Most likely outcome without Magyar settlement of Pannonia?

[Hrvatskiwi]

Hi y'all,

Just wondering what your thoughts were regarding the likely development of the Pannonia plain without the Magyar invasion and settlement.

Would it remain Slavic? Would Austrians continue to settle further East along the Danube or would another set of nomadic pastoralists inevitably dominate the region?

If independent, would the area remain its own powerbase, or be ruled by politics from the north, south, west or east? If so, which direction is this power likely exerted from?

 

[Tibi088]

I dont think it was slavic - or at least not completly. The avars werent slavic and have inhabited the area for quite a long time. As for the future of the region: it was very sparsly populated and it had a power vacuum. The german might push a bit further but it would be on the fringes of all the more important empires/states - meaning the HRE in the west, the bulgarians and byzantines from the south and maybe even the kijevian Rus from the east. But precisly because of its being the fringe territories of these empires it would be the first territory let go if they have any other important issues. So I think if not the magyars some other nomadic people would take it a bit later as most likely.

In the long run: the magyars went christian and feudal after a pretty short while - meaning they integrated to the existing European system. If these other nomads didnt make the same decision its very likely that they would be taken ower by a crusader like state - either by an actual crusade or a teuton order like conquest in the Baltics. If its a german order the carpathian basin will go german in a big part. Its more interesting if they are not a german order. We could see a huge melting pot: large number of french and italian settlers of the order, with a big number of local slavic, avaric and rumanian peasents.

The crusader state could be established in the 12th century and it would be pretty well established by the time the ottomans come knocking (the absence of the hungarians is unlikely to butterfly them). As it still couldnt face the ottomans alone a habsburg like empire would be still created. They would have likely an easier time of it than they had with OTL hungarians so a more integrated and centralised habsburglike empire in the region. But nationalism would make the whole of it a much bigger mess even than OTL.

 

[Mario]

In the relatively short period between the fall of the Avars (early 9th century) and the Magyar invasion (late 9th century), most of Pannonia was an underpopulated Frankish/Carolingian march.

If this situation would have lasted for longer time, probably the HRE/Bavaria-Austria would have slowly incorporated this peripheral area and populated it with German settlers like those that went to Transylvania a couple of centuries later. So, at least western Pannonia (OTL current Hungary) would have been an enlarged part of Bavaria-Austria; the eastern half could either be a HRE march or fall to the Bulgars.