Historical MacGuffins

[Surlethe]

I was listening to Morning Edition this morning, and I heard a story on the ping-pong diplomacy between China and the US during the Nixon administration. Basically, the US and China had been making little friendly overtures for a while (e.g., Mao stopped calling Nixon a 'capitalist pig', and Nixon stopped calling China 'Red China' and started calling it 'the People's Republic of China'), and ended up breaking the silence when Mao invited the US ping-pong team to China for a match. Thereafter followed a flood of US-Chinese exchanges, culminating with Nixon's visit; the rest is history.

I was wondering if there was anything special about the ping-pong team -- were they just in the right place at the right time? If so, they could deserve the thread title: a historical MacGuffin. There seem to be a lot of these, especially in the sciences; for example, Darwin and Wallace independently formulating evolutionary theory, or Leibniz' and Newton's independent development of calculus. This would suggest to me that once the body of scientific knowledge has progressed to the point where the next advance is possible, it just takes a person - or people - in the right place at the right time to make that advance. It seems like doesn't really matter who the person is.

Similarly, in the US-China ping-pong case, the relationship between the US and China would seem to have progressed to the point where a breakthrough was inevitable; it just so happened that Mao decided to invite the US ping-pong team.

Does this idea hold water? How many situations is this reasoning applicable to? For example, was WWI inevitable -- it just so happened that the assassination of Franz Ferdinand started the ball rolling? Discuss.

[Rickie]

This is a cool topic. If I understand your asking whether events are shaped by mass trends but remembered as the work of the individual?

I think its similar to the "Great Men" idea of history, you can find a wiki article on it here. It asks whether events are the product of Great Men or vice versa.

A cult I'm vaguely associated with, "Objectivism" has had a similar problem, whether Aristotle was the creator of Democracy or whether he simply codified trends that were present for a long time in Athens. Oddly enough the hard core cultists choose Aristotle, the rest of us Athens.

There is a certain elitism intrinsic to enshrining individuals as the movers of historic events, religion can be read simply as people deifying "Great Men".

[Kanastrous]

The simultaneous independent development of the jet engine in Britain, Germany, and Italy.

Is that the sort of thing you mean?

[Adrian Laguna]

The Dreadnought, the motherfucking HMS Dreadnought. There really wasn't much revolutionary about it.

Firstly the idea of an all big gun battleship didn't originate in Britain. The idea had circulated for years before hand all over the world, General Vittorio Cuniberti published an article in Jane's Fighting Ships discussing it in 1903, and I've heard that the US Naval Institute publications had mentioned it as early as 1902.

Secondly, both the United States and Japan designed an all big gun battleship before Great Britain did. The Japanese even laid down theirs first, but construction proceeded slowly due to economic strain from the Russo-Japanese War, and a shortage of 12 inch guns. Even then, they would have probably finished first if not for the British cannibalizing two other ships to rush build Dreadnought. Steam turbines were even discussed for the American South Carolina-class, they weren't adopted because range was considered more important than speed.

Basically the British get the credit for revolutionizing ship design, when in reality they were just the first to finish an example of what everyone else was naturally moving toward.

[Stuart]

I was listening to Morning Edition this morning, and I heard a story on the ping-pong diplomacy between China and the US during the Nixon administration. Basically, the US and China had been making little friendly overtures for a while (e.g., Mao stopped calling Nixon a 'capitalist pig', and Nixon stopped calling China 'Red China' and started calling it 'the People's Republic of China'), and ended up breaking the silence when Mao invited the US ping-pong team to China for a match. Thereafter followed a flood of US-Chinese exchanges, culminating with Nixon's visit; the rest is history.

