The Roman Empire is getting it. Manila is already a Roman town.
An Age of Miracles: The Revival of Rhomanion
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The Roman Empire is getting it. Manila is already a Roman town.
MarshalBraginsky
Banned
Just read it, and the Romans might want to pay attention to lands north and south of Pyrgos/Maynila.
Will be very interested to learn more about what has been happening in Egypt, Sicily and Carthage. I Especially want to know if the Komnenos Dynasty will continue to reign in Egypt or will we see another family take the reigns.
I wonder what is the lingua franca of this alternate Philippines. A Greek-Malay-Kapampangan-Tagalog creole/koiné?
Hey. this may be a very very unusual question here but...
Will there be some sort of Titanic analogue in this timeline? that is, unless people manage to learn the lesson without that huge disaster.
Will there be some sort of Titanic analogue in this timeline? that is, unless people manage to learn the lesson without that huge disaster.
Right now the Philippines is wholly native owned, except for the Roman enclave at Pyrgos/Maynila, which is directly controlled by Constantinople (at least as much as one can say for a settlement on the opposite side of Asia with 16th century communications technology). As of now, the Romans view Pyrgos as a big trading post/naval base for raiding China and trading with Japan. Little interest has thus far been expressed in the islands themselves with attention focused on the much more lucrative Moluccas.
While there is some minority support, Constantinople is not interested in European expansion. It is viewed as high-risk, low-reward, and thus a bad investment. However Rhomania is investing a whole lot of soft power, as will become apparent in a few updates.
In terms of languages, I am thinking of a Greek-Sinhala creole for the Roman West Indies and a Greek-Malay for the Roman East Indies. The former is well on its way, and the latter is just getting started. The two will be as close to each other as Sinhala and Malay are IOTL, so learning 'Imperial' Greek will still be a high priority for eastern Romans.
I have no plans for a Titanic-analogue, but I don't have developed plans for anything past 1670, with a couple of exceptions.
The next several updates prior to the next narrative segment are all on the shorter side, but at least that means I post them faster.
"A prince should never be in debt. For a prince who owes money to another is only half a prince, and he who holds the debt holds the other half of the prince."-Theodoros IV Komnenos
1579: They call it Carthage; it is really Tunis. Historical Carthage is a heap of ruins. Modern Carthage is medieval Tunis with a Genoese facelift and some Greek makeup. Although the ruling ducal family still styles themselves Barcids, the brief attempt to conjure back ancient Carthage has been dropped. There are no Hannibals or Hannos in the street; it was a court phenomenon which has long since become a stale and forgotten fad.
But just like the city of a hundred years ago when the attempt reached its minuscule peak and its ancient namesake, Carthage is a city of trade. With fifty thousand inhabitants it is the sixth largest on the African continent after Alexandria (90,000), Mbanza Kongo (80,000), Marrakesh (65,000), Gonder (60,000), and Algiers (55,000). Exporting dates, rice, olive oil, sponges, coral, fish, oranges, lemons, and limes, the Carthaginians have slowly but steadily used the wealth derived from trade, plus Roman court titles (and associated stipends) to build a series of Berber clients, vassals, and allies. Their patronage network now extends over more than a quarter of the old Muslim province of Ifriqiya.
Although the city is part of the Roman Empire, the roman element is very light on the ground. Both Carthage and Constantinople know that the current arrangement is voluntary, but both find it mutually agreeable. Carthage gets direct and customs-free access to Roman textiles and jewelry, extremely useful for greasing the wheels of their African patronage network, as well as Pontic naval stores crucial for maintaining their merchant and war fleet. Rhomania gets a useful naval base in the central Mediterranean with a couple of galley squadrons, a small yearly tribute, and Carthage provides the provisions for the Malta garrison and provincial squadron save the kaffos and sugar ration.
Unlike both Sicily and Egypt which have strictures, Carthage has a de jure unfettered foreign policy, although in Arles Carthaginians piggyback on the Romans’ most-favored-nation status when it comes to trade. In Al-Andalus on the other hand the trade agreements are distinct between the Romans and Carthaginians. The only Catholic Despotate, Carthage also has a close working relations with the Hospitaliers based in Minorca, who also have a hospital in Carthage.
The decades since the Time of Troubles have been a time of growth for the Despotate of Sicily. Although Naples (100,000) and Palermo (60,000) are the largest cities, the wealth is in Bari, Syracuse (30,000 each), and the capital of Messina (35,000). Those three are oriented east towards the Roman Empire and thus have greater access to Roman capital and exports. Both Messina and Syracuse have sizeable Greek and mixed-blood minorities, while Bari is as Greek as Thessaloniki.
