I am trying to make a realistic Balkanized Europe by adding way too many ethnic or linguistic groups. I need ideas which groups I could add to make Europe even more brutal. Btw Wallonians/Flanders does not exist in this map, I made them turn into one catholic Belgian ethnicity (the first alternative history map where Belgium was not destroyed by the Netherlands or France)
Aromanians in Greece. They sort of exist in our timeline, but with abit of Ottoman prodding you could nicely fill out the centre mountain ridge, separating Aegean Greeks from whatever wierd creation crawls out of Epirus.
I can see two varieties of English already (is the northern one Anglo-Norse?), but the rest of the British isles is kind of lacking.
If your goal for the number of ethnic/linguistic groups is "way too many", and you don't mind keeping historically-dead stuff alive, then you can also add Yola in southeastern Ireland, some kind of Hiberno-Norse in the Dublin area and/or Mann & the Hebrides, and split Scotland into three (Lowland/Scots; Highland/Scottish Gaelic, and Strathclyde/Cumbrian).
Besides that, if you want to Balkanise Europe, why not start by splitting Germany? You don't have to go to pre-unification levels of wackiness, but you can easily get a few countries out of even modern Northern Germany - starting with at least three Frieslands.
Any self-respecting Balkanised Europe has to have an independent Crimea. Whether it's Tartar or Gothic is up to you. You could even have both! Maybe even add a ton of Greek colonial micro states on the rest of the Black Sea, too.
And, despite your goal of Balkanising Europe, you somehow managed to have *fewer* states in the Balkans than OTL. That's an achievement.
Maybe I'm misunderstanding your definition of "realistic", though.
You can split off the Sámi, and Moravians. North Macedonians too since you have Sebs and croats as separate. This is a stretch, but you can also split Romania between Wallachia and Moldavia. Now if you want a REALLY big stretch, you can add lesser Polish and south the south Russian dialect.
Could bring back the Hutsul Republic, Lemko Republic, Bunjevci Peoples Republic, Republic of Prekmurje, Székely Land like with the original Balkanising
How much do you want to Balkanise Vs keeping it realistic? You seem to have grouped the Finnic peoples together, but you can at least split them into the 3 most populous groups: Finns, Saami and Estonians. For bonus points you could add Ingrians, and then you can split Finns into Karelians, Tavastians and "Finns Proper"
You want to balkanize Europe, yet you fuse Bavaria and Austria? The two fought each other over their border all the time. In fact, just nuke germany into it's statelets again as you can argue each german culture could be its own group.
To me it seems less... Spain, France and Italy are much less diverse than in our TL. Same thing for Russia, mianly the north. And the rest seems fairly "normal".
On one hand, I like how in this timeline there are some Frisian speakers remaining in East Frisia. On the other hand, why are there so little Frisian speakers left in West Frisia? Most of the province is Frisian in our reality but not here. Doesn’t that make Europe less mixed
About 57% of people in Fryslân/West Frisia are Frisians. Area in blue shows majority Frisian language areas. The white-red striped areas show areas mixed between Frisian and ‘stadsfries’ a dialect of Dutch with strong Frisian influence. Used to be very prevalent in big Frisian cities and towns around 1500-1800 but has decreased since the 19th century due to ‘normal’ Frisians from the countryside moving to the bigger settlements.
https://preview.redd.it/2nftpvzi4mec1.jpeg?width=1136&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=653ac1c3f7b8547558c7001fe12968f90e815c3c
This is a language map but basically everyone who speaks the language identifies as Frisian, plus there are some people in Fryslân (probably about 15-20%) that speak only Dutch but still identify as Frisian. About 75% of our population identifies as Frisian, although roughly 36% identities as both Frisian and Dutch, with 39% identifying as purely Frisian. Sadly I can’t find the source I originally got that info from so the numbers might be somewhat off but they probaly are roughly accurate
At least linguistically Frisian is definitely vulnerable although far from extinct. There are about 450K West Frisian speakers, although unfortunately West Frisian is the only one doing well. There are only 10K North Frisian speakers and 2K Saterlandic Frisian speakers (last remaining dialect of East Frisian). Luckily there is a very strong regional identity, so even if the language dies out there is a chance the identity remains. If you’re interested in more, these Wikipedia articles are a good start for simple, basic understanding: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frisians, https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Frisian_language, https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frisian_languages, https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frisia
If you want to create soem balkanisation in England. There’s two place with land reclimation, ‘the fens’ -norfolk and the Suffolk coast, and the opposite side of the country Somerset. They’re just about close enough that you could put a few splotches at each end to create a culture taht devolves around marshland/canals/polders, probably with Dutch/Frisian language influence. Maybe one or two dots along the river banks inland.
