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subspaceteatime β The Land of Kurultai
#alternatehistory #cartography #map #mongolia
Published: 2016-01-08 17:34:35 +0000 UTC; Views: 20790; Favourites: 222; Downloads: 269
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Description
Here's a more book-style map for a, what else, ongoing book project I've been writing, titled The War of One Thousand Petals. The basic idea is that, in this world, Ogedei Khan survived a decade longer than he did in our world (though not without a few alcoholism scares), allowing for Subutai and Batu to complete their conquest of Europe, eventually making it as far as the Atlantic coast of France. Thus, Europe was integrated into the Mongol Empire along with the rest of the world. A new Khanate, the Khanate of Blue Horde under Batu's second son, Toqoqan, is set up to cover much of Western and Central Europe, with its capital in Paris. Though a quarter of Paris was burned, the new and rich Blue Horde would rebuild Paris to a city that surpassed Constantinople in grandeur and was inspired by the great cities of Khanbaliq and Jiangning.
The map depicts the world in 1300, with the Mongol Empire still at the lofty heights of its power, though now split into different factions. The largest is, of course, Yuan China, but the others are rich and powerful in their own ways, and it is guaranteed that no matter what becomes of the future, the Mongols will have a massive part in shaping it.
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Comments: 49
twf wen europe gets pwned by the mongols and brittania is left unscathed!Β
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Unbent, Unbowed, Unbroken
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Great map! Is this project(the written part) by any chance finished/publicly available?
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Unfortunately not, but thank you for the interest, I'll try to keep people updated.
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Great map and excellent world building!!Β Β Alternate Mongol Khanates are something I love to see!Β Β
Β I must ask, why did the Mongols not press farther down the Italian peninsula?Β Β Also, were the Mongols in any position to invade Britain here?
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Thank you very much, I'm glad you like!
The Mongols did not press further as at the time the effort was mostly to capture Rome. After that, the rest of the peninsula was easy to snag as clients and the like and they were working to consolidate their power on the rest of Europe anyway. The Mongols were not in any real position to invade Britain, no. They really got lucky with getting as much as they did simply with having so much land and peoples to digest, and infamously the Mongols have been terrible invaders over water. With politics getting nasty back home in Karakorum, it was left free in the same way Japan was.
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Oh wow very cool!Β Β
Do the associated states (Novgorod, Delhi sultanate, Dai Viet correct me if i'm wrong) pay tribute to the Great Khan in exchange for, say, protection and trade rights? Or are they buffer states with no real independence? Also, who controls Egypt and Jerusalem? Did the Caliph escape to Egypt like in OTL?
Sorry for all the questions. I am just fascinated with the scenario!Β Β Β
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Are the unoccupied bits of the Balkans dominated by the Latin Empire, Bulgaria, or Epirus?
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Yes. (It's complicated.)
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Trebizond never conquered by Mongols, They pay tax and send troops.
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That is very true. This is an alternate history map where the Mongols took over all of Egypt as well as more of Anatolia than in our world, however. It's not meant to be real history but fiction.
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Sory 
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Hmm.....interesting. Although the back story is a bit implausible(Mongols conquering most of Europe and all of China?), this is still a really good map, nonetheless.
(P.S. good luck with the book project!
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Having studied the Mongols a good deal for this map and the larger project, it's really not that implausible. The army sent to invade Europe in the early 1240s was quite separate from the one attacking China, and the Mongols had no problem, for example, taking Baghdad and the Abbasid Caliphate while fighting Song China, and Baghdad was easily more of a match for the Mongols than anything Europe could bring to bear at the time. Even in our world, the Mongols had quite effortlessly swept aside the best armies Europe could muster and most of the continent lay open upon the death of Khan Ogedei, which sent the Mongols back to Mongolia for a new choosing of the Khan. Had the Khan lived longer, a Mongol Europe is certainly not impossible or even implausible. How long it would last is hard to say, but the Mongols having Europe by 1300 is not difficult to accomplish.Β
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And then there's Novgorod.