I was wondering if there was anything special about the ping-pong team -- were they just in the right place at the right time? If so, they could deserve the thread title: a historical MacGuffin. There seem to be a lot of these, especially in the sciences; for example, Darwin and Wallace independently formulating evolutionary theory, or Leibniz' and Newton's independent development of calculus. This would suggest to me that once the body of scientific knowledge has progressed to the point where the next advance is possible, it just takes a person - or people - in the right place at the right time to make that advance. It seems like doesn't really matter who the person is. Similarly, in the US-China ping-pong case, the relationship between the US and China would seem to have progressed to the point where a breakthrough was inevitable; it just so happened that Mao decided to invite the US ping-pong team.

Does this idea hold water? How many situations is this reasoning applicable to? For example, was WWI inevitable -- it just so happened that the assassination of Franz Ferdinand started the ball rolling? Discuss.

Personally, I believe that history is too large and complex a thing for any one person, or indeed any one event, to cause a major change in course. Evena drastic event causes changes only on one part of the continuum while the rest remains largely unaffected. The analogy I use is of a river flowing. If we take a stick and push it into the river bed, it causes a disturbance and changes the water flow in its vicinity but those changes are soon overwhelmed and disappear when the unaffected portions of the flow take over. A few yards downstream of the stick, there's no sign it was ever there. Taking that analogy further, to change the course of the river takes a massive effort by a lot of people over a long period of time (ie, build a dam). Changing the course of history likewise.

Thus, historical events are largely determined by the large-scale trends that existed at the time. World War One was inevitable, the growing trade and economic conditions, nationalism, the networks of suicide-pact alliances etc all made A war in Europe inevitable. If the assassination hadn't happened, something else would have set the blast off. The war wouldn't have been World War One but it would have been very similar to it (that too was determined by long-term considerations that were outside any one person's control) and functionally it would have been identical - jump forward to the 1920s and nobody would know the difference.

That makes World War two pretty much inevitable as well (personally I look on WW1 and WW2 as round one and round two of the European Civil War). The "Stabbed in the Back" and growing "Aryan" philisophies in germany made WW2 pretty much inevitable; if the Nazis hadn't got into power, somebody very like them (and there were lots of small parties with similar ideas in 1919 Germany) would have. Even if the communists had taken over, its easy to see the great rivalry between German Communists and Russian Communists ending up in a war. One fuctionally identical to our World War Two (perhaos starts in the east and spreads west (which, thinking about it, is more or less what our WW2 did).

We've already had the examples of the jet engine, tanks, radar, the dreadnought battleship, all happening in multiple places at the same time, so they were going to happen regardless of who developed them. Quite a few people were working on nuclear weapons in the 1930s; certainly the massive US investment (a lot of people working hard over a period of years) acceleerated things but nuclear weapons were inevitable as well. The Manhattan Engineering District just hurried them up a bit.

This philosophy comes out in The Big One and its sequels; The Big One made a massive difference in the short term, effectively instantly changing the post-war world from an Atlantic orientation to a Pacific Orientation. However, convergence is taking place and accelerating all the time; today we're looking at exactly that shift in power and orientation (and in the five years since The Big One was written, its moved a lot further in that direction). That's why there's such a high degree of convergence in the TBO novels; as the disturbance of events caused by the different history receeds, all the other effects, trends and influences come to the fore and things revert to their normal flow.

[Adrian Laguna]

I agree that history is too big for any one man or woman, there are always other factors at work, but I disagree about your message of inevitability, that things tend toward the same. Some things that have happened were coming a long way off, but others did require the interplay of various individuals in such a way that changing even one of them could create vast ripples across the whole sphere of world events, and render a present vastly different from ours.

I bring up Alexander the Great, whose reach through history is very, very long. Start with his the creation of Hellenic civilization in the East, then fast forward to the Crusades and you're still standing under his shadow. Yet even such an amazing accomplishment was driven by events beyond his influence. It was made possible because the State he inherited from his father, the military machine that had made that possible, the nature of his adversary in the form of the Persian Empire, and the shared history between it and the Hellenes. However, can you really say that if Alexander was a different man the same combination of factors would have driven someone else to do the same? If not for his untimely death, Phillip II would have certainly tried, he may not have wanted to push as far, or been as wildly successful, but I think him capable of creating something comparable to what his son did. What if instead of changing the son, we change the father?

