally satisfied with this write-up and a longer one might come out at some point.

                                                                                                                                                          Khanates

The Mongol Conquests were the defining event of the second Christian millennium. Starting in 1206, when Genghis Khan united the Mongol tribes in their ancestral homeland, a series of related Mongol empires expanded to conquer much of Eurasia. From the Oder in the east to the Sea of Japan in the west and as far south as Arabia, a patchwork of Mongol-led states emerged which all paid homage to the Great Khan in Khanbaliq (formerly the Chinese northern capital) Within and without the Mongol empires, the ethnic and religious makeup of Eurasia changed dramatically. Loyal ethnic groups were resettled to positions advantageous to the Khans while disloyal provinces often saw depopulation. In addition, the coming of a Mongol horde often prompted mass migrations, and among three of the most prominent of these migrations were the voyages of the Europeans to New Europe, the Arabs to Africa, and the Chinese south into the islands of Nanyang.

    ·         The Mongol hordes have changed very much over the centuries. While in 1300 they were highly mobile absolute monarchies, the Chinese system of bureaucracy was adopted and has spread throughout all the Mongol states. Though they are not exactly centralized, they do have central governments. The Mongol language has become the language of government, culture, and commerce across Eurasia. Though the varieties spoken by the populace of the khanates differs, a trader from Lithuania could travel overland to China and have only minor language troubles. The Classical Mongol dialect (allegedly the form of the language spoken by Genghis Khan, but, more accurately, the Sinicized form spoken by his great-grandchildren) is found in courts across Eurasia and the Mongol literary canon is extensive.

    ·         Though the first Khanates were Tengrist, the Mongol Khans gradually converted to different faiths. Nestorian Christianity was first adopted by a Khan in Persia around 1375, and Nestorianism became the faith of the western hordes. Meanwhile, Vajrayana Buddhism caught on among the hordes in the east. In 1848, the Khanates all officially subscribe to one of these two religions, though the populations of the Khanates include other Christians, Muslims, all forms of Buddhists, and even some unconverted Tengrists.

    ·         The various Khans view each other as brothers, and the Great Khan as something between an elder brother and a father. Though the Great Khan has almost no influence over the day to day affairs of, say, Egypt, the prestige of the Great Khanate, who is viewed as a direct successor of Genghis, is immense. The current Great Khan, the elderly and infirm Rabban II, has no heirs, and his death will likely plunge the Great Khanate into civil war, something that will probably drag in every Mongol state.

    ·         The discovery of the continent of New Europe was prompted by the Mongol invasions of Europe between 1250 and 1325. The early years of the conquest saw thousands of refugees from the east flee into Germany, France, and the Low Countries, where they strained the economies and ultimately paved the way for the Mongols to conquer further west. Following the catastrophic Battle of Woppingen in 1308, which prompted fears that the Mongols would march all the way to the Atlantic, the then-French King made plans for a flight across the sea. In 1311, nearly 2,000 ships departed European ports and nearly two months later landed on the shores of New Europe. Over the next few decades, many more thousands of Europeans, primarily Germans, French, and Italians, fled to this new world. By 1500, the borders of Europe had stabilized and the Mongols had been pushed out of Germany and though immigration would continue across the ocean, it steeply declined, leaving Europe and New Europe to go separate directions.

    ·         Since then, Europe has undergone many changes and regions that were once insignificant have become powerful. The French Kingdom has shattered irreparably, and the Bretons have managed to conquer Normandy. Meanwhile, England’s massive naval expenditures during the 1400s allowed the Scots and Welsh to get a leg up, and polities exist in both those lands that are fervently anti-English. With the Mongols on the eastern border and a strong Muslim state in North Africa, Europe has long felt like a continent under siege, something that has led to heavy militarization and religious turmoils. The Jews were believed in the 16th century to be allies of the Mongols, something that led to their expulsion from nearly every European state in that century. The Jews either went to more tolerant Muslim or Mongol states or settled in Holland, where they eventually became the majority. In 1792, a priest in Baden broke with the Catholic Church, decrying it as overly focused on worldly affairs. He raised a peasant army and his sect of Christianity became known as Expeller Christianity, a comparison to Jesus’ expulsion of the moneylenders from the temple. After decades of peasant revolt, the Kingdom of Free Peasants, a theocratic Expeller republic, was established in Central Europe. Expeller Christianity remains popular among peasants outside the Kingdom and is an existential threat to the old order.