Sicily produces grain, rice, fruit, and some sugar, and the grape and olive are wildly cultivated. Sheep ranching is common, particularly in the Apulian pasture lands. Most exports go to the Romans, who reciprocates with textiles, spices, armaments, and jewelry. There is not much industry outside Messina, Syracuse, and Bari, although the glassworks of the latter are justly famous for the quality of their handworks. When outfitting his royal palace in Riga, Anastasios commissioned the chandeliers from Bari.
Also in Bari is a large meat-packing industry closely linked to the salt pans of Venetia. Although only with 55,000 inhabitants (mostly Greeks, Croats, and Jews), the Queen of the Adriatic justly deserves her title. Spices, silk, and porcelain from or going through the Empire into the vast market of Germany all flows through Venetia, making it one of the greatest ports of the Mediterranean. Salt, fish, and printing are the other mainstays of the Venetian economy. The city’s importance is recognized; the Kephale is ranked fourth only behind the Kephales of Antioch, Smyrna, and Thessaloniki.
Egypt is the largest of the despotates, but even its 3.5 million inhabitants is merely slightly more than quarter the numbers of the Roman Empire proper. Seventy percent of those are Arabs (Muslims), twenty percent Copts, and the remainder a mix mostly of Greeks, Ethiopians, and ‘Nile Germans’. Mostly Franconian and Swabian immigrants attracted by the Komnenid Duxes’ promises of tax-free land grants, they number about 60,000 at the time, concentrated mostly along the Nile just south of where the delta begins.
Alexandria, chief metropolis of Egypt, far outweighs the other cities of the Despotate. Its waterfront is just as busy as Constantinople or Smyrna or Venetia or Antwerp, and virtually every product produced in Eurasia can be found in its shops. But many of those shops and virtually all of the ships are not owned by native Egyptians. A monolingual member of the Alexandrian upper middle or upper class is more likely to just speak Greek rather than Coptic.
The Despotate’s only significant exports are grain and cotton, although it does the former in prodigious quantities. The other cargoes leaving the Alexandrian waterfront for the Mediterranean world are spices, porcelain, ivory, slaves, kaffos, and precious stones, the products of Africa and Asia. The African cargoes are usually in Ethiopian hands, the Asian in Roman ones. The Egyptian involvement is restricted to that of the longshoreman.
A great deal of imports also remain in Egypt, mostly from the Imperial heartland. Although Egypt produces cotton, most of the raw fibers are shipped to Opsikia, spun, woven, and dyed in the workshops of Skammandros and Mysia, and the finished textiles then shipped out to be sold, sometimes back to Egypt. The Despotate also has to import practically all of its timber, iron, bronze, and gunpowder, the necessary accoutrements of a modern military (Unlike the Despotate, the Mamelukes had mercantile contacts throughout the Muslim world and access to Syrian resources, so that even though they had similar problems it was not nearly to the same extent). As a result, rather than import the raw materials and make the weapons locally, armaments are almost entirely ordered from Roman workshops.
Thus despite its larger size, Egypt is economically and militarily much more dependent on the Imperial heartland then either Carthage or especially Sicily, which has small weapons manufactories and shipyards (including a drydock in Messina) in both eastern Sicily and Calabria. Because of the expense and unwillingness to tap the Arabs for manpower, Alexandria only commands three tagmata. Financed in the late Laskarid model with both land grants and cash payments for both officers and men and concentrated in the Delta, it is the same muster as that of Messina even though the de Lecce-Komnenoi only have 2.5 million subjects, a million less than the Egyptian Komnenoi.
The Egyptian tagmata are stationed in the Delta. In Alexandria two full-time salaried guard tourmai have their barracks, but garrisons in the rest of the country are manned by shifts of the tagmata and militia recruited from the Copts and Nile Germans. By far the largest garrison is that maintained in the citadel of Cairo, four thousand strong and comprised of one thousand tagmatic soldiers and the remainder militia.
Cairo is the second city of Egypt but at twenty six thousand souls (not including the garrison) it is a pathetic shadow of its former glory. Many districts of the city are still in ruins, used as garden plots by the occupants of the cleared district. Theodora Komnena Drakina estimated that aside from the garrison, there were a mere three hundred Christians in Cairo. Most of the Cairenes are laborers working in shipping or canal maintenance as Cairo is the western terminus of ‘Andreas’ Canal’, the most recent variant of the ancient Pharaoh’s Canal.