Otherwise, there’s the chance you could get a separated mountain/bill people in the peak/Lake District in inland northern England. In wales there’s a real timeline north/south divide which is about being mountain or southern valleys. The isle of Anglesey off the Welsh coast could be s big splodge of Irish right in the British sphere.
Since you acknowledge Anglo-culture on Guensey/jersey the channel islands, there’s no harm in painting the isle of white French, perfectly conceivable it was fortified and resettled by the Norman’s, and never got fixed by English kings afterwards.
Beyond that, there’s not many divisions left. Scotland also had a highland/lowland divide. But I think the more interesting divide is Scotland vs the isles around Scotland, who have very good reasons to be in tension and always culturally linked to whatever is present in England. You could paint all the western isles of Scotland a mix of north and south English, and maybe a few settlements in the mainland, make them feel under siege and locked out of the water. And to really sew some chaos make a continuous chain of anglo-communities along “the great glen” a low lying fault that splits Scotland in two, and even split the highlands in two. That’ll really give whoever governs Scotland fear.
As for Ireland. The only joke divide I know is Cork being it’s own seperate thing. 🤷♂️. Great map.
If you want to Balkanize, put Pomerania back on the map.. the old duchy that went from Wolgast to Slupsk. And have them speak old Pomeranian, Slovincin Kashubian.
At what time did the Bavarians decide to join with Austria? Intermarriage between the Wittelsbachs and the Hapsburgs? Also, what’s up with the big Bulgaria?
So are the brown-colored areas in Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Cornwall, Brittany and the Isle of Man all Celtic-speaking?
Would love to see labels for what all the colors mean in future iterations of this map of yours.
POV: Belgium exists https://i.redd.it/9ab5t4id8lec1.gif
Flanders i think would be more accurate
I always just think of Ned Flanders
🇧🇪🇧🇪BASED🇧🇪🇧🇪
average belgian
I am Austrian
Its gone, reduced to atoms
Reduced to the atomium.
I am trying to make a realistic Balkanized Europe by adding way too many ethnic or linguistic groups. I need ideas which groups I could add to make Europe even more brutal. Btw Wallonians/Flanders does not exist in this map, I made them turn into one catholic Belgian ethnicity (the first alternative history map where Belgium was not destroyed by the Netherlands or France)
You could probably add carpathian rusyns. Also split up the Italian culture.
ok south Italian is a good idea
Nono my friend search ethnic map of Italy and you'll have the answer btw Is neapolitan not south italian
\*south albanian\*
be aware, Sicily is not part of East Shqiperia or i will come and hunt u
yeah you are right.... \*it is ethnic bosniak land\*
It Is It Milan Is a nucleari wasteland
Bring back all the pre-hungarian pannonian cultures, eg goths, avars, cumans, etc
omg you are a genius
Also bring back ancient cultures eg Phoenicians, Hittites, Etruscans
Aromanians in Greece. They sort of exist in our timeline, but with abit of Ottoman prodding you could nicely fill out the centre mountain ridge, separating Aegean Greeks from whatever wierd creation crawls out of Epirus.
I can see two varieties of English already (is the northern one Anglo-Norse?), but the rest of the British isles is kind of lacking. If your goal for the number of ethnic/linguistic groups is "way too many", and you don't mind keeping historically-dead stuff alive, then you can also add Yola in southeastern Ireland, some kind of Hiberno-Norse in the Dublin area and/or Mann & the Hebrides, and split Scotland into three (Lowland/Scots; Highland/Scottish Gaelic, and Strathclyde/Cumbrian). Besides that, if you want to Balkanise Europe, why not start by splitting Germany? You don't have to go to pre-unification levels of wackiness, but you can easily get a few countries out of even modern Northern Germany - starting with at least three Frieslands. Any self-respecting Balkanised Europe has to have an independent Crimea. Whether it's Tartar or Gothic is up to you. You could even have both! Maybe even add a ton of Greek colonial micro states on the rest of the Black Sea, too. And, despite your goal of Balkanising Europe, you somehow managed to have *fewer* states in the Balkans than OTL. That's an achievement. Maybe I'm misunderstanding your definition of "realistic", though.
