600-699 (Abrittus)

In the 7th century, China (unified under the Sui Dynasty) controls East Asia, while reform-oriented Indian empires and federations pursue targeted power policies in South-East Asia.

The consolidated superpowers of Europe and Asia establish closer connections among themselves. Especially the two most powerful blocs - Sui Cháo and the Roman Republic -, separated by great geographical distance, do not yet perceive each other as rivals or enemies. Diplomacy, exchange and co-operation often still prevail over rivalry. The periphery, which has absorbed much civilizational influence, attempts to pursue its own policies more than ever before, but with even less success than in previous centuries: Turkic peoples are played against each other, Sui prevents power concentrations among its Dai, Tibetan, Korean, and Malay neighbours; Northern European actants experience manifold subtle Celtic manipulations; Arabia and the Caucasus are pacified between Romans and Sabans; Malay kedatuans engage in battles perceived by themselves as attempts at establishing hegemony for themselves, but orchestrated by powerful Indian kingdoms and republics as interventions aimed at maintaining a balance of power.

Science and technology blossom. With China participating in this global dialogue, too, social philosophy and economic theory make great leaps, too. Improved economic productivity and a wider availability of everything needed in daily life lead to rising population levels. In the growing cities, new professional classes increasingly develop self-confidence around the world. The political circumstances under which this happens differ greatly between, for example, Sui China and the Roman Republic, though, and so do the first outcomes of this process of social transformation. While all empires share the tendency towards dwindling powers of the aristocracy, at the periphery, aristocratic structures are just about to emerge and consolidate.

Significant differences from OTL begin to reach the Chinese, Malayan, West African, Korean etc. space. One of them is the early collapse of Islam in this timeline.

600s
In the Yamato Kingdom, Regent Shotoku copies the ministerial and administrational structures of the Sui reforms, builds roads across the kingdom and numerous Buddhist monasteries.

600
The bubonic plague devastates Arabia, East Africa, Eranshahr, Choresmia and the Southern end of the Silk Road.

601
The bubonic plague kills hundreds of thousands in Balochistan, Sindh, Sogdia, among the Turks, and in India. Amidst social chaos, various aristocratic dynasties, urban guilds, religious and popular movements fight for power.

602
China: A large Sui invasion army marches on Vạn Xuân. Lý Nam Đế II abdicates. Sui establishes suzerainty over OTL Northern Vietnam, as in OTL.

Celtic Empire: A group of explorers stops over at the Insulae Petraeae, then heads further North into unchartered waters. They discover a larger island (OTL Iceland), half covered in glaciers, half full of fertile meadows, and completely uninhabited. They name it Glaciana and hoist a Celtic flag, and return to the Insulae Petraeae for the winter, intending to come back next spring.

603
(Western) Göktürks / China: Tardush Khagan throws the huge Western Göktürk army, including Uygurs and Tiele tribes formerly affiliated to the Eastern Göktürks, against Sui China (proclaiming to revenge the Eastern Göktürks; more realistically attempting to prevent rivalling tribes and shads from turning against each other or him). China's new Western ally, the Tuyuhun, manage to poison water wells on the passageways of the Tarim Basin and Dzungaria which Tardush's armies have to pass. Tardush must delay, regroup, endure heavy losses, then abandon his campaign without having fought a battle against the armies of Sui.

Celtic Empire: Throughout the warmer months, two explorer missions venture along the Western and the Eastern coast of Glaciana respectively. They bring sheep from the Insulae Petraeae with them to the island.

604
(Western) Göktürks: Tardush Khagan is killed by a group of influential conspirators. Ashina Daman is proclaimed the new khagan, bearing the title Heshana Khagan. He does not manage to establish control and command fealty from the Kyrgyz in the North, though, and neither that of the Uygurs and Eastern Tiele, who had only followed Tardush into the battle for revenge, and by the end of the year, it appears as though other tribes are following the Kyrgyz path out of the Ashina domination.

China: Emperor Wen returns healthily from his summer vacation at Renshou (instead of dying, as in OTL). He reforms taxation and orders the construction of new, greater reserve granaries and the planting of the extremely productive Funanese rice (which the Chinese, following their new Viet vassals, falsely attribute to the Cham, calling it "Champa rice"). He also has a great number of local magistrates replaced, condemning their arbitariness and wastefulness, and reforms the recruitment of magistrates, installing the Imperial Examinations.

Norway: Harald, the petty king of Agder, curbs the practical independence of the powerful and wealthy city of Sørstad, which has become the centre of a large alliance of city states along the Baltic Sea coasts. With a considerable army behind him and Sørstad being weakened by recurring bubonic plague epidemics, Harald manages to impose taxes and tariffs on the city and limit the city's police forces to dealing with matters only within the city's walls as well as to coerce the city to provide soldiers. (Sørstad continued to have its own mercenary military force, too, which is mostly focused on naval security.)

605
China: To end Cham raids into the newly established province of Lin Yi, where the Viet live, as well as Cham piracy on the Southern Sea, a Sui army under general Liu Fang marches on Lâm Ấp and defeats the Cham. A vassal prince is installed in Lâm Ấp.

In the preparation for the big national census, Emperor Wen codifies the Four Occupations; his administration is instructed to sort everyone into one of them: Religious people (priests, monks etc.) must apply for a personal exception - the first step towards Sui state control over the religious communities.
 * The category of "shi", where hereditary titles are explicitly abolished (the end of traditional aristocracy), access to this category depends on passing the imperial examinations and becoming a magistrate, or being nobilitated by the Emperor; a long list of contraventions leads to the exclusion from this category. Military leaders belong in this category, too, and are thus also either chosen by examination or appointed by the Emperor. Civil magistrates are paid handsomely and exempt from military service, but also forbidden to engage in commercial activities.
 * The category of "nong" (farmers), who are all entitled to the same amount of (non-inheritable, non-sellable, non-rentable) land, which is checked and if needs be redistributed every six years. Male nong must serve in the army, when necessary, between the age of 21 and the age of 45. Enlistment in the army, along with the allotment of a portion of land, is also the only chance to enter this category, be it for Chinese of other occupations who seek to become nong, be it for immigrants or newly subjected people. Only severe crimes (among them desertion) lead to the exclusion from this category. Nong are moderately taxed depending on their harvests.
 * The category of "gong" (artisans and craftsmen). Under Wen of Sui, access to this category was still mostly unregulated and open, and only extreme malpractice could lead to an exclusion, enacted by a magistrate. This category is not allowed to own land, but it is exempt from military service (unless a gong wants to enlist and become a nong, or passes an examination and becomes a military shi).
 * The category of "shang" (merchants, traders). Access to this category was unregulated and open, too, and mostly the same rules as for gong applied.

