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Purple Phoenix Reborn (Constantinople ISOT)

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Or the fur trade may go into an early boom from Elysium as they edge northwards. Because the Chinese did appreciate fur (ie, sea otter pelts in particular if I recall correctly) and were willing to trade for that, but since the Europeans had more silver they went with that until the full exploitation of the fur trade hit its stride in OTL.

Now in the case of England or other European powers without the extensive trade fleets that Spain possesses, may look instead again towards Russia for their precious metal needs. Russia may start its eastward expansion with more gusto far earlier, in order to explore for the shinies.
 
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AYC said:
So what exactly is the Islamic world going to think about Constantinople once its existence is revealed to the wider world? It's hard to interpret the ISOT as anything other than God explicitly and directly favoring Christianity over Islam in a pivotal moment of human history. That's probably going to lead to a crisis of faith for many, many Muslims.
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There are likely to be a few Islamic schisms down the line, yes.

MagisterAurelius said:
Or the fur trade may go into an early boom from Elysium as they edge northwards. Because the Chinese did appreciate fur (ie, sea otter pelts in particular if I recall correctly) and were willing to trade for that, but since the Europeans had more silver they went with that until the full exploitation of the fur trade hit its stride in OTL.

Now in the case of England or other European powers without the extensive trade fleets that Spain possesses, may look instead again towards Russia for their precious metal needs. Russia may start its eastward expansion with more gusto far earlier, in order to explore for the shinies.
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Indeed, the Europeans won't just sit around while their economy collapses due to insufficient shiny metals, if they can't get the shiny metals they need from the New World, they will look elsewhere instead. This may or may not go well, depending on the specifics.
 
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K von Carstein said:
Maybe they would look in Africa? The Portuguese could try colonising the continent instead of just putting commercial outpost?
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The Scramble for Africa happening a couple of centuries early is indeed a possible outcome, and Africa is quite rich in diamonds, platinum, gold and various other precious metals. (Though, interestingly, not silver.)

So while that will certainly help the European economies to a degree, unless the Ming and Qing Dynasties decide to accept something other than silver; which is much easier said than done as the Chinese economy was already well founded on silver from Japan by the mid 16th century to counteract the hyperinflation of their paper money, Africa won't solve the East\West trade problems by itself.

I don't know enough details regarding exactly how that was all put together though, but given that the Chinese were quite happy to trade gold for silver, I doubt that they will be willing to just drop silver. Which means that if another supply of silver cannot be located before the Japanese mines run dry, the economic crisis that led to the fall of the Ming and rise of the Qing will hit sooner and harder than it did in OTL, and the Qing will also end up 'inheriting' a much less economically stable nation without the influx of Spanish silver, which could have all kinds of knock-on effects.
 
Uhm, why would the Peruvian silver be unavailable for trade just because the Spanish don't have it? People are still going to be desperate to trade with China. Silver is the only thing that China will take. Therefore some method must be found to persuade whomever runs Peru to allow access to said silver...

But it's not like the SPANISH just gave the stuff to the rest of Europe, they bought stuff with silver, and that is how it came to the rest of Europe. So why wouldn't the Incans (if they are the Peruvian rulers) trade silver for horses, muskets, artillery, etc, etc?
 
Norseman said:
Uhm, why would the Peruvian silver be unavailable for trade just because the Spanish don't have it? People are still going to be desperate to trade with China. Silver is the only thing that China will take. Therefore some method must be found to persuade whomever runs Peru to allow access to said silver...

But it's not like the SPANISH just gave the stuff to the rest of Europe, they bought stuff with silver, and that is how it came to the rest of Europe. So why wouldn't the Incans (if they are the Peruvian rulers) trade silver for horses, muskets, artillery, etc, etc?
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It won't be unavailable, but it won't be available in the massive quantities at extremely low costs that it was OTL.

Peruvian silver wasn't great for the economies of the Old World because it was available in great quantities, but because it was also dirt cheap thanks to being mined by exploited, underpaid natives in terrible conditions with little to no thought given for the damage done to the local population, because said population were not European and therefore were not considered to really be people. It cost the Spanish basically nothing to mine the silver which could then be sold for 'full' prices in Europe, or even higher prices in China due to the Chinese having a different bimetallic ratio of silver to gold until the 1640s. That makes it less profitable, which means less merchants are interested, which means less volume is traded.

So if the silver lodes aren't owned by Europeans willing and able to exploit the natives for cheap labor, then it is unlikely that said natives will be willing to exploit themselves for cheap labor, which means less silver gets mined and it costs more to do so, lowering profits even further.


In short, there will be less silver coming out of the New World, and it will be more expensive to produce. Which will cause the various economic issues between Europe and China that came to a head in the 1800s to happen sooner, as the only reason those issues were delayed until the 1800s was because of the influx of cheap silver from the New World propping the European and Chinese economies up.
 
