Settlement rate

[Oddball]

Im developing a ATL :D but I would like to have it kinda realistic.

How fast can you expect to land colonists in a "virgin" west African colony?

The influx starts around 1820 and there are no facilities when the first ones arrives. You have atleast three natural harbours in the colony and good backup from the mother country.

[Jared]

Im developing a ATL :D but I would like to have it kinda realistic.

How fast can you expect to land colonists in a "virgin" west African colony?

The influx starts around 1820 and there are no facilities when the first ones arrives. You have atleast three natural harbours in the colony and good backup from the mother country.

Settlement colonies in West Africa are a very, very bad idea. The disease environment in West Africa, for those not from that area, is the most hostile on earth. The mortality rate for any kind of newcomers to West Africa (Europeans, even former West Africans who'd been several generations removed e.g. freed slaves) was about fifty percent dead in the first year, and about twenty-five percent for every year thereafter. It was even worse for children. So if you land 10,000 colonists in West Africa in 1820, expect over 90 percent of them to be dead within ten years. This was the common mortality rate for European soldiers and so on who garrisoned the colonial forts dotted along the coast of West Africa for the slave trade. Things don't get any better until quinine and yellow fever vaccine come along, and even then they're still pretty bad.

Cheers,
Kaiser Wilhelm III

[Oddball]

I agree. If you colonize by using OTL approach ;)

I was wondering more in terms of infrastructure.

The first to arrive needs to establish what is needed. Harbours, housing, roads, security, start farming, ect.

Btw, quinine IS available. It had been for a long time in natural form, but in 1820 two frenchmen succeeded in separating its active ingredient and They started manufacture of quinine in Paris shortly after their discovery. However there was a lingering prejudice against the drug.

[Oddball]

I now realice that Iv posted in the wrong sub-forum :o

Could someone with the power to do so move this to the "Alternate History Discussion" sub-forum? And then delete this post?

[Nik]

IIRC, it goes...

Beware, beware the Bight of Benin,

Whence few come out though many go in...

[Jared]

I agree. If you colonize by using OTL approach ;)

What ATL approach did you have in mind? Ready availablity of quinine would help considerably (although still expect a mortality rate in excess of 25% per year annum), or did you have something else?


I was wondering more in terms of infrastructure.

The first to arrive needs to establish what is needed. Harbours, housing, roads, security, start farming, ect.

Hard to say without more information, but for what it's worth:

For security, the best thing is to get the locals onside - buy em, bribe em, whatever. Give all your settlers rifles too, of course. If you're worried about outsiders, well, don't be that worried; any invaders will drop dead fairly soon anyway. As will your colonists, assuming they aren't from somewhere else in West Africa, but the disease barrier will at least keep you safe from outsiders.

Harbours: decent port facilities will help if you're moving in the tens of thousands. If you're moving a few thousand, well, not so much. One harbour would probably be better than three to start with, incidentally, since its easier to defend with whatever soldiers you have along and means you only need to build one set of port facilities.

Roads will be helped by bringing along a set of engineers, if you plan on exporting cash chrops. Otherwise, if things are only meant to work for subsistence, well-maintained roads aren't such a big thing, since people won't be moving around as much in the first few years. They can be built later as the economy improves, although obviously you need to have enough roads for people to move to where they're going to live in the first place.

Housing and farming are, of course, the two basics. Everyone needs access to a source of food, and a roof over their heads. Its hard to say what's available locally (timber) without more specific information, but one thing's for sure; you'd better pick colonists who know about about farming in the sort of conditions they'll be dealing with here. West Africa has a different climate and set of food crops available in Europe and most of North America (except, kind of, the rice country along the South Carolina/Georgia coast), with wet summers and, well, no real winters in the European sense. Your new colonist farmers will have an awful lot to learn awfully fast.

So, short answer, it depends how many resources can be thrown at it. If the colonising nation has lots of resources (ideally a team of engineers, shipping resources of lumber, quick construction of a port), lots of quinine handy, lots of colonists and support people who don't mind a very high risk of death, locals who have been bought off or driven off (depending on how many soldiers and money you brought), they could land a fair number of colonists. 10,000? 20,000? Hard to say without further information. But without fixing the disease problems (quinine is a start, but there's still lots of other nasty beasties around), the biggest resource they'd better bring would be body bags...

Btw, quinine IS available. It had been for a long time in natural form, but in 1820 two frenchmen succeeded in separating its active ingredient and They started manufacture of quinine in Paris shortly after their discovery. However there was a lingering prejudice against the drug.

Quite; I've heard dates from 1818 to 1820 for quinine. It's certainly a big help against malaria, although it alleviates the symptoms rather than being a direct cure. I've never been quite sure why it wasn't more widespread earlier, but I was assuming that the POD didn't change this. If your POD is earlier access to quinine, this will help a lot, but probably not enough to make colonization of West Africa anything but the most desparate would try. In addition to the aforementioned malaria and yellow fever (the two biggest), there's also a host of other diseases, and to make matters worse they vary within West Africa, so people from different parts of West Africa who moved around would also get hit by these diseases, to lesser degrees than outsiders.

Cheers,
Kaiser Wilhelm III

[Oddball]

If you want to know a bit about quinine, go here (http://www.mmv.org/pages/content_frame.asp?ThePage=page1_000400010002_1.htm&Nav=000400010002) .

Other bad diseases you have to fight in West Africa (Guinea & Siera Leone):

Yellow fever, Dengue fever, Malaria, Cholera, Hepatitis A, E-coli, Schistosomiasis & Typhoid.

Im opting for a settler colony, so beeing nice to the natives wont be a option in the long run :( They could be useful at the start though ;)

they could land a fair number of colonists. 10,000? 20,000

Are you talking about the first year or decade. Or total???? :confused:

[Oddball]

Please delete this thread as Iv copied it over to another subforum