The eastern terminus is Suez, seventeen thousand inhabitants, which is wholly Greek/Ethiopian dominated. A Roman enclave, the garrison is a thousand soldiers rotated from the Roman tagmata but provisioned by Egyptian foodstuffs. Shipping is also the mainstay of the city but after the establishment of the yards in Taprobane only galleys are constructed here, both to patrol the sea and to ferry goods from Aden and Zeila so that sailing ships do not have to brave the treacherous waters of the Red Sea.
The despotic palace in Alexandria is a fount of patronage for Copt artists, architects, poets, and musicians but the numerous ancient Egyptian monuments and temples are used as quarries, not as artistic inspiration. The seeding interest in Pharaonic Egypt is of wholly Greek origin, mostly inspired by a new edition of Herodotus published in Smyrna. Theodora commissions a translation of the history into German, the first of its kind, specifically to send a sumptuously decorated and bound copy as a gift to Wilhelm, who knew the work only through a mediocre Latin edition commissioned in Venice in the 1460s.
The countryside of the Delta is controlled mostly by small Copt landowners, but south of the Nile German colony, the land is made up of vast estates owned by Coptic landowners and worked by Muslim serfs who provide corvee labor and half of their produce in payment to their masters. The landowners may punish any serf with up to twenty two lashes if male, fourteen if female, although if they want to impose a harsher sentence they must get authorization from the local district judge.
In theory the serfs can appeal against the landowners’ sentences but the magnates are very adept at bribing the judges to throw out the appeals on a convenient technicality. The Duxes are aware of the practice but the landowners are powerful and their grain shipments are the primary commodity with which the Duxes acquire Roman imports. It would not do to anger them.
While there is some minority support, Constantinople is not interested in European expansion. It is viewed as high-risk, low-reward, and thus a bad investment. However Rhomania is investing a whole lot of soft power, as will become apparent in a few updates.
In terms of languages, I am thinking of a Greek-Sinhala creole for the Roman West Indies and a Greek-Malay for the Roman East Indies. The former is well on its way, and the latter is just getting started. The two will be as close to each other as Sinhala and Malay are IOTL, so learning 'Imperial' Greek will still be a high priority for eastern Romans.
I have no plans for a Titanic-analogue, but I don't have developed plans for anything past 1670, with a couple of exceptions.
The next several updates prior to the next narrative segment are all on the shorter side, but at least that means I post them faster.
"A prince should never be in debt. For a prince who owes money to another is only half a prince, and he who holds the debt holds the other half of the prince."-Theodoros IV Komnenos
1579: They call it Carthage; it is really Tunis. Historical Carthage is a heap of ruins. Modern Carthage is medieval Tunis with a Genoese facelift and some Greek makeup. Although the ruling ducal family still styles themselves Barcids, the brief attempt to conjure back ancient Carthage has been dropped. There are no Hannibals or Hannos in the street; it was a court phenomenon which has long since become a stale and forgotten fad.
But just like the city of a hundred years ago when the attempt reached its minuscule peak and its ancient namesake, Carthage is a city of trade. With fifty thousand inhabitants it is the sixth largest on the African continent after Alexandria (90,000), Mbanza Kongo (80,000), Marrakesh (65,000), Gonder (60,000), and Algiers (55,000). Exporting dates, rice, olive oil, sponges, coral, fish, oranges, lemons, and limes, the Carthaginians have slowly but steadily used the wealth derived from trade, plus Roman court titles (and associated stipends) to build a series of Berber clients, vassals, and allies. Their patronage network now extends over more than a quarter of the old Muslim province of Ifriqiya.
Although the city is part of the Roman Empire, the roman element is very light on the ground. Both Carthage and Constantinople know that the current arrangement is voluntary, but both find it mutually agreeable. Carthage gets direct and customs-free access to Roman textiles and jewelry, extremely useful for greasing the wheels of their African patronage network, as well as Pontic naval stores crucial for maintaining their merchant and war fleet. Rhomania gets a useful naval base in the central Mediterranean with a couple of galley squadrons, a small yearly tribute, and Carthage provides the provisions for the Malta garrison and provincial squadron save the kaffos and sugar ration.