Certainly Alexander is not called "the Great" for nothing, if one person deserves that moniker, it's probably him, but Phillip II is the unsung foundation upon which all of his accomplishments rest. If not for him, not only do we do not have Alexander, who was very much his father's son, we remove two of his most important supports: Macedonian control of Hellas, and the advanced war machine that made it possible. If, say, Phillip's troubled birth is a failed birth instead, what greater factors are there to drive someone else to be Phillip? To do what he did? Perhaps the younger of his two elder brothers could manage it, if he is sent to Thebes, if he is inspired to copy and improve upon their infantry, if he doesn't die in battle like he did in real life... or perhaps not, which quite changes things when Rome becomes ascendant.


Then of course, the example you brought up, there are several ways the First World War could have ended that would have spared us a round two in Europe. If Germany wins, "wins", or fails to lose, they would likely not have been the broken barking mad nation that they were in the 30s and 40s. Who will take their role then? The French? I don't think so. Such changes could also cause the Ottoman Empire to not collapse and be carved up, the Middle Eastern landscape remains as it was, which is nothing like it is now. This in turn has tremendous geopolitical effects by putting a, by Mid-East standards, westernised and secular power in control of a certain natural resource of some value.

[Mayabird]

Actually, Genghis Khan might be a better example. Didn't even have much of a parental legacy except being the son of a chieftain (but even then had to fight and kill his way back from bare survival as a child), and took a bunch of tribes of nomadic herders who were basically just like any of thousands of tribes of nomadic herders that had been wandering the Earth since domestication was invented, and went on a conquering/slaughtering spree across Asia, where ancient, powerful, and very large cities were utterly destroyed (continued by his descendants across more of Asia, Europe, and the Middle East) and civilizations wiped off the map.

But even so, if the Khans had been facing large, unified empires with proper large armies of soldiers for a good portion of the way, they would not have had the successes they did. They just happened to arrive on the scene at a moment where they could do the most damage.

And of course, if we're going to argue maybe a half dozen or so cases out of all of known human history, it does support the main point quite well.

[MKSheppard]

The "Stabbed in the Back" and growing "Aryan" philisophies in germany made WW2 pretty much inevitable; if the Nazis hadn't got into power, somebody very like them (and there were lots of small parties with similar ideas in 1919 Germany) would have.

I dunno; Hitler was pretty far out there; so were most of the people in his circle; and he did manage to trick fake his way through most of the late 1930s playing the ultimate bluff trick -- I just can't see a Hitler replacement being that crazy in regards to Austria/Czechslovakia, etc....or being willing to go with von Mansten's plan for the attack on France...

[Adrian Laguna]

Actually, Genghis Khan might be a better example.

I was going to mention Temujin, but I forgot after expounding on Alex and Philip.

And of course, if we're going to argue maybe a half dozen or so cases out of all of known human history, it does support the main point quite well.

I think there are far more than a half a dozen cases where changing one or a few individuals had a major effect upon the course of history, but it can be fair to say that a given situation was most likely to cause a certain event. What I mostly object to is then saying that the event would necessarily turn out a certain way, and then deriving conclusions from that.

We can say that late 18th century France was prime for revolution, mostly because the latest Louis wasn't worthy of the Sun King's crown, but the revolution need not have succeeded, it could very well have failed. Had that occurred, the 19th century would have been a lot quieter in terms of social upheaval through Europe, which makes for a completely different picture in the early 20th century, which can have any number of effects on how that world diverges from ours in 2008. For one, multi-national Empires lead by monarchs may still exist.

I do admit, though, there are some things that do tend toward the same. China rapidly becoming the world's largest economy, for example, that's arguably their natural position, since they were until 1890 when the US surpassed them. And speaking of the US, it's an almost forgone conclusion that the area comprising CONUS will become an industrial powerhouse, the what ifs are mostly issues of ownership and magnitude.

