Nations: Rise and Fall

I recently finished a full six-player game of History of the World and found myself pondering the final status of the world. How might history change if certain empires did not arise? The game ends about a hundred years ago at the dawn of the twentieth century. Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany gets the final turn. In a full six-player game, six empires (randomly drawn) do not make their appearance. Below are photos showing the state of the world at game’s end.

 

In this game, the United States did not arise as a nation-empire in the final epoch. Thus, North America is a patchwork with parts controlled by England, Spain, Germany, and Russia. Interestingly the Mayans still hold Central America in strength! In South America, the Portuguese control the south. The Inca empire is overrun by several groups ending with German control of Peru. England controls Guiana in the northeast.

 

Europe remains a patchwork of states. In the British Isles, the Scots have held out fortified against England. Go William Wallace! Germany controls much of Northern Europe, displacing France which retains the Spanish peninsula and northwest Africa. The Swedes have maintained their neutrality in strength. Southern Europe has remnants of the Romans, the Goths, and the Holy Roman Empire. Eastern Europe and much of western Asia are controlled by the Ottoman Turks. A key missing empire that did not show up were the Arabs.

 

This leaves the Middle East as a patchwork of states. Old Crusader states still hold Palestine and environs. There are remnants of Macedonia in the Levant and the Sassanids occupy modern-day Iraq. Of the old empires, bits of the Egyptian and Carthaginian empires have held out in north Africa since the first two epochs. The sub-Sahara has migrants from India. An ancient Gold Coast empire still holds out against colonization. The Portuguese rather than the Dutch have colonized South Africa, while Spain instead of France occupies Madagascar. In India, there are tiny pockets of the Maurya dynasty in Hindu Kush. The Mughal empire is still ascendant. England has a foothold in Goa. The Guptas still hold Hindu Kush, the northwest, and Ceylon but have managed to forge ties with the Malay States.

 

The Khmers hold the mainland of southeast Asia. China is controlled almost solely by the Manchu dynasty except Germany has forced open some ports. The Japanese empire still hold their ancestral lands, while England has colonized Australia. There were a number of attempted colonial land grabs by the European states, not all successful. Unlike my last game two years ago (with five players), there was more of a mosaic at the end of the game – tiny pockets of isolated nation-states rather than great empires. The no-shows (Epochs II to VII respectively) were: Assyria, the Celts, the Arabs, the Chola dynasty, the Timurid Emirates, and the U.S. Many monuments were destroyed, but a number still stand in China and Europe.

 

I could design an Epoch VIII to bring us to the present age, except others have already done so for the newer edition of the game. But I’d have to bend the idea of how an empire is defined. If anything, we now see more breakup rather than consolidation. The world today is a strange patchwork of nation-states, with layer upon layer accreting on the bones and dust of old empires. It’s no wonder such entities carry so much political baggage, and world peace remains elusive.