It's likely that Alexander would have taken over Italy had he lived a couple more decades. He definitely could have done it. Rome was not yet the powerhouse it became and he knew how to lead an army better than literally anyone in history. There were many Greek colonies in Italy but the whole peninsular might have become dominated by Greeks.
By the time Rome got around to taking over Greece it wasn't even a contest. It's actually lucky that the Greek states weren't unified into a force powerful enough to be an existential threat to Rome. It would have likely suffered the same fate as Carthage. Instead it essentially got colonized and incorporated into the Roman empire in a way that could be called a co-equal merger. Rome kind of became Greece v2.
History is full of civilizations that fought bravely against invaders and were destroyed. It's also full of examples of civilizations that surrendered and thrived. It's a hard pill to swallow that "cowardly" surrender can often be objectively better than "stubborn" bravery. One of the big facts of history that blew me away.
> It's a hard pill to swallow that "cowardly" surrender can often be objectively better than "stubborn" bravery
One old saying around these parts of the world (Romania) can be translated roughly like this: "The bowed head doesn't get cut by the sword", which explains like at least half of our history, seeing as we've never been a major regional power while being surrounded by 3 empires for at least a couple of centuries (the Ottomans, the Russians, the Habsburgs) and we still managed to keep a certain level of autonomy throughout the centuries. The Poles were a little bit more courageous than us and that attitude saw their country split into three.
> The Poles were a little bit more courageous than us and that attitude saw their country split into three.
This is very simplistic way to describe reasons behind partitioning of Poland, which was by then standards very large multiethnic country with borders from Baltic to Black Sea and ability to raise considerable military power to defend its borders in times of need.
Commonwealth's dissolution came from the inside. There was no centralization of power in Poland. King was de-facto figurehead with real power being divided between hundreds of nobles. Everybody else was professionalizing their military, but that was impossible to do in Poland because we were 18th century country that relied on King rallying nobles rallying their bannermen for military. There was no chain of command, grand strategy or even unified arsenal. That was ridiculous but nobles wanted it to stay that way so king or congress could never contest their power. What happened instead was country being partitioned and nobility getting the boot from new rulers that did not tolerate private kingdoms, private armies or having to negotiate with every single noble if they wanted to change something.
I think that your post kind of proves my point, as in you're taking it for granted that you needed an army in order to survive as a country (even as not really independent). That was not always so.
I just read through that out of curiosity, and it says the Japanese sent in a leaflet demanding surrender within 24 hours, or "no mercy" would be shown. The Chinese did not respond.
While Nanking was an awful massacre if not genocide, it doesn't have a narrative against the Romanian proverb.
He had given up on India after his army revolted, they were going to return to Greece and he had plans written up to conquer the West/North Africa after that.
> It's likely that Alexander would have taken over Italy had he lived a couple more decades. He definitely could have done it.
But why? The East was far more developed. A unified Mediterranean proved to be very profitable for Rome, but it's not clear to me that this future was obvious to anyone.
But it's an interesting thought, much as it's interesting to think of what might have been if Rome had ever fully conquered and incorporated the British Isles and Germania. Perhaps civil wars and power struggles would have torn the empire asunder much sooner, but perhaps Roman urbanism would have taken a stronger hold, preventing rural feudalism from forming. Who knows!
Although it's also interesting to note that Diocletion's reforms are thought to have set the stage for feudalism to begin with, and Roman urbanism was abandoned in many of the places it had taken hold, once the state fell.
There were greek colonies all over the Mediterranean, weren't there? I don't think it's too much of a stretch to see that as the next step, it's just that Greece was historically more concerned with Persia.
But Alexander wasn't just concerned by Persia and the East, he was also impressed with it. I have to imagine Italy was only barely more interesting to him than the Balkans. By contrast, places in the East, like Mesopotamia and Egypt, were as ancient and storied to him as he is to us.
> It's likely that Alexander would have taken over Italy had he lived a couple more decades.
At the height of the greek empire, it's pretty much a given that alexander would have easily conquered italy. But there was no real reason to as italy/rome back then wasn't really worth conquering compared to egypt, persia, india... I suspect had alexander lived long enough, he would have move further into india and maybe even into china. Not sure how successful he really would have been, but it's an interesting "what if".
> History is full of civilizations that fought bravely against invaders and were destroyed. It's also full of examples of civilizations that surrendered and thrived. It's a hard pill to swallow that "cowardly" surrender can often be objectively better than "stubborn" bravery.
The most poignant example of this is Catholic Europe and Islamic Khwarezmia when Genghis Khan sent his emissaries to each. The leader of khwarezmia had the emissaries tortured and killed and refused trade relations with genghis khan. The pope "surrendered" to genghis khan and established trade relations with the mongol empire. Khwarezmia got destroyed. Italy/Europe got direct trade with the largest empire in the world and got immensely rich which kicked off the italian renaissance and the rest is history.
Of course there are counterexamples as well like the english stubbornness against the spanish empire ( the destruction of the spanish armada ) and most relevant to us, the american revolution.
The key seems to be, if you are going to be stubborn against a major power, be damned sure you can win.
> At the height of the greek empire, it's pretty much a given that alexander would have easily conquered italy. But there was no real reason to as italy/rome back then wasn't really worth conquering compared to egypt, persia, india... I suspect had alexander lived long enough, he would have move further into india and maybe even into china. Not sure how successful he really would have been, but it's an interesting "what if".
Just before he died, he was preparing a campaign to the WEST.
> Just before he died, he was preparing a campaign to the WEST.
Why did you capitalize west? And I'm fairly certain this is not true. The best we know of his immediate plans prior to death was that he wanted to centralize his empire around babylon and then conquer arabia. Not quite "west".
But if you have sources backing your claim, I'd love to see it.
I think it is somewhat hindsight bias to think Alexander would even care about Italy. Alexander was concerned about conquering the Persian Empire which was vastly larger and more wealthy than Italy. At the hight of the Roman Empire, the richest areas were always the former Persian areas - Egypt, Syria, Anatolia. This was also the reason the Roman empire ended up moving the capital to Constantinople.
> It's likely that Alexander would have taken over Italy had he lived a couple more decades. He definitely could have done it. Rome was not yet the powerhouse it became and he knew how to lead an army better than literally anyone in history
> "cowardly" surrender can often be objectively better than "stubborn" bravery
See also the Mongol invasion when cities either surrendered and became vassals or defended themselves, were sieged, captured and sacked. And sometimes everyone there was killed.
By the time Rome got around to taking over Greece it wasn't even a contest. It's actually lucky that the Greek states weren't unified into a force powerful enough to be an existential threat to Rome. It would have likely suffered the same fate as Carthage. Instead it essentially got colonized and incorporated into the Roman empire in a way that could be called a co-equal merger. Rome kind of became Greece v2.
History is full of civilizations that fought bravely against invaders and were destroyed. It's also full of examples of civilizations that surrendered and thrived. It's a hard pill to swallow that "cowardly" surrender can often be objectively better than "stubborn" bravery. One of the big facts of history that blew me away.