[Guardsman Bass]

I'm still slightly wary of this type of determinism. What if, for example, Muhammed had died in the desert in the 7th Century CE rather than going on to conquer Mecca and Medina and dictate the Quran? Would an equivalent figure have emerged anyways?

You could argue that the conditions were right for someone like him, but suppose someone like him didn't come along - somebody who was just not as driven, or religious, or as much of a military leader. You don't get Islam, or at least it doesn't spread like it did historically along with the Caliphate, effectively robbing Byzantium of more than half its territory and destroying the Zoroastrian Persian Empire. That isn't just dropping a rock into a river; that's like the river suddenly switching banks and going down an entirely new area with its own deterministic rules.

[StarshipTitanic]

You could argue that the conditions were right for someone like him, but suppose someone like him didn't come along - somebody who was just not as driven, or religious, or as much of a military leader. You don't get Islam, or at least it doesn't spread like it did historically along with the Caliphate, effectively robbing Byzantium of more than half its territory and destroying the Zoroastrian Persian Empire. That isn't just dropping a rock into a river; that's like the river suddenly switching banks and going down an entirely new area with its own deterministic rules.

I suppose it depends on the relative strength of Arabia compared to the devastated Byzantines and Sassanids of the time. The Sassanids were by far the weakest of the three and collapsed entirely within a decade at the start of Arab invasions, but the Byzantines held out much longer and occasionally inflicted somewhat important reverses on Arab forces. Without a Mohammed figure and his immediate successors, Arabs may not have enjoyed the same success against the Byzantines as they did in real life, but perhaps could have accomplished what they did in Mesopotamia and Iran at that time. It depends on how far downstream the observer is in your river analogy.

[TC Pilot]

I suppose it depends on the relative strength of Arabia compared to the devastated Byzantines and Sassanids of the time. The Sassanids were by far the weakest of the three and collapsed entirely within a decade at the start of Arab invasions, but the Byzantines held out much longer and occasionally inflicted somewhat important reverses on Arab forces.

The Arabs weren't stopped until they abandoned the siege of Constantinople in 678, which was due largely to the weather and the capital being the most heavily defended city in the known world.

Furthermore, the Byzantines did not "hold out longer" than the Persians. The empire was never conquered by the Arabs like Persia was.

Without a Mohammed figure and his immediate successors, Arabs may not have enjoyed the same success against the Byzantines as they did in real life, but perhaps could have accomplished what they did in Mesopotamia and Iran at that time.

How? Arabia was a disorganized assortment of petty tribes and nomads of absolutely no threat to either Persia or Byzantium before Muhammed unified them all. That's like saying the Greek city-states could have gone on to conquer Anatolia without a Phillip unifying them under Macedonian control.

[Guardsman Bass]

Without a Mohammed figure and his immediate successors, Arabs may not have enjoyed the same success against the Byzantines as they did in real life, but perhaps could have accomplished what they did in Mesopotamia and Iran at that time.

How? Arabia was a disorganized assortment of petty tribes and nomads of absolutely no threat to either Persia or Byzantium before Muhammed unified them all. That's like saying the Greek city-states could have gone on to conquer Anatolia without a Phillip unifying them under Macedonian control.

That's what bugs me about historical determinism in this case; it was so heavily dependent on the drive and action of one man setting up the conditions for his successors in the Caliphate. If no one like him had come along, or somebody less competent, then Byzantium (but possibly not Persia, if you do get some equivalent of Islam) has a better chance of getting through the immense amount of instability and crap it went through in the 7th and 8th centuries CE without losing massive amounts of territory (or at least hanging on to Egypt). That completely changes all the forces acting in that area, since a stronger Byzantium could later put down a rising Islam more effectively (one would hope).