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AYC said:
So what exactly is the Islamic world going to think about Constantinople once its existence is revealed to the wider world? It's hard to interpret the ISOT as anything other than God explicitly and directly favoring Christianity over Islam in a pivotal moment of human history. That's probably going to lead to a crisis of faith for many, many Muslims.
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I think many of them will consider it the final condemnation of Mehmed the Second. The man has been known for quite a while as the monster who destroyed the city of worlds desire so throughly that not even bones remained. Soldiers returned home with tales that the city of Constantinople was slaughter down to the last man, woman, and child. While the scholars and Imams who accompanied the army refused to speak of what they saw, and a couple probably died in mysterious ways too (to help keep the secret).

The fact is for most of the Islamic world Mehmed was a monster and he encouraged that view.

While I'm sure a few secret scholars told the truth to their apprentices the fact is that for quite a while now Mehmed has been seen as a demon in human skin. Discovering that god delivered Constantinople to safety might not be viewed as a "god delivering Christians from Muslims" moment and more a "god delivering people from Mehmed" moment. Sure we know that Mehmed wasn't a monster and that he covered up the truth to protect his people, but aside from a few who might read between the lines most people believe Mehmed always intended to destroy Constantinople.

So when I say most Muslims might consider this to be the final condemnation of Mehmed I mean that to the Islamic world this might very look like god himself considered Mehmed so monstrous he needed to step in and save those who the man was planning to kill. Literally a divine sign proclaiming Mehmed as evil.

A negative reputation is a hell of a thing.
 
And 'God literally stepped in and rescued an entire city from the depredations of that guy' is just about the most negative reputation it is possible to have.

Like, that guy must be a real monster if God himself decided that this needed divine intervention; God didn't step in to save any cities from Attila the Hun or Genghis Khan, so what the fuck was Mehmed II planning on doing to Constantinople to get God himself directly involved for the first really major miracle since the resurrection of Christ over a thousand years earlier?
 
Neruz said:
The Scramble for Africa happening a couple of centuries early is indeed a possible outcome, and Africa is quite rich in diamonds, platinum, gold and various other precious metals. (Though, interestingly, not silver.)
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Maybe, maybe not. The Scramble for Africa happened when it did because of the discovery of the chinchona tree in Peru, the source of quinine - the scramble for Africa only happened after the discovery of said tree and the few decades needed for saplings taken to Europe and European controlled plantations to grow to harvestable size. Without European control of the Incan Empire, chances of Europeans discovering the properties of the chinchona tree are slim, and without chinchona, Europeans would not be able to survive malarial sub-Saharan Africa.
 
Zap Rowsdower said:
Maybe, maybe not. The Scramble for Africa happened when it did because of the discovery of the chinchona tree in Peru, the source of quinine - the scramble for Africa only happened after the discovery of said tree and the few decades needed for saplings taken to Europe and European controlled plantations to grow to harvestable size. Without European control of the Incan Empire, chances of Europeans discovering the properties of the chinchona tree are slim, and without chinchona, Europeans would not be able to survive malarial sub-Saharan Africa.
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Ah yes, that is a very good point; Africa, unlike the New World, had a nasty habit of murdering the shit out of Europeans with disease, which made it largely unviable for direct colonization.
 
Neruz said:
I can definitely see the Spanish silver trade being 'replaced' by a smaller but still extremely lucrative Roman silver trade, with the Romans trading New World silver to the Chinese in exchange for luxury goods, which are then traded to the native civilizations in exchange for silver, who then trade said Chinese luxury goods to Europe in exchange for desired European goods like steel and cannon, or something along those lines.
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A pity the Comstock lode required so much industrial technology to mine and process and transport. Otherwise I'd expect the Romans to be finding that lode right around then and while it's no Potosi it's also a literal mountain of silver, silver the gold-backed Roman economy doesn't need except for trade.
 
Neruz said:
And 'God literally stepped in and rescued an entire city from the depredations of that guy' is just about the most negative reputation it is possible to have.

Like, that guy must be a real monster if God himself decided that this needed divine intervention; God didn't step in to save any cities from Attila the Hun or Genghis Khan, so what the fuck was Mehmed II planning on doing to Constantinople to get God himself directly involved for the first really major miracle since the resurrection of Christ over a thousand years earlier?
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With our third-person omniscient perspective as readers, that actually makes Mehmed a fairly tragic figure from our perspective. We know from IOTL that he didn't want to destroy the city but instead make it the crown jewel of the Ottoman Empire. But ITTL an ASB has ensured he will always be known as a butcher.
 
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Neruz said:
There are likely to be a few Islamic schisms down the line, yes.
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There wouldn't be.

Realistically the reaction is going to be that the Turks are such shit people that God favoured the Greeks.

It wouldn't be considered a schismatic religious issue at all in the Islamic world.

