WI: North American West circa 1840 ISOTed to 1200AD
WI: North American West circa 1840 ISOTed to 1200AD
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the atom
Anarcho-Kemalist Thought Leader
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How would the various native peoples of western North America develop with the introduction of the horse and some European tools, but without the apocalyptic pressures of colonization? Who prospers in the short/medium term? What sort of place do the various stranded settlers carve out for themselves? How does this impact the rest of the Americas (and the old world)?
We will use everything in this map west of the red line, as well as all territory north and west of official Canadian borders in 1840 (including Russian colonies).
Some of my predictions:
-The introduction of the horse (and firearm) caused a brief but very sharp population spike among nomadic bison-hunting peoples IOTL and without the genocide that followed shortly thereafter I'd expect this to continue for as long as herds can sustain.
-By contrast anyone that was relying heavily on any sort of Mexican or Anglo-American trade suffers pretty badly. Horses become a lot more valuable.
-The Comanche and Apache migrate south towards mesoamerica. Raiding isn't nearly as profitable as it was against the Mexicans, but there's still gains to be made from displacing northern nomads and extracting tribute from sedentary cultures. The only major barriers to establishing expansive tributary empires are each other. This process will likely accelerate as the northern plains groups with the denser buffalo herds steadily expand in strength and push them south
-A rump Mexico could probably survive for awhile if they stay on the Comanche's good side.
-The Sioux probably expand back towards the Great Lakes.
-A rump U.S. of sorts probably forms in the midwest. Not sure how many people there were in the area but if they can play their cards right they can probably still end up being a regional powerhouse.
-Russian America almost certainly falls apart, with the Russian population either going native or trying to cross the ocean. The Aleuts and Tlingit, once they recover anyways, go on to become very dominant
We will use everything in this map west of the red line, as well as all territory north and west of official Canadian borders in 1840 (including Russian colonies).
Some of my predictions:
-The introduction of the horse (and firearm) caused a brief but very sharp population spike among nomadic bison-hunting peoples IOTL and without the genocide that followed shortly thereafter I'd expect this to continue for as long as herds can sustain.
-By contrast anyone that was relying heavily on any sort of Mexican or Anglo-American trade suffers pretty badly. Horses become a lot more valuable.
-The Comanche and Apache migrate south towards mesoamerica. Raiding isn't nearly as profitable as it was against the Mexicans, but there's still gains to be made from displacing northern nomads and extracting tribute from sedentary cultures. The only major barriers to establishing expansive tributary empires are each other. This process will likely accelerate as the northern plains groups with the denser buffalo herds steadily expand in strength and push them south
-A rump Mexico could probably survive for awhile if they stay on the Comanche's good side.
-The Sioux probably expand back towards the Great Lakes.
-A rump U.S. of sorts probably forms in the midwest. Not sure how many people there were in the area but if they can play their cards right they can probably still end up being a regional powerhouse.
-Russian America almost certainly falls apart, with the Russian population either going native or trying to cross the ocean. The Aleuts and Tlingit, once they recover anyways, go on to become very dominant
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Granted your timing just precedes the gold rush, and so the population there is still going to be quite low, but my guess is probably around a total of perhaps up to 100,000 non-native american's in the area described. This is perhaps half the population of Natives in the area is what I could gather. It's kind of a very fun period right before the gold rush as you get population numbers from 1-10k for most of the 'major' cities out there.
With that said I think there would be a slowly growing powerful 'Mexico' no matter what the Comanche do, as well as a powerful growing 'Iowa' and 'Republic of Texas'. But aside from those three would be a tribal strength 'Oregon' which would only really control a couple cities at first and only slowly grow.
The first few years would make or break it for the Republic of Texas, as they are the ones who would be trying to fight for their survival against the Comanche. But eventually I think that those four sources would be all that survived of Europeans. The various native tribes would probably start to coalesce into nations in response instead of just peoples. Poor Columbus is going to be in for a shock. I'll just assume that no ships made it through the transition... if they did well, then you probably get european migration earlier, or more to the point russian migration flowing into the west. But as the point of this is how would the world develop I'm going to assume ROB picked the perfect moment where there were no real ocean going vessels in western ports.
I would expect that technical innovation would probably stall out for a few hundred years as effort is mostly focused on retaining the level of technology that had made it to the west. But even with what they backslid into, or were able to retain would be such that in 200 years when Columbus get's there the America's are ready for him. The 3-4 European powers aren't interested in being colonized or conquered, and the various forming or formed northern actual native nations are not going to be hit by a technologically superior force while the southern american empires will have already probably reached 1400's european level's of technology. It will be much more Hong Kong trade cities becoming a thing than nations being formed and invasions and looting.
With that said I think there would be a slowly growing powerful 'Mexico' no matter what the Comanche do, as well as a powerful growing 'Iowa' and 'Republic of Texas'. But aside from those three would be a tribal strength 'Oregon' which would only really control a couple cities at first and only slowly grow.
The first few years would make or break it for the Republic of Texas, as they are the ones who would be trying to fight for their survival against the Comanche. But eventually I think that those four sources would be all that survived of Europeans. The various native tribes would probably start to coalesce into nations in response instead of just peoples. Poor Columbus is going to be in for a shock. I'll just assume that no ships made it through the transition... if they did well, then you probably get european migration earlier, or more to the point russian migration flowing into the west. But as the point of this is how would the world develop I'm going to assume ROB picked the perfect moment where there were no real ocean going vessels in western ports.
I would expect that technical innovation would probably stall out for a few hundred years as effort is mostly focused on retaining the level of technology that had made it to the west. But even with what they backslid into, or were able to retain would be such that in 200 years when Columbus get's there the America's are ready for him. The 3-4 European powers aren't interested in being colonized or conquered, and the various forming or formed northern actual native nations are not going to be hit by a technologically superior force while the southern american empires will have already probably reached 1400's european level's of technology. It will be much more Hong Kong trade cities becoming a thing than nations being formed and invasions and looting.
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the atom
Anarcho-Kemalist Thought Leader
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The governor of New Mexico did not like his chances against them when asked to go to war against them by the federal government in 1841, and things will have hardly improved in this scenario.
Yes, but going to war to attack and consolidating and defense are very very very different things. One would be trying to fight and hunt the Comanche on their land. The other is holding pat and saying, get off my lawn. One gets all the tribes upset at once and ready to fight, the other is seeing off raids and raiding parties that aren't really trying to kill you all.
This is why I don't think Mexico would be eliminated in this scenario. They would recognize they have no chance at an offensive and the Comanche are highly highly unlikely to try to kill them all in a unified fashion. Consolidation would likely occur but then they would start expanding slowly again.
the atom
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Right, and the Mexicans weren't able to consistently do that either. The Comanche were expanding into their territory until about 1850.
Idk if Mexico gets eliminated per se. They've still got a relatively large population but those advantages were never decisive OTL and they're going to be muted as they rapidly lose that technological edge (firearms will almost certainly be one of them) and the plains tribes rapidly grow in population.
At the same time, New Mexico's primary defence was always diplomacy and I expect they'll continue that practice here