[TC Pilot]

That's what bugs me about historical determinism in this case; it was so heavily dependent on the drive and action of one man setting up the conditions for his successors in the Caliphate. If no one like him had come along, or somebody less competent, then Byzantium (but possibly not Persia, if you do get some equivalent of Islam) has a better chance of getting through the immense amount of instability and crap it went through in the 7th and 8th centuries CE without losing massive amounts of territory (or at least hanging on to Egypt). That completely changes all the forces acting in that area, since a stronger Byzantium could later put down a rising Islam more effectively (one would hope).

Indeed. Even if Muhammed is still in the equation, simply placing Heraclius or a more competent Byzantine commander at Yarmuk would probably have crushed the Arabs' westward advance. Even tiny changes, particularly the removal or "editing" of individuals in high places alters the timeline wildly.

[StarshipTitanic]

The Arabs weren't stopped until they abandoned the siege of Constantinople in 678, which was due largely to the weather and the capital being the most heavily defended city in the known world.

Furthermore, the Byzantines did not "hold out longer" than the Persians. The empire was never conquered by the Arabs like Persia was.

The Byzantines ejected the Arabs from Alexandria for a short period and repeatedly kept the Arabs out of the Exarchate of Carthage (though they paid tribute to do so).

Furthermore, I'm not nearly stupid enough to think the Arabs conquered the whole Byzantine Empire. Assume I was referring merely to the territories that the Arabs did conquer and that the lands they conquered from the Byzantines did hold out longer than the lands conquered from the Sassanids.

How? Arabia was a disorganized assortment of petty tribes and nomads of absolutely no threat to either Persia or Byzantium before Muhammed unified them all. That's like saying the Greek city-states could have gone on to conquer Anatolia without a Phillip unifying them under Macedonian control.

That's a poor analogy. The Greek city-states proved themselves quite capable of resisting the Persians and extending their influence into coastal Anatolia. Perhaps a situation similar to what happened to the Western Roman Empire may have developed since Arabia evidently had enough population to field armies of tens of thousands in actual history. From my understanding, Sassanid Persia was in utter chaos after Heraclius and probably in a worse condition than the Roman Empire was when it suffered its barbarian invasions.

[TC Pilot]

The Byzantines ejected the Arabs from Alexandria for a short period and repeatedly kept the Arabs out of the Exarchate of Carthage (though they paid tribute to do so).

Temporary setbacks, at best. The Arab onslaught was unchecked until it lost hard at Constantinople. The Arab invasions of North Africa didn't stop until the Pyrennes.

That's a poor analogy. The Greek city-states proved themselves quite capable of resisting the Persians and extending their influence into coastal Anatolia.

Yes, coastal Anatolia.

Perhaps a situation similar to what happened to the Western Roman Empire may have developed since Arabia evidently had enough population to field armies of tens of thousands in actual history.

So, a group of people who had never posed even a slight threat to the two great empires of the Middle East for centuries would suddenly run rampage, while internally divided and competing with each other? Don't be ridiculous. The Arabs had no impetus to attack either Persia or Byzantium, no political unity to facilitate such an invasion, nor were any great migrations of nomadic barbarians forcing them onto either empire. No Muhammed means no unified Arabia, which means no Arab invasions.

[StarshipTitanic]

Temporary setbacks, at best. The Arab onslaught was unchecked until it lost hard at Constantinople. The Arab invasions of North Africa didn't stop until the Pyrennes.

No shit they were temporary. That's why I said "occasionally inflicted somewhat important reverses" before you started nitpicking me. What point are you trying to make, anyway? You took one half of a sentence comparing relative Byzantine strength to relative Persian weakness at the time of the first Muslim conquests and are trying to extrapolate it into something irrelevant. I'm well aware that the Exarch in Africa isn't currently pushing the Egyptian emirs out of Libya today. Are you aware that it took the Arabs perhaps a decade to destroy the Sassanids while Byzantine Africa remained contested until the early 700s? Or do you think the Arabs were marching from Cairo to Ceuta for 70 years?

Yes, coastal Anatolia.

