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It just means you're going to get traders first as a foothold, with any attempts at colonisation expanding from there later.
What if the native Americans had bullshitium potions to cure European diseases?
- Thread starter Mook
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Trade and cultural exchange will strengthen the natives though making it more difficult to attempt colonization later.
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Have you heard of Africa?
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The Scramble for Africa in the 19th century is completely different from any hypothetical scramble for the Americas in the 16th century.
Yeah getting real tired of that comparison myself. Completely different continents and completely different situations. There's no reason the same thing should happen.
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There was European trade with Africa for centuries before the Scramble for Africa occurred.
Africa itself had deadly diseases in its jungles, and the Southern Tip was extremely remote and Dutch property. Now, its possible that the Dutch could have done more with the land and region, since it wasn't nearly so awful as the middle of Africa. But most trade involved the purchase and shipments of slaves and gold from the Gold Coast empires, mostly POWs, prisoners, and eventually random tribes rounded up for export. The diseases of Africa prevented deeper penetration of Central Africa outright, and Southern Africa was extremely remote and while it could have received extra attention early on from the moment the Dutch built the outposts, it just didn't, because North America was closer. Now if for some reason the Dutch start selling parts of that land to whoever can take it and defend it and general provide a decent atmosphere for colonization and do so early, they might attract people who are arriving specifically to be as far away from Europe as possible for whatever reason.
But it would have to start early and change both the behavior of the Dutch East India Company and that of the Netherlands itself.
I imagined things would end up much more like Africa in how they were situated. Random European colonies in certain areas but others still completely under the control of the natives. The Europeans have a strong foothold but hardly command of the whole continent to the point of replacing the native population since a lot of areas are still remote. Other regions have strong ties with some European nations or are too remote for any country to actually spend the money and manpower to take them over.
I'm certain there will be large parts of central and south America that are Spanish speaking but it will definitely not be shore to shore. While North America will have many little English, Dutch, and French enclaves. But I do not think any of them would spend the money and effort pushing west as hard. Also the lack of a large population in the colonies might mean they do not secede from England at all.
I'm certain there will be large parts of central and south America that are Spanish speaking but it will definitely not be shore to shore. While North America will have many little English, Dutch, and French enclaves. But I do not think any of them would spend the money and effort pushing west as hard. Also the lack of a large population in the colonies might mean they do not secede from England at all.
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Does nobody at all realize that Africa spent several centuries imploding under the crippling economic repercussions of the slave trade before the 19th century colonial rush? Like, is this something people are just unaware of when they make this dumb comparison?
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You can't colonise a non-post apocalyptic America if the natives don't let you, though; 16th century Europe has essentially no ability to project power over that sort of distance. The most similar model you'd be looking at there is the Portugese Empire in India, which was, funnily enough, fairly similar to early European 'colonisation' of Africa; a small number of coastal enclaves and then some Indian client states and trading partners. The Portugese simply couldn't ship enough men overseas to accomplish more.
This is because armies of the period needed a population base to support them in their area of operations. There's no real ability to set up regular shipments of supplies - early colonies often went years without seeing more ships, to the point where more colonists turned up and the colony was just gone, leaving everybody wondering just what the fuck happened. You can't just plonk a tercio down in Mexico and call it a day.
It's not a game of Europa Universalis, in other words. The historical European colonisation of the Americas relied on the continents having been depopulated before they got there in significant numbers. If that hasn't happened, then colonisation is going to be later, slower and more superficial; you'll have to wait until you can deploy and sustain significant armies over the Atlantic and outright conquer the natives, in other words, rather than colonising empty land and pushing over countries already teetering on the edge of collapse and civil turmoil as a result of pandemic disease outbreaks.
The Spanish conquest of Mesoamerica was done on a shoestring with 'armies' of a couple of hundred men at the most, and only succeeded because the native countries were in the process of collapsing all on their own anyway, and they could find native allies to help who were conveniently dying off as well, and therefore wouldn't be staying around to contest things afterwards. If you posit a situation where there are no pandemics, what'll happen is that Tlaxcala will help Cortez kick over the Aztecs, and maybe win (the Aztecs will be stronger here, remember), and then turn round and tell Cortez to fuck off when he tries to claim the land for Spain. There won't be anything he can do about it, because he's got a couple of hundred guys and no prospect of reinforcement, and the natives have tens of thousands.
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It's also worth noting that even with the rampant disease and depopulation, Cortez almost failed. He and his men had to drop everything and run for their lives on la Noche Triste and if things had gone a bit worse Cortez would have been dead and his men would have had no leader and probably said "fuck it" and run off to the coast to wait and pray for more ships to show up so they could get the fuck out of Mexico.
mdkcde
"Emotions are prohibited"
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It's the, hehe, Conquistador mindset.
Biigoh
Tanuki
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- Tanukia
Wait... if the native Americans had cures that DO stop European diseases, do the Europeans have ways to stop the native American diseases in return? Because the colonists and explorers might get hit with native American diseases that have no analog in Europe and which they're weak against.
Workable Goblin
Equestrian Fleet Command
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It's strange to me that there are people comparing this situation to Africa when on the face of it it seems more reasonable to compare it to the colonization of India, Southeast Asia, and the Far East. In each case, the locals were heavily enough armed to stop any significant European takeover until the would-be colonists gathered a much larger technical advantage than the Europeans had when they first encountered the Americas, and the eventual political takeovers (where they occurred) were undertaken by taking advantage of political instability and clientization.