Unlike both Sicily and Egypt which have strictures, Carthage has a de jure unfettered foreign policy, although in Arles Carthaginians piggyback on the Romans’ most-favored-nation status when it comes to trade. In Al-Andalus on the other hand the trade agreements are distinct between the Romans and Carthaginians. The only Catholic Despotate, Carthage also has a close working relations with the Hospitaliers based in Minorca, who also have a hospital in Carthage.
The decades since the Time of Troubles have been a time of growth for the Despotate of Sicily. Although Naples (100,000) and Palermo (60,000) are the largest cities, the wealth is in Bari, Syracuse (30,000 each), and the capital of Messina (35,000). Those three are oriented east towards the Roman Empire and thus have greater access to Roman capital and exports. Both Messina and Syracuse have sizeable Greek and mixed-blood minorities, while Bari is as Greek as Thessaloniki.
Sicily produces grain, rice, fruit, and some sugar, and the grape and olive are wildly cultivated. Sheep ranching is common, particularly in the Apulian pasture lands. Most exports go to the Romans, who reciprocates with textiles, spices, armaments, and jewelry. There is not much industry outside Messina, Syracuse, and Bari, although the glassworks of the latter are justly famous for the quality of their handworks. When outfitting his royal palace in Riga, Anastasios commissioned the chandeliers from Bari.
Also in Bari is a large meat-packing industry closely linked to the salt pans of Venetia. Although only with 55,000 inhabitants (mostly Greeks, Croats, and Jews), the Queen of the Adriatic justly deserves her title. Spices, silk, and porcelain from or going through the Empire into the vast market of Germany all flows through Venetia, making it one of the greatest ports of the Mediterranean. Salt, fish, and printing are the other mainstays of the Venetian economy. The city’s importance is recognized; the Kephale is ranked fourth only behind the Kephales of Antioch, Smyrna, and Thessaloniki.
Egypt is the largest of the despotates, but even its 3.5 million inhabitants is merely slightly more than quarter the numbers of the Roman Empire proper. Seventy percent of those are Arabs (Muslims), twenty percent Copts, and the remainder a mix mostly of Greeks, Ethiopians, and ‘Nile Germans’. Mostly Franconian and Swabian immigrants attracted by the Komnenid Duxes’ promises of tax-free land grants, they number about 60,000 at the time, concentrated mostly along the Nile just south of where the delta begins.
Alexandria, chief metropolis of Egypt, far outweighs the other cities of the Despotate. Its waterfront is just as busy as Constantinople or Smyrna or Venetia or Antwerp, and virtually every product produced in Eurasia can be found in its shops. But many of those shops and virtually all of the ships are not owned by native Egyptians. A monolingual member of the Alexandrian upper middle or upper class is more likely to just speak Greek rather than Coptic.
The Despotate’s only significant exports are grain and cotton, although it does the former in prodigious quantities. The other cargoes leaving the Alexandrian waterfront for the Mediterranean world are spices, porcelain, ivory, slaves, kaffos, and precious stones, the products of Africa and Asia. The African cargoes are usually in Ethiopian hands, the Asian in Roman ones. The Egyptian involvement is restricted to that of the longshoreman.
A great deal of imports also remain in Egypt, mostly from the Imperial heartland. Although Egypt produces cotton, most of the raw fibers are shipped to Opsikia, spun, woven, and dyed in the workshops of Skammandros and Mysia, and the finished textiles then shipped out to be sold, sometimes back to Egypt. The Despotate also has to import practically all of its timber, iron, bronze, and gunpowder, the necessary accoutrements of a modern military (Unlike the Despotate, the Mamelukes had mercantile contacts throughout the Muslim world and access to Syrian resources, so that even though they had similar problems it was not nearly to the same extent). As a result, rather than import the raw materials and make the weapons locally, armaments are almost entirely ordered from Roman workshops.
Thus despite its larger size, Egypt is economically and militarily much more dependent on the Imperial heartland then either Carthage or especially Sicily, which has small weapons manufactories and shipyards (including a drydock in Messina) in both eastern Sicily and Calabria. Because of the expense and unwillingness to tap the Arabs for manpower, Alexandria only commands three tagmata. Financed in the late Laskarid model with both land grants and cash payments for both officers and men and concentrated in the Delta, it is the same muster as that of Messina even though the de Lecce-Komnenoi only have 2.5 million subjects, a million less than the Egyptian Komnenoi.