They didn't need Philip II's help to dispute the richest and most populous parts of Anatolia with the Persians. Hence, a poor analogy. Not necessarily a failed one, but a poor one.

So, a group of people who had never posed even a slight threat to the two great empires of the Middle East for centuries would suddenly run rampage, while internally divided and competing with each other? Don't be ridiculous. The Arabs had no impetus to attack either Persia or Byzantium, no political unity to facilitate such an invasion, nor were any great migrations of nomadic barbarians forcing them onto either empire. No Muhammed means no unified Arabia, which means no Arab invasions.

Chronic Persian civil war is a great impetus for nomads to raid with the hope of easy gains. I'm not familiar with the demographics of late antiquity Arabia, but their rapid initial conquests perhaps indicates that they were doing well population-wise. I personally don't believe it's likely that the Arabs without Mohammed could have done anything similar to what they did, but I'm trying to explore reasons why they might have.

[Guardsman Bass]

Temporary setbacks, at best. The Arab onslaught was unchecked until it lost hard at Constantinople. The Arab invasions of North Africa didn't stop until the Pyrennes.

No shit they were temporary. That's why I said "occasionally inflicted somewhat important reverses" before you started nitpicking me. What point are you trying to make, anyway? You took one half of a sentence comparing relative Byzantine strength to relative Persian weakness at the time of the first Muslim conquests and are trying to extrapolate it into something irrelevant. I'm well aware that the Exarch in Africa isn't currently pushing the Egyptian emirs out of Libya today. Are you aware that it took the Arabs perhaps a decade to destroy the Sassanids while Byzantine Africa remained contested until the early 700s? Or do you think the Arabs were marching from Cairo to Ceuta for 70 years?

I'm not arguing that. What I'm arguing is that without Muhammed, they don't even get the unity necessary to conquer the Persians, who are in a bad state - or they eventually do, but by the time they do it the Byzantines have gotten through the shitfest they went through in the 7th and 8th centuries.

Yes, coastal Anatolia.

They didn't need Philip II's help to dispute the richest and most populous parts of Anatolia with the Persians. Hence, a poor analogy. Not necessarily a failed one, but a poor one.

Weren't the western coastal areas of Anatolia already settled by ethnic Greeks in the Persian Empire, like the Ionians? I don't remember whether it was a difficult overthrough for Alexander.

So, a group of people who had never posed even a slight threat to the two great empires of the Middle East for centuries would suddenly run rampage, while internally divided and competing with each other? Don't be ridiculous. The Arabs had no impetus to attack either Persia or Byzantium, no political unity to facilitate such an invasion, nor were any great migrations of nomadic barbarians forcing them onto either empire. No Muhammed means no unified Arabia, which means no Arab invasions.

Chronic Persian civil war is a great impetus for nomads to raid with the hope of easy gains. I'm not familiar with the demographics of late antiquity Arabia, but their rapid initial conquests perhaps indicates that they were doing well population-wise. I personally don't believe it's likely that the Arabs without Mohammed could have done anything similar to what they did, but I'm trying to explore reasons why they might have.

They were growing, but keep in mind that their military force was disproportionate to their numbers, since they were largely nomadic (and the nomads usually had a modicum of training in fighting). But, as we mentioned, without Muhammed and Islam, there was very little chance of them forming anything like the organized group they initially did under Mohammed and his heirs in the Caliphate (which fell apart later, but at the time it was pretty formidable). They may have started raiding and small-scale invasions into Persia and perhaps some of the Mesopotamian Byzantine territories, but nothing like the large-scale gradual conquest that it did historically.

[TC Pilot]

No shit they were temporary. That's why I said "occasionally inflicted somewhat important reverses" before you started nitpicking me.

What point are you trying to make, anyway? You took one half of a sentence comparing relative Byzantine strength to relative Persian weakness at the time of the first Muslim conquests and are trying to extrapolate it into something irrelevant.