Wen's definitions contain several other breaks with Confucian tradition (including military shi). Most importantly, though, the codification subjects otherwise unwritten (and very conservative) traditions to discussion and modification. It is considered the most important factor in the construction of later Sui absolutism.

Anji Bridge is finished.

(Western) Göktürks: The Western Göktürks fall apart. Two new federations - the Nǔshībì in Bactria and the Six Oghuz, in which Chigils and Yagma have leading roles, emerge. (Clans of the Kimek tribe live in both of these new federations.) Only Türgesh, Karluks and Basmils and a few remaining clans of the former Eastern Göktürk leadership circle remain loyal to Heshana Khagan.

In the Far West, Tamgan Shad dies and leaves behind the only stable part of the former Göktürk Empire. He is succeeded by Sheguy.

606
China: The First Great Sui Census is conducted. To standardise the procedure, a recently invented machinery is used for the first time on a large scale: The required categories of information are printed with wooden blocks on papers which the Ministery of Revenue distributed to the civil servants carrying out the census. This is the first major use of letterpress printing in history.

The census stirred some unrest, but produced valuable data and insights. Sui has roughly 56,000,000 subjects.

Central Asia: In fights between the (Western) Six Oghuz (Chigils, Yagma et al.) and the tribes loyal to Heshana Khagan (Türgesh, Karluks, Basmils, et al.), thousands are killed. Several tribes flee from the devastation Westwards, the largest among them being the Pechenegs. No side manages to gain the upper hand, and no major territorial shifts are achieved by either confederacy.

Silk Road trade volumes are at a new low, what with the plague, increased unsafety due to the Turks, and warfare in Northern India.

Sheguy Shad pursues a policy of independence from the other Turkic tribes. In the region controlled by him (North of the Caucasus and across the Caspian Sea), trade routes are secure (albeit heavily taxed by his tuduns).

India: The 16 year-old Harshavardhana begins a legal apprenticeship and matriculates at the University of Sthanisvara at the same time. He will go on to become - not an emperor over all of Northern India, as in OTL, but the most important political leader of Northern India's city republics, who forges the Kannauj Alliance.

607
China: After the plague has subsided worldwide, a large number of envoys from non-tributary states - the Roman Republic, the Kingdom of Saba, Eranshahr, the Gupta Empires and the Pandya Kingdom, the Yamato Kingdom, the Sogdian Federation, the Shaihr Jaari and the Xiyu city states of Kashgar, Kucha, Karanshahr and Turfan - arrives at the Sui court in Chang'an. (Vassals like the Tuyuhun, the Ashina of Dali, the Viet, the Cham, Funan and many others had a regular presence in Chang'an anyway.) The establishment of so much foreign contact changes not only Chinese history for ever. The simultaneous presence of representatives from so many different states from all across the huge continent, on which at least the Roman representatives, who are accustomed to having the ambassadors of the Celts, the Sabans, Armenians, Aksumite, Imaziyen and Franks in Rome, know how to draw, also sows the seeds for future multilateral international co-operation, which begins to develop in this century, mostly focusing on the subject of keeping Eurasian trade routes open and safe.

608
China / Tuyuhun: The Tuyuhun King Murong Fuyun visits Chang'an. Emperor Wen promises to support his kingdom, which had been badly affected by the famines of the last decades, too, with technical help in the construction of greater and more complex irrigation systems. Constructions are begun. Murong Fuyun, who in OTL is attacked by Yang Guang of Sui and has his land conquered, declares Emperor Wen of Sui "the brightest star of our age, lighting the path for all peoples."

Roman Republic: Envoys returning from Sui China report to a flabbergasted Senate about the enormous power and wealth of the empire in the East, about its omnipotent emperor and his huge army, its reserve granaries, its educated magistrates, its writing system with a myriad of symbols, about wheelbarrows and suspension bridges, horse collars and fire matches and Cuyu football.

Rome's elites need some time to digest this intelligence. The exchange of permanent ambassadors is planned.

609
China: In the new Chang'an, comfortable quarters are reserved for the newly established embassies of foreign countries. In exchange, Sui ambassadors are given representative homes in Rome, Ma'rib, Ctesiphon and Pataliputra.

Saba: Saba's navy has managed to copy fire siphons. The design is slightly different from the Roman one. Also, it is rumoured that Saban or Persian military chemists have come across a liquid "inextinctable flame" in the research process.

610s
The three Western Turkic federations, who have escaped from Heshana Khagan's domination, begin to consolidate as three separate states, with permanent cities as their capitals:
 * In the Far West, the Turks under Sheguy's leadership become known as the "Chasars". They build a new capital on the Ra (OTL Volga) named Atil (the Turkic name for this river). Their new polity is increasingly shaped by Ostrogothic culture (Judaism, the Greek language). It includes the non-Turkic Magyars and Mari, too.
 * In Bactria, the Nǔshībì build a palace for their shah in the ancient city of Balkh. This new polity absorbs Mazdakist influences from both Choresmia and Persia (along with the Pahlavi language), seizes on the Mazdakists favourable or idealising view on nomads, and assumes the role of military protectors of the Mazdakist realm.
 * In Sogdia, Suyab (formerly a small Sogdian town) becomes the capital of the Six Oghuz. This new polity experiences strong Sogdian influence (politically and linguistically, but not religiously), and the different tribes of the Six Oghuz increasingly establish themselves in Sogdian towns - as well as controlling the countryside surrounding them.