"Yay! We are still alive!"
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Pretty much. They're under the Mongol thumb but allowed some autonomy, which they like.
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I assume this is inspired by RVBOmally's scenario, "the yellow man's burden", but with more of a direct conquest and control of europe by the mongols. Great work, anyway!
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No, not at all. This was inspired by my own research into the Mongol Empire.
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Oh.
Either way,Β how did the remaining european states react to the massive mongol invasion?
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At first, with great fear that they would be next on the dinner menu. Once things had calmed down, however, they mostly were positive toward opening up trade with the Mongol empire and using the disadvantage of the other Europeans as an advantage for themselves, having not been devastated by war or famine.
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1. Did the mongol invasions of Europe here contribute to the downfall of feudalism (because the mongols would be less willing to attack castles and more willing to attack villages, causing widespread panic and contempt against the ruling classes doing nothing to stop them), or did they help keep the system afloat (because feudal lords depend on barbarian invasions to keep their populace in line)?Β
2. Will the Khan of the Blue Horde ever convert to christianity?
3. What drove the mongols to invade Europe? Plundering the eye-choking ammounts of gold held by the nobility?
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1. They did, but not because they didn't take castles. I don't understand why people don't think Mongols can take castles. The Mongols took the walled city of Kaifeng, which was far larger and more sophisticated than anything in Europe at the time, and that was at the start of their wars. The Mongols here take European castles with ease. Uncooperative nobles are killed while those who bend the knee are allowed to rule over their people and pay tribute to the Blue Horde but in general feudalism is replaced by a more Chinese-style system of governance. Even after the Blue Horde dies out, the European system of government never reverts back to feudalism.
2. He does after a while, which creates friction between the Blue Horde and the Ilkhanate but turns out to be a good move as it allows him to ally himself with the Roman Catholic Church and keeps the Blue Horde going for longer than it would have otherwise.
3. For the reasons they did in our world, just successfully. They believed it was their right, duty, and divine mission to conquer everything beneath the Great Blue Sky. Europe was very poor compared to places they had already conquered (Persia, Central Asia, and China) so it wasn't the wealth so much as the desire to rule. Some parts of Europe, notably Paris and Hungary, actually end up much richer under the Blue Horde than otherwise.
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1. Once the age of sail comes, will the Blue Horde participate? And how?
2. Is land contact between Europe and China closer ITTL?
3. Has gunpowder been discovered earlier here?
4. What influence did the mongolic/turkic invaders bring to the european languages?
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I have to say, I find it funny that it's been almost a year since the last reply. But hey, happy to keep it going.
1. What the Blue Horde will be by then will be less Mongol, but still unlikely to do much. The Age of Sail IOTL was only really kickstarted by the Ottoman Turks taking Constantinople and denying Western nations access to the lucrative trading markets of the East. Not only do the Byzantines/Romans (they insist on using the term) still own Constantinople, but the Mongols in Europe create even more trading and cultural connections between the East and the West. While an Age of Sail does end up happening (though not quite to the extent of OTL and is due to the Byzantines/Romans deciding to not exactly be the nicest to the Catholic West), it's primarily in the areas the Mongols didn't occupy in Europe, notably Scandinavia, southern Italy, Spain, Portugal, and England.
2. Oh, very much so. Europe is far more attune to what goes on in China than in our world and in general the links are strong enough that parts of Europe feel closer to China than far western Europe.
3. It wasn't discovered earlier but spreads wildly and is taken up more readily by pretty much everyone due to the heavy Mongol usage of it (the first major battle involving gunpowder weapons, the Battle of Xiangyang,Β occurred between the Song dynasty and Mongols in the 1200s, after all).
4. About as much influence as they had on Russian in our world. The Mongols aren't numerous and their leaders fairly quickly adopt the languages of the people they manage. Ironically it's not the Mongol language that spreads like wildfire over the Blue Horde, but French as its status as a palace language and the capital in Paris makes it a necessity in the rest of the empire and the de facto trading, business, and government language for much of Europe. While it doesn't outright eradicate a lot of language, the influence of French is felt hundreds of years later.