Because you claimed Byzantium "held out longer" than Persia, as if the empire had been conquered by the Arabs, implying you're either completely ignorant or thought that the Seljuk and Ottoman Turks were the same things as Arabs.

Are you aware that it took the Arabs perhaps a decade to destroy the Sassanids while Byzantine Africa remained contested until the early 700s? Or do you think the Arabs were marching from Cairo to Ceuta for 70 years?

And it took the Arabs a mere 40 years to get from Mecca to the walls of Constantinople. Regardless, Anatolia was never conquered by the Arabs and the majority of their conquests (excluding North Africa and Sicily) took place within fifteen years of initial hostilities. That's a negligible difference in the amount of time.

They didn't need Philip II's help to dispute the richest and most populous parts of Anatolia with the Persians. Hence, a poor analogy. Not necessarily a failed one, but a poor one.

I see the point sailed right over your head. If you are deluded enough to think the disunited Greek cities could have accomplished even a fraction of Alexander's conquests (i.e. the conquest of all Anatolia, not just the already-Greek Asian cities as your sad strawman goes), I won't bother wasting any more time on you.

Chronic Persian civil war is a great impetus for nomads to raid with the hope of easy gains. I'm not familiar with the demographics of late antiquity Arabia, but their rapid initial conquests perhaps indicates that they were doing well population-wise. I personally don't believe it's likely that the Arabs without Mohammed could have done anything similar to what they did, but I'm trying to explore reasons why they might have.

"Why they might have"? It would have been completely impossible.

[Thanas]

I would be very hesitant to consider the setbacks the muslims suffered in their conquest of north africa "temporary", for a period of 50 years is anything but temporary.

As for "Arabs" raiding Byzantine and persian lands, there are reports of this happening from the beginning of the third century. The difference in the raids exhibited by Mohammed and his successors is that the powers of the era were too weak to offer anything but token resistance.

Mohammed is also certainly not the first arab who managed to form a coalition of tribes. Julian, for example, was aided in his invasion of Persia by several saracen princes. The difference Mohammed made was that he managed to unite the tribes.

Certainly they would not have managed to do a similar conquest. However there is no reason not to assume that the different tribes would not have managed to carve out some piece of territories for themselves.

[StarshipTitanic]

I'm not arguing that. What I'm arguing is that without Muhammed, they don't even get the unity necessary to conquer the Persians, who are in a bad state - or they eventually do, but by the time they do it the Byzantines have gotten through the shitfest they went through in the 7th and 8th centuries.

I agree with you there, though the point gets muddled when TC Pilot decided to be a SDNet badass and nitpick everything I said sentence by sentence. I wish I were more familiar with the Sassanids to understand Arab chances. I know they were a much more centralized state compared to the Parthians, which implies strength, but their civil war was particularly devastating at the time.

Weren't the western coastal areas of Anatolia already settled by ethnic Greeks in the Persian Empire, like the Ionians? I don't remember whether it was a difficult overthrough for Alexander.

Yes, they were settled by Greeks so there was a cultural barrier for the Persians. However, aside from Hellenized cities like Alexandria and Antioch, Byzantine Syria and Egypt weren't culturally close to the Greek core in Anatolia beyond a common bond through Christianity. The monophysite controversy at the time was highly popular in Egypt and Syria while it was considered heresy by more orthodox Greeks. The Arabs enjoyed popular support in their conquered areas because they were more tolerant than the imperial government. The Ghassanid Arabs, the Byzantine's client Arab kingdom, were monophysites.

They were growing, but keep in mind that their military force was disproportionate to their numbers, since they were largely nomadic (and the nomads usually had a modicum of training in fighting). But, as we mentioned, without Muhammed and Islam, there was very little chance of them forming anything like the organized group they initially did under Mohammed and his heirs in the Caliphate (which fell apart later, but at the time it was pretty formidable). They may have started raiding and small-scale invasions into Persia and perhaps some of the Mesopotamian Byzantine territories, but nothing like the large-scale gradual conquest that it did historically.