610
Norway: Harald, King of Agder, uses the money gained by the taxation of Sørstad, to modernise his kingdom. Dams with watermill-powered manufactures as well as windmills are built.

611
China: Emperor Wen of Sui dies. After a long nation-wide mourning, Wen's oldest son, Yang Yong, becomes the new Emperor Yang of Sui.

Yang redistributes the agricultural land in accordance with the census provisions. He faces massive opposition from the former aristocracy. Yang has far-reaching plans, with which he aims at continuing his father's legacy of modernising the empire, but he knows he will only be able to implement them if he achieves the same popularity and immunity against criticism that his father enjoyed, based on his military successes.

612
China: Emperor Yang sends an army of more than a million soldiers against Gorguryeo. In contrast to this brother's campaign in OTL, Yang Yong trusts his generals, especially Yu Zhongwen, and the campaign proceeds successfully. Goguryeo's fortresses are stormed and the supply lines through OTL Manchuria are maintained. King Yeongyang appeals to Baekje for help, but Baekje fails him, fearing the evident superiority of Sui forces. After an initial defeat of the naval expeditional corps of Lai Huni, Sui`s army successfully conquers Goguryeo´s capital, Pyongyang, and subsequently the rest of the country. King Yeongyang is led to Chang`an as a captive, and more than 250,000 inhabitants of Goguryeo are deported to Sui as captives, too, among them most of the military leadership. Only a handful of Goguryeo aristocrats manages to escape to Silla.

Aksum: Emperor Gersem dies. His succession becomes, for the first time in centuries, a subject of heated dispute. Instead of accepting the modus operandi of nominating an heir from Gersem's Tigray clan as emperor, the Nobatian King Tokiltoeton calls for an electoral convent, similar to the ones held with the purpose of choosing a Patriarch.

613
China: Emperor Yang distributes fertile land in the former Goguryeo provinces to landless workers and peasants from among the Han. Using the Goguryeo prisoner work force, he begins the construction of the Grand Canal.

Aksum: The proceedings for an electoral convent must yet be negotiated. In the heated debate, Saba does whatever it can to support a dynasty from Adulis, the "Solomonites", whose members are related to the Saban royal family; while Rome does the same to supports a female Makurian pretender who had grown up and attended school and university in Roman Alexandria. Tokiltoeton and the Tigray heir vie for the support of the Patriarch.

614
China: Emperor Yang orders the compilation of a "complete" encyclopedia of (medical, astrological, historical, geographical, philosophical and engineering) knowledge. He prepares to reform state exams on this basis.

Thousands of Goguryeo slaves die in the construction of the Grand Canal, while Han Chinese soldier-peasants and a well-organised administration (like everywhere else in Sui Chao) stabilise and consolidate Sui rule and settlements in the former Goguryeo lands. Provisional roads and bridges constructed for troop transportation during the war are transformed into permanent, stable ones. The peasant population of Goguryeo puts up little resistance to their integration into the Sui Empire.

But in Silla, escaped Goguryeo leaders are preparing the counter-attack.

Aksum: The electoral convent chooses Tokiltoeton as the new (and the first Cushitic, non-Habesha) Emperor of Aksum.

615
Roman Empire / Arabia: A group of refugees of a new religious movement, calling themselves "Muslims", flee from persecution in their home town Mecca, across the Red Sea and into the liberal Roman port town of Myos Hormos, where they are considered just another monotheistic, reformist or revolutionary sect. Meccan enovys appeal to the Vigintiviri of Myos Hormos to extradite the Muslims. The citizens of Myos Hormos decide in a Comitium to allow the Meccans to chase after the Muslims, but they do not allow them to wear arms in their civitas. The majority of the Muslim refugees escapes or hides successfully, but is prevented from public proselytisation for the next years.

Aksum / Saba: Angered at Saba's and Rome's interventions for his rivals, Tokiltoeton decides to close the Bab el-Mandeb passage for Saban and Roman ships. The blockade ends with a major naval defeat for Aksum, though, because Roman and Saban ships have fire siphons, while Aksumite ones don't.

616
Frisia / Celtic Empire: Merchants from all across Frisia form a powerful association for the common pursuit of their interests, vis-a-vis their Celtic allies as well as their Saxon and Salian neighbours and their Baltic trading partners and Scandinavian rivals. It is called the Frisian "Hanse".

617
Roman Empire: The island of Canaria (OTL Gran Canaria), where agricultural production and trade with the Roman Empire have increased greatly since the Ostrogoths have settled the Nesoi Porphyroi (OTL Madeira), joins the Roman Republic as the Civitas Canaria.

Aksum: As a conciliatory gesture to Adulis, the fief of the Solomonites, Tokiltoeton orders the construction of a magnificent, high cathedral in Adulis. Its windows are adorned, for the first time in history, with lead lights.

618
China: Against advice from high-ranking officials, who stress the danger of the nomadic people in the West and the importance of Chinese control over the Silk Road, Emperor Yang defines, for the first time, an explicit strategy for Chinese expansion. Based on the Fubing structure of the army, Sui must only expand into fertile regions where the empire's border can be defended by local yeomen soldiers.

The new Grand Canal is finished. It links the Yellow River with the Yangtse at Yangzhou. The surviving Goguryeo captives are freed and allotted land all across the Empire if they enlist in the army. A considerable part of the Goguryeans move into the growing cities instead, though, where they find work as contract labourers. They are not allowed to move back into Goguryeo, though - not for another two decades at least. Eventually, they all assimilate into the multicultural, but Han-dominated Sui society (sometimes categorised as a new tribe).