The Egyptian tagmata are stationed in the Delta. In Alexandria two full-time salaried guard tourmai have their barracks, but garrisons in the rest of the country are manned by shifts of the tagmata and militia recruited from the Copts and Nile Germans. By far the largest garrison is that maintained in the citadel of Cairo, four thousand strong and comprised of one thousand tagmatic soldiers and the remainder militia.
Cairo is the second city of Egypt but at twenty six thousand souls (not including the garrison) it is a pathetic shadow of its former glory. Many districts of the city are still in ruins, used as garden plots by the occupants of the cleared district. Theodora Komnena Drakina estimated that aside from the garrison, there were a mere three hundred Christians in Cairo. Most of the Cairenes are laborers working in shipping or canal maintenance as Cairo is the western terminus of ‘Andreas’ Canal’, the most recent variant of the ancient Pharaoh’s Canal.
The eastern terminus is Suez, seventeen thousand inhabitants, which is wholly Greek/Ethiopian dominated. A Roman enclave, the garrison is a thousand soldiers rotated from the Roman tagmata but provisioned by Egyptian foodstuffs. Shipping is also the mainstay of the city but after the establishment of the yards in Taprobane only galleys are constructed here, both to patrol the sea and to ferry goods from Aden and Zeila so that sailing ships do not have to brave the treacherous waters of the Red Sea.
The despotic palace in Alexandria is a fount of patronage for Copt artists, architects, poets, and musicians but the numerous ancient Egyptian monuments and temples are used as quarries, not as artistic inspiration. The seeding interest in Pharaonic Egypt is of wholly Greek origin, mostly inspired by a new edition of Herodotus published in Smyrna. Theodora commissions a translation of the history into German, the first of its kind, specifically to send a sumptuously decorated and bound copy as a gift to Wilhelm, who knew the work only through a mediocre Latin edition commissioned in Venice in the 1460s.
The countryside of the Delta is controlled mostly by small Copt landowners, but south of the Nile German colony, the land is made up of vast estates owned by Coptic landowners and worked by Muslim serfs who provide corvee labor and half of their produce in payment to their masters. The landowners may punish any serf with up to twenty two lashes if male, fourteen if female, although if they want to impose a harsher sentence they must get authorization from the local district judge.
In theory the serfs can appeal against the landowners’ sentences but the magnates are very adept at bribing the judges to throw out the appeals on a convenient technicality. The Duxes are aware of the practice but the landowners are powerful and their grain shipments are the primary commodity with which the Duxes acquire Roman imports. It would not do to anger them.
Carthage must be quite the nifty place to live in. I mean its got fresh fruit from orchards/plantations, exotic good from all the lands that Rhomans have been to, religious tolerance based on its heterogeneous population, good hospitals run by Knights Hospitaliers, good protection by Roman/Despotate fleet at sea & allied tribes on land...etc.
Sicily is a bit behind in industry but seems to have good enough land to be not be seriously lacking in anything. Got its own weapons industry, wide variety of food sources, good manpower, respectable shipping, etc.
Egypt seems to be the worst of the three Despotates. Rampant racism between the Arab majority and Coptic minority, lack of native resources & (trusted) manpower to field adequate military (!), lack of any good trade goods other than bulk grain & bulk cotton, no naval power despite sitting on a hugely strategic trading hub, use of serfdom & corvee labour...
Sicily is a bit behind in industry but seems to have good enough land to be not be seriously lacking in anything. Got its own weapons industry, wide variety of food sources, good manpower, respectable shipping, etc.
Egypt seems to be the worst of the three Despotates. Rampant racism between the Arab majority and Coptic minority, lack of native resources & (trusted) manpower to field adequate military (!), lack of any good trade goods other than bulk grain & bulk cotton, no naval power despite sitting on a hugely strategic trading hub, use of serfdom & corvee labour...
TheScottishMongol
Banned
I don't know about that last one. Certainly the social issues are a big negative, but they're the economic powerhouse of the Mediterranean. Anyone trying to move goods between the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean has to go through them.
Razgriz 2K9
Banned
To be quite honest, I'd love to make flags of these, I really do...I just have no idea where to begin...or end.
Oh certainly, Egypt is strong and wealthy. But that doesn't necessarily equal stability or longevity. Those social problems are deep and will probably plague the state for centuries to come. The whole thing looks like a powder keg waiting to go off.
Also on an unrelated note, it's a damn shame that the Ancient Egyptian relics are getting destroyed. It's like watching Mesoamerican temples getting destroyed for roadfill.
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I'm starting to make my peace with the despotate, although I still hope the model is never exported in Asia:
With Carthage I never had any problem and the current set-up is so good I'd have trouble finding a better one.