    ·         The League of New Europe encompasses almost all of the states established by Europeans fleeing across the Atlantic. The League’s central government is comprised of delegates from all constituent kingdoms, and directs major policy. Though in theory the League Council’s decrees are not binding, a culture of compliance has grown up. Though it is linguistically diverse, with representation of most European languages and numerous indigenous languages, the League functions smoothly and internal disputes rarely end in bloodshed. Religiously, most of the League is New World Catholic, an offshoot of Roman Catholicism that had its start when a contingent of cardinals from New Europe arrived in the Papal Seat of Canterbury for a conclave only to find a new Pope had already been elected. They returned to New Europe and elected their own Pope, hoping that would be a symbol to Europe, but the rift never healed and two separate churches developed. One of the biggest differences between these two churches is that the New World Catholics allow mass to be performed in any language, while Old Catholics still use Latin.

    ·         When the Mongols conquered the Middle East, a great many Arabs fled to East Africa and Muslim regions of Central and West Africa. In the following centuries, the center of the Muslim world shifted from Arabia and the Levant to the cities of the Niger and the ports of the Swahili Coast. Mali, which became the nucleus of a large empire, was a hub of Islamic scholarship. Islam would penetrate further down the African coasts and into the interior while the seafaring Muslim powers of the Neo-Idrisids and Mali would voyage across the Atlantic and settle the imaginatively-named continent of New Africa. Islam would have a rupture in 1579 when, in reaction to the decline of the prominence of the Arabs in the Islamic world, the Quran was translated into Swahili. In the next few centuries, Sunni Islam was divided into “Vulgar” and “Pure” factions which supported translation of the Quran and opposed it, respectively. Vulgar Sunnism has become predominant throughout much of Africa and New Africa, though many Old Sunnis still exist and practice their faith. These days parts of Africa are among the most technologically advanced, which is interesting, as there are other parts of Africa that are still populated by hunter-gatherers.

    ·         New Africa is divided between Idrisid and Malian colonies in the east and independent indigenous empires in the west. Almost all of New Africa, including the empires that have never come under direct Old World control, have been converted to Islam. While most of these Muslims are Vuglar Sunnis, an Old Sunni state was established after a revolt in the Moroccan colony of New Palestine. In the south, the Aymara Empire, a massive state that revolted from the decaying Tawantinsuyu, follows its own brand of Sunniism that labels the Aymara people as the chosen and Aymara as the language of God.

    ·         The Indian subcontinent has been forced to focus southwards since the Mongols conquered the north and boxed them in. Indian ships can be found sailing between Nanyang, Kumari Kandam, and East Africa, something that has made the Indian states very rich. These states have some overseas colonies but more recently have made peace with the Red Horde and increased trade with them.

    ·         The Chinese Empire in exile is run from Shuijing (water capital, in reference to its position on the sea) on the coast of Borneo. The Chinese flight from the Mongols was massive, and ethnic Chinese overran much of the Philippines, Nanyang, and portions of Indochina. The population these days is a mixture of natives and Chinese, though power is concentrated in the hands of Chinese. Interestingly, TTLs Chinese is much more influenced by Yue, Hakka, and Min, as people from the south were heavily represented in the flight. Though the descendants of the Europeans and Arabs that fled before the Mongols have settled in and consider New Europe and Africa their homelands, respectively, the Chinese still consider China proper their homeland, and their current residences as temporary lodgings until their ancestral homeland is reconquered.

    ·         South of Nanyang, the continent known as Nandao, Kumari Kandam, and Whenua o Iwi Puri is divided between three different colonial powers and the pre-industrial natives. The Chinese and Indian colonies in the north and west are focused on resource extraction (though this has not gone especially well) while the Māori colonies in the east are the result of migration from their homeland. The Māori have managed to become a major Pacific Empire under the United Iwi. The United Iwi serves as a federation to coordinate the various Iwi (a form of organization with aspects of clan and kingdom) and under the United Iwi, the Māori have expanded throughout the Pacific as far as Hawai’i, which has fallen under the sway of the iwi of Ngāti Whātua.

    ·         Technologically, this world stagnated sometime after the Mongol conquests. Though most of the world has technology analogous to the OTL year of 1700, portions of Africa, New Europe, and Nanyang are further ahead and perhaps on the verge of an industrial revolution.