What if carthage won?

[Skitarii]

Debate

 

[Tomboy Respecter]

WE WUZ PHONESHEANS N SHIEEEET.

 

[DJ Grelle]

Difficult to say. Carthage was a trade empire and would never conquer the mediterranean like the romans did. That already has massive ramifications over pretty much the entire world. Europe would be different, christianity and islam probably wouldn't exist. More celtic areas then now.

 

[Lone MacReady]

Death to all Levant merchant sons. Their land was destined to be Roman.

 

[Some Manajerk]

I imagine there would be a much sharper cultural divide in europe. Celtic in the north, hellenic in the east. Have to wonder what greece and the succesor states would have come to if not for the constant roman meddling/wars.

 

[Certified_Autist]

Instead of being one of the most famous and most paraphrased sayings, the phrase "Carthago Delenda Est" would be a footnote and an ironic joke among historians.

Also, without a Rome in Europe it would be very interesting to see how those areas would develop. Greece was already mentioned but I would be very interested to see how a Northern Europe without Romans would have developed. Would the "barbarians" have been as much of a problem without a Roman Empire antagonizing them/pushing them out of lands? Would the Vikings ever have had a presence if Europe was full of propsering Celts and no declining empire to plunder? Or would their presence have been more successful with (presumably) less Celts having fighting experience? Would the Anglo-Saxon-Jutes ever have crossed the sea west from Germany to fill the vaccuum in England caused by Rome's fall and Viking invasion, or would they have remained in central Europe?

With no Rome there is probably no Catholic Church, which changes the religious landscape massively. And probably a less powerful Western Europe which might also lead Eastern Europe into more prominence. None of those countries would call their leaders Czars/Tzars though since that is a derivative of Caesar. With no Roman incursion into Middle East, Judaism probably stays contained to that area, and Christianity/Islam either never appear or do so differently, but I couldn't say how it would develop from there. I won't even go into the possible changes around the discovery of America by Vikings/Columbus/whoever.

I'm just scratching the surface. Carthage taking out Rome would change so many things its hard to say how the future would look.

 

[Magicicada_septendecula]

Science fiction writer Poul Anderson wrote a short story about this, "Delenda Est" where some time travelers meddle in Hannibal's invasion of Rome allowing him to win. They come back to the 20th century to find the Welsh controlling North America, the Hindus controlling Australia, and the Lithuanians controlling Russia. He does go a bit into why certain states become prominent in this scenario (for example, there was no falling Rome for the Germans to plunder so they never amount to much, so the Lithuanians end up filling the void in eastern Europe).

 

[axfaxf]

I don´t know or have any idea tbh. But I would want wild elephants roaming around Europe. Looking for fun and adventure.

 

[Mr Bunny]

Difficult to say. Carthage was a trade empire and would never conquer the mediterranean like the romans did. That already has massive ramifications over pretty much the entire world. Europe would be different, christianity and islam probably wouldn't exist. More celtic areas then now.

Counter, Christianity would have existed and still spread due to word of mouth because 12 guys ran all over the place talking about it, one got far as India but due to lack of unified authoritarian structure via the Roman Empire it may not have become the the top religion in Europe, because Christianity existed, Islam would exist and spread as it did by the sword, Islam becomes the top religion due to a lack of unified political structure from the "Carthage Christianity".

 

[Some Manajerk]

Also, without a Rome in Europe it would be very interesting to see how those areas would develop. Greece was already mentioned but I would be very interested to see how a Northern Europe without Romans would have developed. Would the "barbarians" have been as much of a problem without a Roman Empire antagonizing them/pushing them out of lands? Would the Vikings ever have had a presence if Europe was full of propsering Celts and no declining empire to plunder? Or would their presence have been more successful with (presumably) less Celts having fighting experience? Would the Anglo-Saxon-Jutes ever have crossed the sea west from Germany to fill the vaccuum in England caused by Rome's fall and Viking invasion, or would they have remained in central Europe?

I imagine that we would still have seen the various barbarian migrations and incursions, since roman empire or not the Mediterranean was still the center of wealthy trade, and the climate shifts would still have made their homelands less hospitable and given them more incentive to up stakes. without the roman empire unifying the lands they marched into to oppose them, i would guess they would have been much more successful in thier initial incursions, but also wouldn't have had a long lasting impact, as even the invasions of the western empire were rapidly absorbed into the native populations.

 

[DJ Grelle]

Counter, Christianity would have existed and still spread due to word of mouth because 12 guys ran all over the place talking about it, one got far as India but due to lack of unified authoritarian structure via the Roman Empire it may not have become the the top religion in Europe, because Christianity existed, Islam would exist and spread as it did by the sword, Islam becomes the top religion due to a lack of unified political structure from the "Carthage Christianity".

Christianity only grew out of the roman suppression of the jewish faith post great jewish revolt.
It'd be totally different if it even made the jump from ethnoreligion to global religion, so much that it can't even be called christianity at that point.
There are almost three full centuries between the punic wars (which meant the end of carthago) and the beginnings of christianity.