Now in the world of the Great Schism that splits Chalcedonian Christianity, ie Catholicism and Greek Orthdoxy, clearly the Roman Catholic Church is gonna have some issues.
 
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I don't think there would be schisms or it would be impugned on the Turks. It would probably be seen as a moral denunciation of Mehmed II in particular or a sign from God that he had some moral failing.
 
It could also be that God has some particular plan for Constantinople that mortal conquerors can't be allowed to interfere with.
 
Everyone talks about how Islam will be effected, but Catholicism is gonna get hit pretty hard too, considering that this more or less shows that they were on the wrong side of the split
 
I'm not going to directly comment on the religious stuff, beyond saying there's a reason that one of the two main goals of the butterfly net was 'there needs to still be *a* Reformation'.
 
Yeah transporting Constantinople to the other side of the world is certainly more massively dramatic than lets say Pope Leo turning back Atilla the Hun and his army with mere words or apparently half the leaders who who's armies sacked Rome apparently dying within a year.

Though on the other hand no non-Christian army has ever succeeded in actually breaching Rome's walls since it went Christian though the Arabs did admittedly pillage parts of Rome that were outside the city walls and god didn't save Constantinople from the Venice hijacked fourth crusade just from the Sultan Mehmed II who in this world is considered a monster.

Edit: Its not hard to imagine a pretty universally negative view about Mehmed II developing among both Christian and Muslims which might well splash over onto his descendants for being relating to a man apparently so evil god stepped into to foil him.
 
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I'll drop one bone on religion, I suppose. Two of the major Christian sects (which aren't the sum total of major Christian denominations by the modern day, though I'm obviously not saying how many there are or what the others are) will end up creating an academic in-joke. One along the same vein as the Not-Holy, Not-Roman, Non-Empire jokes of our timeline.

The Roman Catholic Church* that is centered in Rome, but is not part of the Roman Empire nor related to it at all.

and

The Roman Orthodox Church** that is centered in the Roman Empire that does not (and has not for centuries) controlled Rome, and is on an entirely different continent.

This is not confusing to people who are either not-Christian or not from Arcadia or Europe. Not at all :V

*There is no great spoiler to say the Schism is hardly being healed, even by something like this. If nothing else, Catholic rulers are going to see the Catholic Church as a pillar of their power against Reformists and Orthodox power.

**Can hardly call it the Eastern Orthodox Church now, can we? That's still in Europe :p
 
Skywalker_T-65 said:
**Can hardly call it the Eastern Orthodox Church now, can we? That's still in Europe :p
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It's not called that?

That's a name used by people in casual conversation.

Officially it is and always has been the Orthodox Catholic Church.

What would be disputed is the Patriarchal titles, as the Ecumenical Patriarch can no longer minister to Greece and Anatolia, that jurisdiction would likely have fallen to two men, a Patriarch of Greece and the Holy Mountain, and a putative Patriarch of Pontus and Anatolia in Trebizond.

With Serbia and Moscow having and continuing to vie for primacy in the Balkans and Asia Minor.
 
Here's a fun little timeline or the Catholic and Orthodox churches. Notice some of the little details like with 1066. It appears that a good chunk of the church in England was rather Orthodox leaning and William's little adventure enforced towing the Catholic line.

Timeline of interesting coinkydinks

So if you look at the title pre-Great Schism, of The One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church, Constantinople could say, "Sure you can call yourself Roman Catholicism, we'll just take the other bits. Kindly call us The One Holy Orthodox and Apostolic Church, thank you very much.
 
I'm going on colloquial name there, for the joke, more than anything else.

(that is, most people think 'Eastern Orthodox Church' when they think about the name of that church, formal name entirely aside)
 
Skywalker_T-65 said:
(that is, most people think 'Eastern Orthodox Church' when they think about the name of that church, formal name entirely aside)
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Which is a thing they've favoured over the centuries to avoid confusion with the RCC.

Just pointing it out that in no way, or fashion would they actually call themselves that, when discussing things with an Emissary, King, or Emperor.

If they wanted to go really fancy they'd preface a letter with.

"These are the Words of The One Holy Orthodox and Catholic Church of the Roman Empire, overseen by the Primus Inter Pares among the Pentarchs and Patriarchs of the Church, The Ecumenical Patriarch who sits the See of Saint Andrew in New Rome."
 
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So question, I joked about this earlier but will there be people who actually blame Constantinople's relocation on Aliens or something instead of God?

How will religions unrelated to abrahamic ones respond to this?
 
King Washington said:
How will religions unrelated to abrahamic ones respond to this?
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Would they actually respond beyond thinking that the Abrahamic god picked a side?

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More interesting is that Ottoman Legitimacy will be completely shot as the news travels back to Europe though.

We will likely see revolts against Ottoman Rule being larger and stronger than historically, and most likely we can look at the Hasanid Sharifs of Mecca becoming a focal point of Islamic revival and an Arab revolt.
 
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