1453 – Rise of Empires
Great powers, fragile alliances, and shifting borders
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World Description
In 1453, the world consists of interconnected trade routes and competing political powers. In Europe, there are kingdoms, principalities, city-states, and the Holy Roman Empire; in the Eastern Mediterranean, the Ottomans, Byzantines, and Mamluks; in Anatolia, alongside the Ottoman Empire, there are the Karamanids, Isfendiyarids, Dulkadirids and Ramadanids (under Mamluk protection), the Empire of Trebizond, and in Eastern Anatolia, the Ak Koyunlu; in Iran and Mesopotamia, Jahan Shah's Qara Qoyunlu state and the Timurid legacy; while in South and East Asia, their own dynastic orders prevail. The Papacy, in addition to being a religious office, is a diplomatic power seeking to establish influence in European politics. There is no single political authority in the Islamic world; as competition persists, temporary alliances and initiatives for unity may arise around common interests. The world does not follow a fixed scenario. Dynastic struggles, trade, diplomacy, plagues, economic pressures, and wars shape the future of states. The existing geographical cells on the map may not exactly coincide with historical administrative units; the initial political distribution must be established by verifying region by region. Austria in 1453 consists of the hereditary lands of the House of Habsburg; it is not under Ottoman rule. Friedrich III is both the Habsburg ruler and the Holy Roman Emperor, having been crowned in Rome in 1452. The American continent is a geography yet unknown to Europeans; however, the Inca, Chimú, Muisca, and Maya city-states, the Aztec Triple Alliance, the Purépecha, and numerous other indigenous societies live there. In Australia, various Aboriginal communities maintain their own social and commercial networks. In Western Europe, France, Brittany, and Burgundy are separate political entities. At the beginning of 1453, Calais and Guyenne are under English rule; the English position in Guyenne will collapse with the defeat at Castillon and the surrender of Bordeaux in October of the same year. Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy, governs the provinces in the Low Countries not as a single centralized state, but as a personal union that preserves their separate laws and privileges. Peter II, Duke of Brittany, reigns independently. The Holy Roman Empire is not a unified Germany. Alongside Emperor Friedrich III, the Kingdom of Bohemia, the electorates of Saxony and Brandenburg, the separate Wittelsbach duchies of Bavaria, the ecclesiastical electorates of Mainz, Cologne, and Trier, and the free imperial cities like Nuremberg, Frankfurt, Augsburg, and Lübeck operate with their own institutions. These political actors are under the umbrella of the empire, but they are not direct imperial officials or units of a single centralized administration.