The loss of Sicily still stings a bit, but it's developing to be a good ally protecting a flank of the Empire.
I'm totally enjoying the current situation of Egyptian, those backstabbers are really getting their due, with their economy utterly controlled by Romans, who are so kind to let them deal on their own with their huge arab problem.
More seriously Egypt is a hellhole if you're muslim, the Copts are too scared to do something positive about it.
I thought Cairo was settled with like 4 thousand copts (checked: 6 thousands) when it was reconquered last time, so how there are only 300 christians right now?
With Carthage I never had any problem and the current set-up is so good I'd have trouble finding a better one.
The loss of Sicily still stings a bit, but it's developing to be a good ally protecting a flank of the Empire.
I'm totally enjoying the current situation of Egyptian, those backstabbers are really getting their due, with their economy utterly controlled by Romans, who are so kind to let them deal on their own with their huge arab problem.
More seriously Egypt is a hellhole if you're muslim, the Copts are too scared to do something positive about it.
I thought Cairo was settled with like 4 thousand copts (checked: 6 thousands) when it was reconquered last time, so how there are only 300 christians right now?
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Hm. Though I still want Sicily to be an integral part of the Empire (hope it will come back one day), and Carthaginian situation seems pretty natural, I changed mind about Egypt, which I also wanted to get integrated back into imperial heartland.
The way you described it, Romans get most of goodies from it (trade and grain) while ungratefull Copts are left to deal with unruly muslim arabs. Maybe once this situation explodes (or if), Rome can march back in and arrange something better (and take back what should be theirs).
So, while a loyal orthodox Egypt would be great addition to the Empire, this Coptic version is maybe better left as a despotate.
The way you described it, Romans get most of goodies from it (trade and grain) while ungratefull Copts are left to deal with unruly muslim arabs. Maybe once this situation explodes (or if), Rome can march back in and arrange something better (and take back what should be theirs).
So, while a loyal orthodox Egypt would be great addition to the Empire, this Coptic version is maybe better left as a despotate.
We're getting slowly to an age where religion doesn't count so much anymore, so the romans may in the future not care if Egypt is once again ruled by muslims as long their interests in Asia are not affected. Right now it could still be a problem, it's gonna take some time before it sinks in that a shared religion does not automatically makes Egypt and Ottomans allies.
To be clear I would love nothing more than to see arabs standing in Egypt improve in a peaceful way which doesn't entail any bloodshed, but it's obvious it's a little "too good to be true scenario". And for once it would be nice to see Islam not giving up further ground.
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^This. I'm still hoping for a reconquest of Egypt.I'm starting to make my peace with the despotate, although I still hope the model is never exported in Asia:
With Carthage I never had any problem and the current set-up is so good I'd have trouble finding a better one.
The loss of Sicily still stings a bit, but it's developing to be a good ally protecting a flank of the Empire.
I'm totally enjoying the current situation of Egyptian, those backstabbers are really getting their due, with their economy utterly controlled by Romans, who are so kind to let them deal on their own with their huge arab problem.
More seriously Egypt is a hellhole if you're muslim, the Copts are too scared to do something positive about it.
I thought Cairo was settled with like 4 thousand copts (checked: 6 thousands) when it was reconquered last time, so how there are only 300 christians right now?
If that happens again in this fic you can expect huge numbers of muslims to be killed just like in the two previous revolts/uprisings. I wonder how long it'll take before we start to see significant numbers of Arab-Egyptians converting to christianity?
Just realized: the capital of Kongo is the second largest in Africa.
It was mentioned that Kongo is a well developed state even before Christians arrived, but I didn't realize that they'd have the administrative capability of maintaining a city that big.
How are things going down in Kongo, Basileus? Is Christianity beginning to supplant local religions yet? Are the presence of foreign traders messing up their economy? Are the Ethiopians helping them modernize? I'd love to know because it's my hope that Kongo survives to modern day intact and powerful, preferably without the B.S. that was Belgian Kongo.
It was mentioned that Kongo is a well developed state even before Christians arrived, but I didn't realize that they'd have the administrative capability of maintaining a city that big.
How are things going down in Kongo, Basileus? Is Christianity beginning to supplant local religions yet? Are the presence of foreign traders messing up their economy? Are the Ethiopians helping them modernize? I'd love to know because it's my hope that Kongo survives to modern day intact and powerful, preferably without the B.S. that was Belgian Kongo.
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