[blinks] Is there a school of thought claiming there was a way to contain it? How the hell would that have worked?
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What's the most Cringeworthy Alternate History you've ever read?
- Thread starter Silent Runner
- Start date
- Post-1900
[blinks] Is there a school of thought claiming there was a way to contain it? How the hell would that have worked?
BBadolato
Experiencer of Bij
- Location
- The Netherworld
Yeah, about that
I mean it's based off the oh you read one book and take it as gospel critique that has come up, but I take the Skulking Way of War by Patrick Malone as possible that might answer that question. Basically when it came down early on, the colonists (namely during what would be the Pequot War) basically needed the help of native guides because even with better metallurgy, and gunpowder weapons it did not mean the colonists could outfight their enemies tactically as they both knew the land, and fought in irregular formations more suited to it. Hell the native basically adopted both guns and total war oriented fire attacks into their tactics.
Basically I feel you need a decisive victory by any group in opposition to the European Settlers, a evolving confederation or two, perhaps some trade with a group like the French or Dutch. I also wanted to considering having the English brought into more European conflicts as well.
[blinks] Is there a school of thought saying there was a way to contain it? How the hell would that have worked?
I mean it's based off the oh you read one book and take it as gospel critique that has come up, but I take the Skulking Way of War by Patrick Malone as possible that might answer that question. Basically when it came down early on, the colonists (namely during what would be the Pequot War) basically needed the help of native guides because even with better metallurgy, and gunpowder weapons it did not mean the colonists could outfight their enemies tactically as they both knew the land, and fought in irregular formations more suited to it. Hell the native basically adopted both guns and total war oriented fire attacks into their tactics.
Basically I feel you need a decisive victory by any group in opposition to the European Settlers, a evolving confederation or two, perhaps some trade with a group like the French or Dutch. I also wanted to considering having the English brought into more European conflicts as well.
Z-Cosmonaut
Self-Requested Ban
Nope, but since I have to pay for it, I am very unlikely to ever look at it. Though, from what I can gage, it doesn't leave its POD much at all, meaning that's its really hard to tell how the US is affected by such changes long term. Though, I have a feeling that a timeline called Mexico Ascendant : A failed Texas revolution (or something like that), can answer my question. From what I've seen, it seems to actually put a good chunk of some of my more plausible ideas I've held for a timeline into action.
Neal Caffrey
Watch White Collar.
- Location
- Colombia
- Pronouns
- He/Him
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
Flint does, however, explicitly bring up the root issue behind "No Way To Contain:" there were a LOT of Anglos coming in, and coming in constantly. By the time of his point of departure (1814 or so), the demographics were just unsupportable for Native Americans. Ethnic groups whose populations are measured in the tens of thousands at most aren't in a good position to meaningfully draw a line on the ground and saying "thus far, no farther" to a population of millions that has no ethical qualms whatsoever about taking their stuff. They can try, but of the available options, none end well.
Honestly if you want to write a storyline where European settler-colonization of North America never happens, you probably need a point of departure prior to Columbus, and a fairly drastic one.
- Location
- Amman, Jordan
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
So even if there was a way to immunize the Native Americans to the disease (preferably a few centuries before the Columbian Exchange) , you'd need a way to stem the flow of immigrants.
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
The problem is that the affected area is huge. Natives slaughtering all the English colonists in New England in 1630 or whatever isn't going to truly derail English colonization of Maryland/Virginia, or Dutch colonization of the Hudson River valley, for instance. We're talking about roughly a thousand-mile front here, and from an ethnographic perspective the 'defenders' are dispersed into multiple clusters with wide gaps between them and a lot of viable sites for settlement exist within those gaps.
"Derail the English" in the long run probably just means someone else colonizes that same swath of North America. The land's very attractive, and unlike French Canada it's attractive for permanent settlement and agriculture on very large scales. Someone's going to want to take advantage of all that prime farmland and places to grow things like tobacco, sooner or later; it's not going to remain sparsely populated indefinitely. Unless native populations recover very rapidly from the decline of the 1500s and early 1600s (how/why?), there's just too many big holes for arriving whites to slip into.
Without the pandemics the native populations wouldn't have collapsed to the point where mounting a defense became nigh-untenable. You might have still seen white settling along the coast, but it would have been more like the Vikings settling in England- they'd make an impression but wouldn't overwhelm the natives culturally or ethnographically in the long run.
- Location
- Amman, Jordan
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
Plus, slaughtering the colonists means the next colonization attempt is effectively a military campaign what with all the soldiers attached to it.
That would be an interesting timeline. Native American states forming on their own without being overwhelmed by white settlers.
So what would a good PoD be for this? Ship full of plague victims or sick refugees from Africa lands in the 10th century AD? Or maybe earlier, to allow the natives some time to recover?
chinger
Alien Spy
Zheng He successfully set up colony in America, then it is abandoned on the emperor's order but after bringing infections in? Some colonists choose to remain in America and introduce horses, steel and gunpowder to natives...
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- Location
- Amman, Jordan
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
Hm, that's plausible, but it would be cutting it awfully close in terms of building immunities and allowing for population recovery. Plus, using wheat instead of corn comes too late for use as a staple food and civilizing factor. Though it would be amusing to see a native Californian state rise to dominate Western America.
Norseman
Entirely Wholesome
And this, right there, is one of my complaints about A Golden Island (the California ISOT). They basically declare a huge swath of the west to be the territory of California, with full access permitted by Mexicans and Native Americans only. But the demographics don't change, a few tens of thousand of natives are not going to be able to stop the relentless pressure of settlers just moving in and setting up.