I agree with you regarding their chances against the Byzantines, but I know too little about the Sassanids to feel comfortable saying that the Arabs had absolutely no chance. That's not to say I think the Islam-less Arabs still had an excellent chance, of course.

[Guardsman Bass]

Mohammed is also certainly not the first arab who managed to form a coalition of tribes. Julian, for example, was aided in his invasion of Persia by several saracen princes. The difference Mohammed made was that he managed to unite the tribes.

Certainly they would not have managed to do a similar conquest. However there is no reason not to assume that the different tribes would not have managed to carve out some piece of territories for themselves.

Thanks for the information! I think my main point still stands - the Arabs probably would not have been able to carve off large chunks of Byzantium without the organizing factor of Mohammed, but it is still conceivable that they could have torn off pieces of Persia, or even conquered it entirely (which would make for some interesting alternate history - would the Arabs then get pulled into Zoroastrianism? ), since Persia was pretty weak at the time when the Islamized Arabs came out of the Arabian peninsula into Persia.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

If my memory serves, there a huge host of factors that led to Byzantine defeat. Notwithstanding the treacherous governors in Eygpt and the region who soon discovered the double edged sword of Arab religious tolerance, the Byzantines relied on unreliable allies at the battle which resulted in a collapse of the battleline. Heraclius was also too tired to lead the army then as well.

Zoroastrianism in Persia pretty much died out in Persia after the practioners were persecuted and driven out. So much for religious tolerance. The last few adherents of the faith are for the most part in India now.

[Thanas]

I agree with you regarding their chances against the Byzantines, but I know too little about the Sassanids to feel comfortable saying that the Arabs had absolutely no chance. That's not to say I think the Islam-less Arabs still had an excellent chance, of course.

I normally do not engage in what-if scenarios because I frankly consider them to be utterly pointless, however for the benefit of the discussion here are the general differences between parthia and the sassanids militarically:

1) While the Parthians primarily focused on archers and heavy cavalry, the sassanids enjoyed fielding a more balanced army, including heavy infantry and siege trains. Obviously, their heavy infantry and siege technicians never reached the level of the romans, but they were quite capable of pulling off combined-arms operations.

2) fortress and guerilla warfare
The Parthians were never really that good at defending their cities. Once a roman army reached ctesiphon, they were done for. However, in the time of Julian, the Sassanids had surrected huge fortresses and regularly employed scorched earth tactics.


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Now, one thing I have not seen raised in the discussion is the mere fact that the arabs were rich. Very rich. For exemple, the case can be made that at Yarmouk, the arab army (especially the infantry, shocking though it may be) were way better equipped than their Byzantine counterparts.

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Now, considering the geopolitical situation, I do not believe that the Arabs could have conquered Persia without having knocked out the Eastern Roman empire first.

As to that, there is no reason to assume they would have achieved anything more than carving out some secondary territories for themselves without Mohammed. Yes, coalitions might have been formed, but without the unifying ideology they are nothing more than the coalitions the Byzantines have faced before.

It is however impossible to control Persia without controlling the Euphrat and Tigris, and if the arabs should manage to take control over it instead of the Persians, there is no reason to assume the Byzantines will not move in. Without Mohammed, there is no reason to assume the invasions will happen in much smaller waves due to less tribes attacking together.

The only hope for the arabs in such a scenario is that the avars happen to keep the Byzantines busy. Yet this will not be the case, since avar power was in steep decline after the defeat at Constantinople. So what do we have then - a Byzantine empire which has to deal with Arab raiders. Certainly this will provide some sort of challenge to the Empire, but it is nothing they have not handled before.

In the end, this could end up being very, very beneficially to the Byzantines. They would most likely play the various tribes against each other while at the same time enjoying relative peace on the frontier or even expanding into Mesopotamia. At any rate, this should give the Byzantines the breather they need in order to resist the bulgarians and the lombards.