619
China: After repeated Khitan raids on the new (former Goguryeo) provinces, Emperor Yang conducts a brutal campaign against the Khitan and allied Kumo Xi and Mohe tribes. All through the summer, tens of thousands are slaughtered, while during winter, even more nomads died of starvation as the Sui troops had killed much of their livestock. Before the end of the year, the leaders of nine tribes give themselves in to Sui commanders.

Aksum: Tokiltoeton begins to build up a professional administration, after the Roman model. It takes over many duties hitherto exerted by local chiefs, urban guilds, tribal associations like the kiyama in the South, vassal kings and representatives of the clergy. The move towards a centralised monarchy increases the tensions in Aksum.

Roman Empire: Canaria's neighbouring island Ninguaria (OTL Tenerife) joins the Republic as a new civitas, too.

620s
Heavily taxed by the Kings of Agder, the trade volume of the city of Sørstad and its guilds and associations decreases. The faltering of Sørstad's dominance leaves a trade and power vacuum filled by the rising Frisian Hanse and facilitates the emancipation of Vineta from direct Sørstad control and monopoly.

620
China: Emperor Yang orders the deportation of the defeated Khitan, Kumo Xi and Mohe, and their employment as forced labourers in the construction of a continuation of the Grand Canal, which would connect Beizhou with the Yellow River and the Bohai Sea, allowing the transportation of goods from China's economic centre in the South to its new provinces in the North-East. Members of those Mohe tribes who had cooperated with Sui are invited to the Imperial Academy (and many, after passing the imperial examinations, would return to govern their former home lands later). Three more provinces are established.

621
Aksum: Tokiltoeton's troops annex the sparsely populated OTL Somalia and begins major infrastructural construction projects: roads linking the coast and the cities, which decrease Aksum's dependence on rivers for transportation and several new ports South of the Horn of Africa.

622
Arabia: Muhammad Ibn abd'Allah and his followers escape from persecution in Mecca to Yathrib, where they manage to pacify the town, which has been plagued for decades by conflicts between Jews, Simonists and polytheists. The Muslims are expropriated in Mecca. Arrived in Yathrib, they must rely on plundering caravans - and they specialise on those led by Meccan Quraish.

623
Frisia: Frisian shipbuilders invent a vessel suited for shallow water as well as high seas - the cog. Members of the Hanse will buy hundreds of them over the next years, which allow them to multiply their trading volume with the Venedian and Baltic tribes living on the shallow Southern coastline of the Baltic Sea.

China: In this year's regular redistribution of land, the vast newly acquired territories in Manchuria are included, too, settling this land with Han Chinese, too. The territories are so large that parts of it remain fallow.

624
Aksum / Roman Empire: Tokiltoeton signs a contract with the half-private, half-public Roman construction trust "ENERGEIA". ENERGEIA will build a dam on the Black Nile and reap a small share of the annual profits of the mills powered by it.

China: The Northern extension of the Grand Canal is finished, too. The surviving Tungusians are scattered across the empire, similar to the Goguryeans a few years earlier, but although they will Sinicise thoroughly, too, they remain a distinct ethnic group (presently called "Nu-Zhen").

626
Roman Empire: Violence breaks out between the new settlers on Canaria and Ninguaria and the indigenous population, whose herding, hunting and gathering grounds are encroached upon by the expansion of new agriculture. The new civitates prevail militarily without any interference from the Republican government. Several hundred indigenous persons are deported to the nearby island of Iunonia (OTL Lanzarote and Fuerteventura).

627
Saba / Arabia: Quraish clans appeal to Sharabil, King of Saba, for help against the troublemaker Muhammad ibn abd'Allah and his Muslim followers, who have undermined the safety of inner-Arabian trade. Sharabil agrees to help because the disturbance of trade between Saba and the Mediterranean has affected Saban economy gravely. He sends not only 3,000 soldiers to join the Confederate troops, but also his capable general Wahib - and incendiary bombs with inextinguishable fire (developed by Romans).

The Muslim defenders of Yathrib have dug a trench to stop the Quraish and Saban cavalry. But they are not prepared for Saba's incendiary bombs. Yathrib burns to the ground - and inside it, almost all of its defenders, including the prophet and religious leader Muhammad ibn abd'Allah. Some men and women try to escape the inextinguishable flames and are caught in the trench they had dug earlier, where they are slain by the Confederate soldiers. Only very few people manage to escape into a wood thicket and thence, as night falls, into the desert.

The fire of Yathrib does not only extinguish Islam on the Arabian peninsula and restores the safety of Quraish trade across the desert. It also becomes a symbol of the might of Saba. Yathrib is resettled and rebuilt by the (confederate) Jewish tribes of Banu Qaynupa and Banu Nadir and becomes a part of the Kingdom of Saba. Mecca's independence, as the last Arabs outside Saba's realm, becomes mere facade, as Saba joins the Hilf al-Fudul economic alliance and the military dependence of the Quraish on Saba has become evident for everyone.

629
Frisia / Celtic Empire: After negotiations have been pushed by the Frisian Hanse, who seeks Celtic military support for their trading ventures, the treaty with which Frisia become's the first Celtic margo of the Celtic Empire is ratified in a Frisian Thing and by the Celtic Senate.