It seems probable to me that at some point there will be colonization of the Americas by the Europeans, witnessing the failure of these other societies with relatively more people and often more resources than the Americas seem like they could scrape together to prevent that. However, it probably won't be complete (as it wasn't in Asia; Mesoamerica and the Andes might be good candidates for becoming "China" or "Siam" or even "Japan" using this analogy, as inexact and imprecise as it is; and the Great Plains and Mountain West could easily become "Mongolia" or "Afghanistan"), it definitely won't involve settler colonialism, and it will definitely emerge later than colonization did in reality.
It seems probable to me that at some point there will be colonization of the Americas by the Europeans, witnessing the failure of these other societies with relatively more people and often more resources than the Americas seem like they could scrape together to prevent that. However, it probably won't be complete (as it wasn't in Asia; Mesoamerica and the Andes might be good candidates for becoming "China" or "Siam" or even "Japan" using this analogy, as inexact and imprecise as it is; and the Great Plains and Mountain West could easily become "Mongolia" or "Afghanistan"), it definitely won't involve settler colonialism, and it will definitely emerge later than colonization did in reality.
That's the thing, there weren't any, really (sometimes people talk about syphilis, but as best I can recall that's quite controversial and anyways isn't a plague like smallpox was, and I haven't heard any other suggestions). The relative lack of densely populated areas compared to Eurafrasia and the lack of most domestic animals drastically limited the ability of epidemic diseases to evolve.
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My comparison to Africa was very specifically as regards the contention that trade and exchange act as some form of inoculation against later colonisation, not that it would be a template for an alt-Americas.
Workable Goblin
Equestrian Fleet Command
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But even in that regard India and East Asia would be better comparisons, since those areas lack the confounding factors that Africa had and were also colonized despite extensive trade and exchange, and, at least early on, virtual technical equivalence.
It's the lack of domestic animals that probably did it; there were areas of fairly high population density in central and southern America when Columbus made his voyage, and there's evidence that there were some in North America as well, but we know so little about those (on account of disease wiping them out totally and utterly before any Europeans got anywhere near where they once were) that it's hard to say. Large numbers of domesticated animals are very important to developing infectious diseases, because they hugely increase the reservoir potential gribblies have available to evolve in.
Do bear in mind, the disease epidemics had already done a number on the native populations by the time Columbus 'officially' discovered the continent; we know the Vikings made the crossing, and there's a fair amount of evidence to suggest that fishermen were already fishing in the Grand Banks and had been making occasional landfall in Newfoundland for decades. That's probably where Columbus picked up the idea of there being land of some sort on the other side of the ocean from, and a vague idea as to how far away it was.
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Workable Goblin
Equestrian Fleet Command
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Well, I did stress the relative for a reason. China alone...
Deadguy2001
oWo
Higher end estimates of pre-plague North America and South America were at like 100+ million.
The population of Europe circa 1500 was 80 million. There's really no way the Europeans can win this.
The population of Europe circa 1500 was 80 million. There's really no way the Europeans can win this.
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That's not a good comparison, since Africa didn't really have any sizable empires like the Incas, and Africa was colonized centuries after the Americas were, and Africa was only colonized after the stuff open_sketchbook mentioned.
I mean seriously, the Incan empire reportedly had 20 million people in 1527. The entirety of Europe was something like 50-60 million people at the time. Their empire wasn't exactly small in land either:
I'm not particularly sure how a European is going to be able to conquer a huge pile of dudes who are an ocean away, then a jungle away, then a mountain range away, unless they have bullshitium logistics.
Overall I'd say that Europe has no ability to conquer large parts of the Americas until the industrial revolution hits and lets them Eurocentrism wank on everyone. Even then, its probably going to be trickier to handle than China or India, as crossing a giant freaking ocean is a huge logistics issue.
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Except none of the powers in North America above the Rio Grande were organized and centralized. They were primarily interconnected villages and city states. Now, could they organize themselves into something resembling states? Yes, plenty of precedence. But its still not a simple numbers game.
Workable Goblin
Equestrian Fleet Command
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Wait, but the Europeans had to cross a giant freaking ocean to get to India or China (except for Russia, but they're less than relevant here). Or rather, sail around the Cape and back up across the Indian Ocean. I'm not seeing how the Atlantic is a bigger logistics barrier than that? If anything, the evidence of relatively close connections between the American colonies and the European mainland during the 18th century seems to auger for the opposite position (coincidentally, this is about the same time that the Europeans started to actually colonize India, rather than just building "factories" there)
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Sailing down a coast where you have colonies and naval bases or friendly ports scattered about is a tad different from sailing across the open ocean.
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Workable Goblin
Equestrian Fleet Command
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It wasn't all friendly ports, you know. Also, as I pointed out there was quite a bit of commerce across the Atlantic by the 18th century (I have a book on the Seven Years War which I believe contains some statistics to support this, but unfortunately it's in storage, so I can't reference it). Neither the Americas nor India were particularly easy for people to reach.
Also, Europeans can conquer areas through native auxiliaries just as well as through European troops, as they did in most places. Not even native allies, necessarily, but essentially mercenaries. They don't have to ship them across the Atlantic.
And the wars. From which many slaves were taken.