And the Ottomans peacing out means the Russians can export and import throught the Black Sea again, which will make a huge though patchy difference to their logistics and popular discontent.
Its very interesting to think what those alternatve Versailles terms would look like.
This POD might have the US entering the war earlier because Germany panics earlier.
Usually the problem is that existing income doesn't cover expenses even apart from debt payment, so repudiating debt still leaves you short and you have trouble borrowing to cover the shortfall since you just repudiated your debt.
This is a really cool notion, but the thing is that the eastern empire area of the Byzantines was rich, and Britain was not. It can't really support a Roman administration on its own resources.
You'd need really active trade through the channel for *Britzantium* to tax or something.
I still think you need a common enemy, but I can an additional basis for good relations being something like Confederate soldiers engaging in military activity around Latin America, the Caribbean, and elsewhere in close cooperation with and at the behest of Northern industrial interests. The...
This would be an own goal.
The civil rights movement had significant quiet elite cooperation in the South partly because these elites had been educated at relatively progressive prestigious Ivy League institutions and had hobnobbed with northern elites with whom they were ashamed to appear...
The main base of support for Christianity was not "the poors." Historical sociology of religion is a well-established field and the rise of Christianity has attracted a great deal of scholarship.
My argument, which I believe is supported by the historical record, is that Christianity's rise to...
Roman Empire cultural and intellectual elites pretty much all believed in some kind of infinite and perfect supreme being (or force or whatever). They saw the Greek and Roman gods as either fairy tales or else as manifestations or avatars or aspects of the supreme ground of being. Christianity...
A flawed supreme being would be extremely difficult (i.e., impossible) to square with dominant philosophical positions held in late antiquity which means Christianity probably never achieves the position it held OTL.
It's not about sympathy. It's about what Napoleon's expectations are and what he's going to do when he can't meet them. He either knocks over the weak and tottering Bourbon monarchy as OTL or accepts a *radically* reduced lifestyle (which is already radically reduced from when he was the...
The main problem is financial. Napoleon is acting as a ruler on Elba, albeit in a scaled down way, but Elba cannot support it financially. It requires the subsidies that the Bourbon kings promised to pay being paid, which they weren't OTL.
Something is still likely to happen unless somehow...