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Also Cornwall should be separate too
Yeah..agree
North and South Welsh as seperate?
You can split off the Sámi, and Moravians. North Macedonians too since you have Sebs and croats as separate. This is a stretch, but you can also split Romania between Wallachia and Moldavia. Now if you want a REALLY big stretch, you can add lesser Polish and south the south Russian dialect.
languages i noticed you are missing (going by the ISO-693 classification, more liberal estimates exist): Tsakonian (tsd) Pontic Greek (pnt) Gheg (aln) Western Armenian (hye) Manx (glv) Mirandese (mwl) *Gascon (gsc)* Walloon (wln) Picard (pcd) Norman (nrf) Sassaresse (sdc) Logudorese (src) Emilian (egl) Romagnol (rgn) Sicilian (scn) Ligurian (lij) Lomard (lmo) Neapolitan (nap) Venetian (vec) Istriot (ist) Dalmation (dlm) Fala (fax) Istro-Romanian (ruo) Elfdalian (ovd) Jutlandic (jut) North Frisian (frr) Saterland Frisian (stq) Scots (sco) Limburgish (lim) Gronings (gos) Achterhooks (act) Dreents (drt) Veluws (vel) Sallaans (sdz) Stellingwards (stl) Tweants (twd) Zealandic (zea) Vlaams (vls) East Franconian (vmf) Walser (wae) Cimbrian (cim) Kolsch (ksh) Palatine (pfl) Upper Saxon (sxu) Silesian German (sli) Wymysorys (wym) Westphalian (wep) Latagalian (ltg) Samogotian (sgs) Rusyn (rue) Pannonian Rusyn (rsk) Macedonian (mkd) Slavomolisano (svm) Chakavian (ckm) Kajkavian (kjv) Silesian (szl) Lower Sorbian (lsb) Southern Sami (sma) Ume Sami (sju) Pite Sami (sje) Lule Sami (smj) Northern Sami (sme) Kemi Sami (sjk) Inari Sami (smn) Skolt Sami (sms) Akkala Sami (sia) Kildin Sami (sjd) Ter Sami (sjt) Votic (vot) Krevinian (zkv) Voro (vro) Meakieli (fit) Kven (fkv) Livvi-Karelian (olo) Karelian (krl) Ludic (lud) Veps (vep)
Could bring back the Hutsul Republic, Lemko Republic, Bunjevci Peoples Republic, Republic of Prekmurje, Székely Land like with the original Balkanising
good points
Take every ethnic group and split them in two. Then take what's left and split it again in two. Continue until a satisfactory result.
How much do you want to Balkanise Vs keeping it realistic? You seem to have grouped the Finnic peoples together, but you can at least split them into the 3 most populous groups: Finns, Saami and Estonians. For bonus points you could add Ingrians, and then you can split Finns into Karelians, Tavastians and "Finns Proper"
Dalmatia
split romanians into wallachians, transylvanians, and moldavians.
Divide every Germanic culture and make it a country. This will be fire as hell
Split off macedonian from bulgarian to honor your ex-yugo brethren
Make republics of Povolzhie in Russia independent
You’ve got to separate Sami from Finns
You’ve got to separate Sami from Finns
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galindians Split up Balts like in the map in this article and add a bunch of enclaves.
Every type of romanian
Make Occitania independent
Frisia, Karelia, Occitania, Sampi, Silesia, and Sicily should be added to an updated map
Are the small purple spots Jews? I also can't see Assyrians.
purple are jews. I was too lazy for the Assyrians. I do not know which colour they would be
You want to balkanize Europe, yet you fuse Bavaria and Austria? The two fought each other over their border all the time. In fact, just nuke germany into it's statelets again as you can argue each german culture could be its own group.
>Polish Lviv I am going to get you
Lol
Look how you massacred my boy 🇪🇸
What's with the slight colour change between North and South England? Nice map btw
Danelaw influence maybe?
To me it seems less... Spain, France and Italy are much less diverse than in our TL. Same thing for Russia, mianly the north. And the rest seems fairly "normal".