 

[Anime Tiddy]

With no Roman Empire to rule over Judea and vigorously crush Jewish revolts, there may not be such a large Jewish diaspora and the history of Israel/Palestine would likely be very different.

 

[Ughubughughughughughghlug]

Don't know a ton about Carthaginians, but some general thoughts:
As a people, the Carthaginians seem a lot more sympathetic than the Romans (merchant city-state republic versus warmongering slaver republic).
Latin was a very useful lingua franca, but you'd probably still have a lingua franca anyways; things like koine and Aramaic and whatever Mesopotamian language (Babylonian?) was used in Middle Eastern diplomacy all emerged without needing a state to impose them.
Romans are often described as being a very uncreative people who were good at diffusing technology and maintaining a society much more than actually inventing new things.
Without Roman republicanism, you might have different inspirations for governing systems much later on. Maybe the city-state model is a lot more popular, people glamorize loyalty to the polis rather than to the nation.

Overall, I feel like a Carthaginian world probably shapes up to be more humane and diverse. I figure that the Gauls probably end up being the core of Western Europe. You'll still eventually get German mass migrations.

There's a good book I agree with (Escape from Rome) that makes the case that big empires like the Romans and Chinese are actually much worse, long-term, than competitive great power systems. Basically, when elites have to fight each other, they don't have as much resources to exploit their own people. When they don't have credible competition (or their competition are like the nomads who'd repeatedly conquer China, small groups that were irresistible but also easily assimilated into their culture) they turn all their energy to exploiting their people and ramping up state security, which ends up making for an utterly worthless, stagnant society that does nothing useful and becomes a hellscape. Basically, empires like Rome, in the long term, make societies like China. If an empire is more medium-sized, like Russia or the Middle Eastern regimes, it isn't as bad. A world with Carthage surviving, I think, has less cultural cohesion across Europe - less pressure for unifying religion/language, for example - which would be bad for technology and art, but it would also I think diffuse power more which would be good.

 

[Ughubughughughughughghlug]

With regards to religion, there's a few themes I see come up a lot.
One is that desert areas seem to spawn monotheisms more, which I know the Hedjaz and Israel aren't all desert, but still. Mongolia is pretty open land and their Tengriism was kind of monotheistic. I think that

On the other hand, whenever a society gets complicated enough, there is a top-down push to centralize their priesthoods which eventually culminates in the creation of monotheism. Or your philosophers get smart enough to think how retarded paganism is. (Aryan paganism -> Zoroastrianism, Egyptian paganism -> Akhenaten, Canaanite paganism -> Judaism, lots of indigenous religious movements.)

There's also a tendency for established religions to end up spawning universalist, utopian religions that market themselves by offering easy solutions and better treatment for the downtrodden (Judaism -> Christianity, Hinduism -> Buddhism -> Pure Land Buddhism, etc.).

Anywhere you can get a reasonably sophisticated and large state, you'll eventually get a monotheism I think, and faster if it's desert, and more likely to be evangelizing if it's part of a multiethnic empire. Perhaps Carthage would end up spawning its OWN Semitic monotheistic Church.

 

[Marley Rathbone]

The Phoenicians, of course, were Greece's only rivals in colonizing the Mediterranean. And the Punic language was just a form of Phoenician, which was just simply - Aramaic.

There were Phoenician colonies in Modern Southern Spain, Morocco, France, Italy, Sicily, and in Asia minor the Aramaic speaking populations from Orontes and Euphrates river basins slowly settled in the Hellenic cities.

After Rome was gobbling up real estate, these communities were proselytized by Jews and that is the reason there were so many Jews in places like Spain, Morocco, and Turkey.

They were simply Aramaic-speaking Phoenicians who found it very easy to convert to a religion that 1) made them feel as part of a special, persecuted group which was nevertheless superior to all other nations that they lived in and 2) already spoke their language.

The Phoenician colonies of the Mediterranean became the Sephardic Jewish communities of the Middle Ages. They were converts.

 

[Alex Krycek]

A society that’s the inverse of China more or less. It would be more of a Maritime Power than a land power, focus more on trade than agriculture, probably have more client states than direct tribute states, and try to mediate conflicts rather than direct military actions and interference. I don’t see Punic ever becoming a monolithic language like Latin but more of a Trade Language like English is today. Eventually it will have an economic downturn and collapse.

As to religion I still believe Christianity and Islam would rise but Manichaeism probably would have persisted if not flourished with the help of traders.

 

[Lemmingwise]

Roma delende est

 

[Rome's rightful successor]

Not sure if Carthage could have lasted as long as western Rome.
The Carthaginians came from a background of the finest sailors of the ancient world. Maybe they could have invented deep sea sailing and explore new lands long before anyone else did from the old world in our timeline.
I think their reliance on foreign Mercenaries would ultimately doom them in the end.

 

[Akashic Retard]

Engine power would be measured in elephantpower instead of horsepower. Other than that there would be zero difference.

 

[Shitposting boogeyman]

We'd be having the baby burning debate instead of the abortion debate.