Economy & Technology:
Across Europe, North-Eastern Africa and Persia, separate professions of distillers, pharmacists, chemists, gaffers, medics, opticians, millers etc. have formed. Where there are universities and academies, they are more advanced and more innovative, while in the Germanic, Slavic, Central, East and South-East Asian as well as Northern African countries neighbouring the empires, the professions have organised into guilds where knowledge is kept under restriction and handed down by practitioners to apprentices only. Several drastic measures are taken to combat the bubonic plague, first in the Roman and Persian Republics, then in China, Saba, Kushana, Chastana and Harsha India, Gandhara and the Celtic Empire, too, and towards the end of the century also in Aksum, Gupta India, Funan and Silla and  the cities of Dvaravati and the Pyu  and some Franconian towns:
 * In China, new furnaces produce excellent steel. The products reach Europe in the last third of the century.
 * Also in China, newspapers are invented. Both innovations travel fast; they are used in the ideological battles of Mazdakists and conservatives, Hindus and Buddhists, their competing schools,different Christian churches, Optimates and Populares in the Roman democracy etc.
 * Under the Sui dynasty, the equal field system is enforced across the empire. Training and exams of the bureaucracy are improved. Both ideas are discussed in Persia, India, South-East and East Asia as well as Africa and Europe later, but only consistently adopted in Nihon in later centuries. China's population grows and enjoys enormous increases in living standards in the meantime, also caused by canal construction and easier sea trade.
 * The development of credit systems has reached a critical point both in the Roman Empire (where public institutions like the academies, temples, infrastructural agencies or even the Cura Annonae have been the main lenders, but the owners of profitable textile manufacturers begin to participate in the game, too) and in India and China (where Buddhist monasteries are the main lenders). Not only occasional debt crises create unrest, but also the enormous power of the lending institutions (crossing imperial borders, etc.) harbors potential for conflicts. Christians increasingly stress their anti-interest position, which varies from violent Simonist action to the establishment of interest-free mutual credit systems sponsored/backed by the Roman Catholic Church (and which were, to a great extent, inspired by the mutual credit networks of the Jewish Ostrogothic sea merchants).
 * In the Roman Empire, optical lenses are improved to a great extent. Eyeglasses are invented and improved thoughout the century. First primitive microscopes and telescopes are built, the latter facilitating sea navigation considerably and being used by Ostrogoths first.
 * Also in the Roman Empire, derivates of sulphuric acid are discovered to be of use as fertilisers. They improve agricultural productivity significantly, providing the growing population of the empire with sufficient produce.
 * Rome's world-leading industries (textile and other) are owned by several dozen dynasties. Most of these tycoons had been landowners under the Principate; only a handful are "new wealth". These industrial tycoons are richer than even the wealthiest patricians before the abolition of slavery; they have come to be called "fortunati". Through major donations, they dominate both political parties and most electoral campaigns. They use their influence to tweak competition in their favour and direct infrastructural investment money in ways which suit them best. Together with public institutions, they operate as international lenders, financing major investments like dams in countries with less accumulated capital like Lasikia, Iberia, Armenia, Saba, and Aksum, against a share of the profits. The power of these oligarchs is debated very critically within the Roman Empire - it is one of the driving forces behind the Tax Reform of 683 - and it also creates negative sentiments vis-a-vis the Romans in other countries, from where they still reap their profits decades and even centuries after the initial investment.
 * In Athens, diethyl ether is produced from sulphuric acid and alcohol for the first time. Its anaesthetic qualities, first experienced by the chemists who discovered it, are soon used in dental medicine, later also for other medical operations like amputations.
 * In Persia, batteries are developed and used for stimulating the muscles of veteran soldiers and other long-term hospital inmates. The idea is copied in Saba, Kushana, and the Roman Empire.
 * In the Roman Empire, weighing scales are greatly improved. The invention spreads to the other empires soon.
 * In Aksum, leadlights are invented and soon copied in the Eastern Mediterranean and in Saba.
 * In a town in the Roman province of Dacia Superior, wire drawing is invented. Thin gold wires and thicker copper wires are used for a very limited range of purposes at first.
 * In the Celtic Empire, syringes are invented.
 * In towns and cities, all garbage must be placed in large containers, which are collected and burned by public workers.
 * The streets of towns and cities are no longer only swept, but also endowed with water cleaning connected on the source side to the aquaeduct system and on the target side to new and improved canalisation systems leading to the urban cloacs. In smaller towns and those with less water supply, citizens are obligated to clean the streets in front of their houses themselves.
 * Urban citizens who illegally deposit garbage or do not protect their edible stock or do not clean their street are fined severely and often imprisoned.

Military:

 * In Sui China, gunpowder is invented, but not widely used for military purposes.
 * Saba builds its own "Greek fire" devces and endows its fleet with them. Saba's commercial fleet competes with Rome's in trade with India and sea trade with China.
 * After the conquest of Goguryeo and the pacification of the Khitan, Mohe, Tuyuhun and many other potential invaders, Sui China begins to emphasise naval dominance much more than in OTL, in order to control the trade through the Malay archipelago, but also for fast movement of goods to its counties on the Korean Peninsula. The marine strategy will suffer its first major setback, though, in a defeat dealt to the Chinese navy by Sri Vijaya.
 * The Celtic and Roman Empires, Saba, and China discuss, then experiment with unheard-of military co-operation in the marine sector in order to keep at least the sea trade route between Europe and the Middle East on the one hand and China on the other hand open and safe, since inner-Turkic wars are making the Silk Road almost too dangerous to travel in this century. In contrast to the later Sogdian Solution for the Silk Road, though, nothing is formalised here, so a few irritations and an incompetent Chinese emperor (Yang Liao aka Liao of Sui) suffice to provoke a minor sea skirmish between Roman and Chinese ships and the end of this form of co-operation in the 670s or 680s.
 * Across the Indian subcontinent, powerful empires are increasingly replaced with federations of small, defiant republics, who pay for the military services of warriors instead of letting them rule their countries.

Philosophy / science:

 * Methodical medical observation carried out in the context of East Roman hospitals leads to the identification of rats as the most likely source / carrier of the bubonic plague. Drastic measures of public hygiene are imposed in the Empires and adopted later elsewhere, reducing infection rates by 90 % over two decades.
 * In the natural sciences, several conflicting theories are developed concerning the movements of the stars, the role of organs and bodily fluids, the underlying principle behind plant and animal life, the fixed or changeable properties of substances and their internal structure, as well as concerning mass and weight. The Armenian scholar Anani of Shirak discerns planets and moons and formulates a model of the solar System.
 * An apothecary in a Celtic monastery in Gaul, which has a huge garden with all sorts of (supposedly) medicinal plants at its disposal, creates the first botanical nomenclature system.
 * In attempts to tackle anarchism, which has gathered new followers beyond staunch Simonists, sophisticated theories of democracy are elaborated at Roman universities.