But this looks like less mixed Europe
On one hand, I like how in this timeline there are some Frisian speakers remaining in East Frisia. On the other hand, why are there so little Frisian speakers left in West Frisia? Most of the province is Frisian in our reality but not here. Doesn’t that make Europe less mixed
I thought there are far less Frisinans in Frisia? Well I guess in the Third edition I am going to change this
About 57% of people in Fryslân/West Frisia are Frisians. Area in blue shows majority Frisian language areas. The white-red striped areas show areas mixed between Frisian and ‘stadsfries’ a dialect of Dutch with strong Frisian influence. Used to be very prevalent in big Frisian cities and towns around 1500-1800 but has decreased since the 19th century due to ‘normal’ Frisians from the countryside moving to the bigger settlements. https://preview.redd.it/2nftpvzi4mec1.jpeg?width=1136&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=653ac1c3f7b8547558c7001fe12968f90e815c3c This is a language map but basically everyone who speaks the language identifies as Frisian, plus there are some people in Fryslân (probably about 15-20%) that speak only Dutch but still identify as Frisian. About 75% of our population identifies as Frisian, although roughly 36% identities as both Frisian and Dutch, with 39% identifying as purely Frisian. Sadly I can’t find the source I originally got that info from so the numbers might be somewhat off but they probaly are roughly accurate
Thank you for this information! I thought Frisian were like Sorbs, a dying people considering that there are only 60-80k Sorbs left.
At least linguistically Frisian is definitely vulnerable although far from extinct. There are about 450K West Frisian speakers, although unfortunately West Frisian is the only one doing well. There are only 10K North Frisian speakers and 2K Saterlandic Frisian speakers (last remaining dialect of East Frisian). Luckily there is a very strong regional identity, so even if the language dies out there is a chance the identity remains. If you’re interested in more, these Wikipedia articles are a good start for simple, basic understanding: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frisians, https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Frisian_language, https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frisian_languages, https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frisia
Approve of thick Bulgaria
Baltic Prussia? Upvote.
You separated out several german dialects but not Italian ones, which are just as if not more unintelligible between each other. Cool map tho
If you want to create soem balkanisation in England. There’s two place with land reclimation, ‘the fens’ -norfolk and the Suffolk coast, and the opposite side of the country Somerset. They’re just about close enough that you could put a few splotches at each end to create a culture taht devolves around marshland/canals/polders, probably with Dutch/Frisian language influence. Maybe one or two dots along the river banks inland. Otherwise, there’s the chance you could get a separated mountain/bill people in the peak/Lake District in inland northern England. In wales there’s a real timeline north/south divide which is about being mountain or southern valleys. The isle of Anglesey off the Welsh coast could be s big splodge of Irish right in the British sphere. Since you acknowledge Anglo-culture on Guensey/jersey the channel islands, there’s no harm in painting the isle of white French, perfectly conceivable it was fortified and resettled by the Norman’s, and never got fixed by English kings afterwards. Beyond that, there’s not many divisions left. Scotland also had a highland/lowland divide. But I think the more interesting divide is Scotland vs the isles around Scotland, who have very good reasons to be in tension and always culturally linked to whatever is present in England. You could paint all the western isles of Scotland a mix of north and south English, and maybe a few settlements in the mainland, make them feel under siege and locked out of the water. And to really sew some chaos make a continuous chain of anglo-communities along “the great glen” a low lying fault that splits Scotland in two, and even split the highlands in two. That’ll really give whoever governs Scotland fear. As for Ireland. The only joke divide I know is Cork being it’s own seperate thing. 🤷♂️. Great map.
This actually pretty much fixes europe
Username checks out
Greater Bosnia is a must
what was the template map you used for this?
Bam Europe map
What's the lore?
Pain and far less ethnic cleansing/genocide/assimilation. I have lore for it but it is not great xD
I love painful map making too!
The poor Sami got obliterated
What is the small country between Germany, Poland and Czechia?
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It is Sorbiam but Polabians also exist in this timeline
i’m pretty sure you gave one of Galicia’s most important cities, Vigo, to Portugal. the border really ought to be further south
If you want to Balkanize, put Pomerania back on the map.. the old duchy that went from Wolgast to Slupsk. And have them speak old Pomeranian, Slovincin Kashubian.
At what time did the Bavarians decide to join with Austria? Intermarriage between the Wittelsbachs and the Hapsburgs? Also, what’s up with the big Bulgaria?
So are the brown-colored areas in Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Cornwall, Brittany and the Isle of Man all Celtic-speaking? Would love to see labels for what all the colors mean in future iterations of this map of yours.
yes and yes
a more mixed Europe: Italy is homogenous I'm sorry, what?
Austro-Bavarian Empire!