That is unless California is willing to very aggressively patrol the fairly empty land.
Bingo.
Comrade Future
Man from Zeerust
- Location
- USSR
- Pronouns
- He/His/Him
However, how long will it take? I doubt that they had the opportunity to catch up with the Europeans in such a short time.
Keep in mind that A) Without the draw of the West Coast the Intermountain Areas past the Rockies are not all that attractive to (White) settlement and B) CA is in a position to deny military backup to settlers while granting it to the natives, so the former will be obliged to "walk small" if they homestead or set up businesses where nobody feels obliged to run them out on principle.
- Location
- Volksstaat Hessen, Deutsches Reich
But that seems to be exactly what Norseman means: That would require patrolling a vast region of territory, larger than the core territory, and building up at least a skeleton military infrastructure there.
Plus, not all of California is deep blue liberal, of course. I can see many rural conservative Californians trrying to settle in those lands, exactly because they believe in Manifest Destiny.
Terra Allias
World's only Magical Girl Spec Ops Asuka fan
- Location
- Cheverly
- Pronouns
- She/Her
To be honest if you're presenting an ah scenario where the natives are more immune to disease, then they likely still get colonized more in a fashion to Africa.
- Location
- 2038
So where would the 'South Africa' and 'Italian Libya' settler colonies of the Americas be?
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
It depends. The "sample space" of outcomes for colonialism outside the Americas ranges from Australia (where scattered, small, non-state populations with Neolithic technology were not merely conquered but slaughtered and supplanted)...
...to Africa (where denser, larger, sometimes but not always state populations with Iron Age technology were usually simply conquered, and that only after Europeans developed much deadlier weapons, because it took machine guns)...
...to Asia (where populations with density and size and level of state organization comparable to those of Europe resisted more than 'spot' conquest by Europeans of the most vulnerable regions for a long time, and where large regions were only ever lightly placed under a foreign yoke, sometimes for no more than about a century before decolonialization threw them back out).
There'd be no way to know without knowing exactly where the big centers of the native organized states capable of resisting such settlement were, and then saying "uh, not there."
Sulemain
Self-Requested Ban
- Location
- United Kingdom
- Pronouns
- He/Him
The East Coast seems likely, as in OTL.
Terra Allias
World's only Magical Girl Spec Ops Asuka fan
- Location
- Cheverly
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Patagonia and Texas respectively. The former existing because a canal doesn't exist yet to enable quick access to the East and the latter because desert and oil
- Location
- 2038
Patagonia and Texas respectively. The former existing because a canal doesn't exist yet to enable quick access to the East and the latter because desert and oil
Imagine the Mapuche, except more of them.
Norseman
Entirely Wholesome
It will be a bleeding sore. Because raids will happen in both directions. I mean come on, what raiding culture would not launch daring raids if magical people have given them a protected homeland. Also Californian politics would have a tendency to make them react only to raids into the Californian protectorates, not so much out of them. Especially when you remember their reasons for declaring said protectorates.
Settlers will start creeping in from east and west, maybe setting up defensible villages instead of traditional homesteads. And these settlers will either be ignored, permitted, or driven out at gunpoint, and the first two approaches will rapidly mean that there are so many of them that clearing them out won't be so easy. Also if rural conservatives hook up with the old timey westerners things get even worse.
And sheer demographics makes it very, very hard to fight against this long term.
None of this will be likely to heal the wounds betwee East and West.
- Location
- Amman, Jordan
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
Wouldn't have to be a complete defeat of the colonial empires, just forcing a ground situation where the Europeans don't just steamroll the locals and shove them into tiny reservations. At best, it would be an England example; ruled by the stronger Europeans until they can absorb the white settlers and form their national identities. At worst, it would be decolonization-era Africa, but while that would be a mess, at least they're not in miserable little reservations.
Of course, exposure to European technologies would encourage the tribes deeper inland to advance and industrialize before the Euros get there, and you might end up with places like a more organized California.
- Location
- The Midlands.
There's a PoD for a less intensively colonised North America, then: The so-called Mound Builders come through whatever major setback happened at the tail end of the "Woodland period" (a combination of over-hunting the local game population, severe weather events causing widespread crop failures and a side order of internal strife over the remaining resources, according to current scholarly opinion) with their trade links and other lines of communication somewhat more intact, meaning that when they meet Europeans for the first time they're a somewhat cohesive nation-state rather than a lot of isolated clans who don't have much regular contact. Not only does that make it more likely that they'd have developed more innovations like ironworking, but traders and pilgrims and other regular travel means there will be roads of some sort and probably an established method of sending messages from the capital to the provinces, so the rest of the nation would at least be forewarned when the almost-inevitable smallpox outbreak happened.
King Washington
Semi-Depressed Lurker
- Location
- Indiana
Then what should California do then? Just let the settlers move in and abandon the natives to there fate?
Norseman
Entirely Wholesome
I am simply saying that actions have consequences. If California decides to aggressively and extensively patrol this vast territory they might succeed in stopping the spread of settlers. But the cost will be a bleeding ulcer to the east, both in terms of US hostility and the cost of the patrols.
If you do not do this then, even if you stop the US military, settlers will slowly overwhelm the natives. Quite likely supported to some degree by rural conservatives leaving California.
Though I am a bit annoyed how simply pointing out consequences gets this knee jerk reaction.