Religion:

 * Catholic and other brands of Christianity show differentiating trends across the social strata. Among the educated, ever-more sophisticated theological theories and complex abstract moral philosophies circulate and regain followers as the Roman cult starts to fade away. Among the working classes, a canon of ethical principles derived from all kinds of Christian confessions starts to consolidate and shape everyday life, while in spiritual life and personal belief, countless variations of ecclesiastic pantheons and mixtures with mystic practices from all around the world are practiced. Across all strata, Christianity gains new followers through its systems of mutual credit, which are exclusively available to trustworthy members and present a very attractive alternative to high-interest loans from diverse public institutions.
 * A new and more missionary school of thought develops within the Celtic Church. Monasteries outside the Celtic Empire are founded, especially in Narbonnensis and Mauritania, but later in the century also in Norway.
 * Roman and Celtic paganism gradually decline.
 * Paulicianism finds supporters in Saba, Aksum and the Roman Empire, too. In Saba, it is outlawed.
 * Several different schools of Mazdakism develop in Persia, India, China and Europe.
 * Manichaeism loses ground to Mazdakism and new Christian and Buddhist sects.
 * New Buddhist schools develop in Gandhara, some regions of India and China due to the intense contact with Mazdakism, European philosophy and the monotheistic religions of Christianity and Judaism.
 * The Bhakti movement, in contrast to OTL originating in Kushana, where the marginalisation of Brahmins and official Zoroastrianism have relegated Hindu beliefs into the realm of the personal, now spreads across Northern India. It is adopted by urban manufacturing and commercial elites and rural population alike; its open, radical flank are the "anti-scripturalist" populists who demand a redistribution of brahma-deyas and properties of Buddhist monasteries in the Gupta lands in favour of landless Hindu peasants. Absorbing Mazdakist influences, the Bhakti movement is also closely much more tantric than in OTL.
 * The Vedic religions and even the Bhakti variants do not find resonance in Tamilakam. While Buddhists and Jainists remain active, and all sorts of Christian, Jewish and Zoroastrian confessions are practiced by foregin merchants in the port towns, the rural population continues to practice its cult of (mainly female) natural deities. Intellectualisations of these traditional cults are formulated in the towns, too, drawing not only on Vedic, but also on Zoroastrian, pagan-Roman and even Daoist sources.
 * After most of its followers are killed in Arabia, a new Arabian revelatory religion called "Islam" only has a handful of followers left, who have emigrated to the Roman Empire (instead of Aksum). In the liberal Roman civitates of Egypt, their radical theses are tolerated, but also widely ignored. The sect later consolidates around the civitas of Antinopolis in Roman Egypt, propagates and implements on a communal level similar welfare policies than the more moderate branches of Simonist Christians and the more reformist branches of Catholic Christians. Roman Egyptian Islam remains focused on Jerusalem (Muslims do not pray towards Mecca) and maintains close connections to Christian and Jewish groups. Several conflicting transcriptions of Muhammad's revelations circulate and lead to later schisms, which condemn the small religious group to relative insignificance.

Nations of Europe:

 * Roman Empire: Infrastructural projects and the increasing number of public hospitals in cities put a strain on public budgets, whereas the fortunati display their wealth in drastic ways. With land becoming a less important economic factor as more and more capital is accumulated, a tax reform pushed forward by the Populares, where "communalisti", a group with socio-economic positions derived to a great extent from Mazdakism, have temporarily gained the upper hand over the party's fortunati-backed elite, passes the Senate in 683 after decades of heated debate and fierce resistance from the fortunati. Imperial taxation is now extended onto all kinds of property, based on census information. The reform contributes to a fiscally evasive behaviour among the wealthy, who begin to hide some of their possessions in strongboxes and vaults.
 * Slavonia, between the Carpathians and the Tyros (OTL Dniester), mostly inhabited by farmers of mixed ethnic descent, many among them Slavs, and led by a Romanised urban elites which strengthens its ties with the Roman South, first becomes a Roman margo, then joins the republic.
 * First in Roman Slavonia, then also in the regions to its North and East, woods are cut (and sold), canals built, crop rotations improved, more powerful ploughs bought and used, and experiments with fertilisers made. The region becomes the bread basket of the Roman Republic. Whereas Slavic peasants on Roman territory enjoy an (albeit limited) share of the rising living standards, their brethren under Chasar rule suffer from the institution of a quasi-feudal system by the Chasar tuduns, which bereaves them of a large share of their labour's fruit and excludes them more drastically from power, too.
 * Celtic colonisers and research expeditions discover and map Glaciana (OTL Iceland) and Polaris (OTL Greenland), where they do not encounter any indigenous population yet.
 * The thriving new port towns all along the Baltic Sea are often attacked by pirates and raiders. They are increasingly fortified against this threat.
 * Saxony / Denmark: In 669, a small Danish fleet under King Hygelac defeats the Saxon navy, which pursued putative pirates and had tried to collect tributes for the Saxon king, too. Hygelac builds a large hall in Gudme in celebration of this victory and resides there as a king whose domininion, for the first time in Danish history, encompasses several larger islands in the West of the archipelago.
 * Scandinavia (Norway): Through marriages, charisma, good relations with the Celts and a couple of violent acts, petty king Augvald of Karmøy gains control over all of Sogn, Rogaland and Hordaland in the West of Norway in the 620s; the capital of his kingdom is named Avaldsnes after him. Further to the North, Trøndelag emerges as a polity; its security is guaranteed by the yarls of Lade. In the East, the petty kings of Borre have consolidated their control over Viken and extended it across the entire Vestfold and much of Østfold; they can guarantee Celtic, Frisian and other traders safety from piracy in the Oslofjord; the town of Oslo grows considerably.
 * Scandinavia (Sørstad Alliance / Norway / Frisia): The city of Sørstad regained fiscal independence after violent confrontations in 669 and managed to stabilise its position as centre of the second most important Baltic trading network. It still has to provide soldiers for the King of Agder. To stabilise and enhance its fragile autonomy, the Sørstaders invite Celtic monks to build a monastery, knowing full well that the Celtic Empire would protect its citizens.
 * Venedia / Saxony: Within the fortifications of the castle of the Obodritic king Visan, the Baltic port town of Liubice (OTL Lübeck) develops. Its initial Wagrian inhabitants quickly mix with arriving Frisians and Scandinavians. His son, Drasco, marries a Polabian princess in 640, thus uniting the kingdoms of Liubice and Sverin (OTL Schwerin). In 662, the Saxon king Heinar violates the treaties and marches on Liubice and Sverin, forcing Drasco's son, who is also named Drasco, to pay tribute and become a vassal of the Saxon king.
 * Further to the East, Vineta's mostly Pomoranian, Ranian and Lutician inhabitants manage to emancipate themselves from the rule of Sørstad's secret societies. The new Vinetan leadership establishes contacts with the Frisian Hanse, but also maintains those with Sørstad's sister towns. Vineta becomes the largest port town on the Southern Baltic shore and the largest exporter of cereals in the Baltic region. The strong influence of the Lutician Slavic priests of Rethra on the city council of Vineta in the last third of the 7th century leads to limitations on alcohol abuse. Vineta becomes the port town which exchanges its goods not so much for brandy, but for the newly invented fertilisers and tools for its craftsmen.
 * Czechs and Moravians, the only Slavic tribes who live South of the mountain ridge, have come to live in permanent conflict with each other. While Moravian traders want to sell wood to the Romans, who pay handsomely, the Czech oppose deforestation on religious grounds. Religion escalates the conflict anyway since Moravians have converted to Catholicism and the Czech cling to traditional Slavic cults.
 * After the breakup of the Western Göktürk Khaganate, the Chasar Khaganate establishes itself in the pontic steppe, on Tauris and in the Northern Caucasus. The Chasars become semi-sedentary. Ostrogothic influences create the Chasar language, the Turkic language with the greatest Greek influence (and written in the Greek alphabet), and the Chasarian faith, a rather unorthodox variety of Judaism, as well as access to modern craft know-how. The Chasars amass wealth by taxing the Euro-Asian trade flows across their territories, and they extend their sphere of influence at the cost of the Bashkirs. Eastern Slavic as well as Ugro-Finnic (Mari, Magyars) and Caucasian (Alani, Nakh) peoples submit to their overlordship. The Roman Republic is divided into pro- and anti-Chasarian factions (the former seeing the Chasars as a buffer state, the latter as a danger at the doorstep and a hindrance to commerce). In the inner-Turkic wars of the century, the Chasars play an important role from the sideline, preventing the ascension of any serious rivals in the Transoxanian region.
 * After the Romans abandon their naval presence on the Borysthenes and Tanais, the Roman and Ostrogothic population there attempts to organise their defense together with the chiefs of surrounding Slavic and Mordwinian tribes. Ultimately, they must give in to Chasar rule. More Romans / Ostrogoths move Westwards, often into the new Roman Slavonia.
 * The Ostrogoths who have migrated into the Roman Empire become good, integrated citizens, but especially craftsmen and traders keep their own socio-economic structures and associations and even the Pangothikon, although its role changes. Other Roman citizens learn a lot from Ostrogothic associations, clubs, syndicates and networks. The Ostrogothic immigrants also strengthen Judaism within the Republic - and reformist tendencies within Roman Judaism. Also, Ostrogoths are actively pushing diplomatic contact and co-operation with China, for example solutions for a military protection of Euro-Chinese sea trade through the Malay archipelago, which is both full of pirates and whose coastal towns demand enormous staple taxes.

Nations of Africa:

 * A half-private, half-public Roman investment trust had built the first dam on the Black Nile in Aksum and several manufactures using its waterpower, in the 630s. The Emperor of Aksum had signed a contract leaving a quarter of the manufactures' profits to this Roman trust. Throughout the 670s and 680s, alleged fraud in calculating the profits of these manufactures leads to tensions between Rome and Aksum. After an offensive "inspection" in 690, Aksum ceases to deliver the payments altogether, which causes the Roman-Aksumite War. After Roman victory, the Senate installs a new, more Rome-friendly dynasty in Aksum.
 * Simonists emerge triumphant from civil war in the Sao cities, too. The great Simonist arc now stretches from Wagadu in the West over the Hausa, Banza and Sao to the Tubu in the East and the Garamants in the North as well as anarchic communities within the South-Eastern provinces of the Roman Empire. Except for the Roman Simonists, all other Simonists are learning to read their Bible in the old Libyan alphabet of the Garamants. From a Palestinian sect, Simonism has become one of the three largest Christian confessions whose core area has moved significantly South into Africa - a fact symbolised by the increased importance of Mune as a second important Christian sanctuary and religious centre after Jerusalem.
 * Ostrogothic ships from the Nesoi Porphyroi (OTL Madeira and Porto Santo) sail around Africa's Western coast, intensify trade with the Insulae Fortunatae (OTL Canary Islands) and the Horon and build a lighthouse at Glossa Ygra (OTL Cabo Verde). They also discover and colonise the Nesoi Atlantikoi (OTL Azores). Ostrogothic boats reach as far as the Benin Kingdom of the Edo. While their former home on Tauris is ruled by Chasars, these "Atlantic Ostrogoths" are a highly decentralised society, where each island and port town considers itself a sovereign state, held together not by political confederation, but by economic bonds (e.g. sea merchant syndicates, guilds, insurance clubs and credit networks). The Pangothikon in Byzantion is forced to accept its extremely modest role as arbiter between these important associations.
 * Saba's and Aksum's cities on the East Coast increasingly influence their hinterland, with which they trade growing amounts of coffee, tropical wood and ivory for alcohol, glass and weaponry. With some "help" from the coastal cities, several ways of increasing agricultural production per square unit are found. Persian and Indian sea merchants appear in greater numbers.