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Cool!
1. What happened to the anatolian Seljuks?
2. Who controls southern Italy?
3. How are things in Iberia? Has the reconquista been completed earlier ITTL?
4. I heard you mentioning the mongols capturing Egypt. Why isn't it shown as one of the great hordes in this map?
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1. The Mongols helped with that, via an alliance with the Byzantines similar to OTL:Β en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byzantinβ¦
2. The Kingdom of Sicily. For a while held by the Holy Roman Emperor-in-exile, but ends up kind of doing its own thing later on. A bit more powerful due to a large population from refugees and close ties to the non-Mongol Mediterranean.Β
3. Muslim nations are badly affected by the Mongols and as such the reconquista is completed. Probably not incredibly earlier than OTL but it certainly is.
4. That was a typo, I meant to say "Europe".
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Took me a couple of looks over to finally realize that Pagan is part of China here. Aww shit yes, that is one of my secret obsessions.Β
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Looks very nice, thank you for keeping up the amazing quality!
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I presume the new Prime Meridian goes through everyone's sacred Mount Belukha?
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It's actually through a town in Bengal where the modern latitude and longitude system was developed rather than in Greenwich.Β
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Really interesting idea.
I wonder how this Blue Horde would've evolve
I guess they would've been quickly assimilated to the European civilization, in the same way than Ilkhanates with Persians & Golden Horde with Tatars. Perhaps it would've lead to a early united Europe with a common lingua franca (a neo-latin with mongol, french & germanic influence ?).
I guess Catholic Spain would've collapse between Blue Horde & Al Andalus
Very nice idea
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Yes, the Mongols in this world pretty quickly assimilated themselves into Europe. As somewhat stated, Paris is set up as a kind of new Rome and the Blue Horde ruled as the Neo-Roman/Neo-Carolingian Empire rather than as a purely Mongol Empire. French likely served as a lingua franca for the empire.
By 1241, Castile and Aragon had pushed the Muslims to the very south of Iberia (basically Granada and the Algarve) and were very much in power; their collapse was unlikely, to say the least.
Glad you like!
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Oh right, I always forget the chronology of Reconquista ^^'
Could we imagine a failed attempt to conquer Britain or Scandinavia, like they failed to conquer Japan 
Β I guess that sciences & knowledge would've travel more easily inside Eurasia, until the religious divisions between Blue Horde, Golden Horde and Ilkhanate lead to a war between each Mongol empire
Β I wonder however how the Blue Horde would've collapse. The rise of a "native" european dynasty like in China ? Conquest by a foreigner state like the Russian/Golden Horde wars ? Or division into many states like in Ilkhanate
Β Or perhaps, thanks to diplomatic weddings, they will success to stay at the head of this neo-Carolingian Empire
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Sad to see they didn't conquer Arabia and North Africa with it
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Probably not that sad for the people living there.
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Heresy! Only greatness can come with Mongol plunder, raiding, and destruction!
I saw that you said that you've been reading up on the Mongols. May I also recommend reading up on the good king Attila and the Huns as well
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Trust me, Attila is next on the list.
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Yes! May the Sword of God guide him to victory!
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Thank you! That means a ton, coming from you.
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Really stunnung Lynn, I still canΒ΄t understand how they managed to rule such a huge empire,
the fastest way to spread informations or order was a rider oO
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I've been reading books on the Mongols recently and it's incredibly fascinating. The most sophisticated system of bureaucracy the world had yet seen combined with the most advanced courier system in the world let them rule. It's still amazing how much they accomplished in our world.
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Indeed just amazing, but IΒ΄m still glad they couldnΒ΄t conquer all of Europe XD
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I kinda want this as a print, framed, on my wall xD Excellent work, Lynn!
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Awww, how kind of you! Thanks for the compliment!
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