Nations of Asia:
Christianity is the common bond uniting Southern Arabia, while the Roman-Saban co-operation for naval security in the Persian gulf is the key factor for Saban hegemony over the peninsula's East Coast.
 * Arabia: Saba emerges from the peninsular conflicts as the undisputed power no. 1: At the beginning of the 7th century, Saba is a consolidated kingdom. Himjarite and Hadamautian nobility have long since become loyal to the crown, as have the decimated tribes of the Azd and the Abd al-Qays.

Saba has also become a major trading nation. Its colonies on Africa's East Coast provide ivory, but more importantly coffee, for which there is enormous demand from the Celtic West to the Indian East, and which allows Saba to import glassware, new medicine, oil and alcohol from the Mediterranean and spices from India. Saba's new wealth is reflected in its capital city, Ma'rib, whose tall churches and palaces and lush gardens and parks do not fail to impress their fellow Arabs.

The alliance between Saba and the Quraish lasts. After aristocratic inter-marriage, the Quraish officially become a part of the Kingdom of Saba, which now controls almost all of Arabia.

After trade routes are open again, Saba's wealth grows even faster than before. They learn from their Persian trade partners how to caulk their ships to transport liquids, and from their Roman trade partners how to grow and produce ailments themselves instead of importing them etc. The first Arabian university is founded in Ma'rib in 661.

In dealing with its new Central Arabian countrymen and their Northern Arabian neighbours, Saba succeeds with very cautious and balanced policies. It only deploys its military, which has developed small and more directed flamethrowers apt for equestrian use and generally enlarged its cavalry, to secure its trade routes. The Christianisation of the Quraish is undertaken slowly and cautiously, and shows considerable success towards the end of the century, when Quraish leaders in Mecca re-interpret their city's central sanctuary, the Ka'ba, in Christian terms as the altar of Ibrahim / Abraham and build a basilica around it. Towards the end of the century, Saba's wealth, international relations and scholarly advances have become a symbol of Arabian pride. Saba is an important trading partner of the Roman Empire. Its conflicts and rivalries with Aksum continue throughout the century, though. Salvador79 (talk) 15:16, March 9, 2014 (UTC)
 * Much of Northern India formally belongs to the Gupta Empire, which has turned into an extremely loose confederacy (akin to the OTL Holy Roman Empire), in which city-states, republics and petty kingdoms pursue their goals autonomously and guilds (shreni), religiously flavoured self-defense societies blossom and social conflicts between urban and rural, wealthy and poor begin to escalate. Harshavardhana unites the gana sangha city republics in a great federation, which, although formally accepting Gupta overlordship, pursues a very active foreign policy aimed at securing their share of control over the South-East Asian sea trade routes against Sui/Funanese hegemony. Among the petty kingdoms, conflicts often erupt, and are sometimes solved with judgements from the Gupta Emperor.
 * The gana sanghas, as well as city republics in the Tamil South and those of the mountainous North-West, feature an emerging middle class, a peaceful coexistence of all sorts of cultural and religious blends, and an increasingly self-confident foreign and external economic policy, based on the wealth generated by their shreni or nikamam (guilds/syndicates). Sometimes acting in unison - especially within the Kannauj Alliance forged by Harshavardhana and the Shaihr Jaari -, they pursue policies of securing resources and outlet markets.
 * Buddhist cities, led by Nalanda, also forge alliances with the Pyu of Sri Ksetra and the Malay of Palembang, to where they export their political model of gana sangha. The Buddhist city republics are more democratic and egalitarian than the Hindu-dominated ones. Together, and at times allied with the other city republics or other actants, they try to keep trade routes open and empires from taking them over.
 * During another century of peace and prosperity, disrupted only by minor socio-economic conflicts, society in the Tamil kingdoms grows more secular and absorbs technological progress quickly. Dravidian cults have syncretised with many other cults, the Vedic ones not being dominant among the latter. Buddhism and Jainism continue to flourish.
 * European telescopes find their way into India and help both astronomy and sea voyaging.
 * Imported fertilisers are used  to increase agricultural output in the artificially irrigated, arid lands of central and Southern India.
 * South-East Asia: Funan loses its maritime supremacy over Indo-Chinese trade to Sri Vijaya. After Westward expansion is stopped by Dvaravati and Langkasuka, Funan grows closer to Sui China, copies its policies and orients itself towards the North. Along the Mekong, land is brought under control and integrated into the modern Funanese agricultural system and cities are built as far North as OTL Luang Prabang. Funan's ruling ethnic group of Indianised Khmer represents a minority here, with Tai (Shan, Lao and others) and Hmong combined outnumbering them.
 * Sui and the Tuyuhun remain closely allied and keep both the Yarlung Tibetans and various Turks at bay. The Tuyuhun build a modern state after the Chinese model.
 * Influenced by Sui, Zhangzhung rebels successfully against the Yarlung Dynasty. Tibet never becomes a unified empire.
 * Turks: Chasars, Türgesh, Basmyls, Kyrgyz, Chigils, Pechenegs, Karluks, Tuwinians, Kipchaks, Chubans and Yagma fight with and against each other and with and against neighbouring kingdoms, empires, and city states in unstable and shifting alliances. Chinese, Sogdian, Persian and Ostrogothic influences deeply shape the different Turkic tribes and proto-states in different ways.
 * Nihon: The reforms of Regent Shotoku and the Taika years centralise and modernise the Yamato kingdom after the Chinese model.
 * Nihon / Korea: After Silla attacks Baekje, Yamato manges to help the rebels restore Baekje and drive off Silla`s troops.
 * After relations between the Chasars and Caucasian kingdoms turn sour, the construction of the Great Caucasus Wall is begun.
 * Langkasuka and Kedah gain independence and Palembang (Sri Vijaya) on Sumatra takes over the leading role in protecting Indochinese trade from Cham and other pirates. Each of them have a different powerful Indian empire or federation behind them.

Abrittus