Plausibility Check #2: A Deadlier Black Death (with a twist)

Nerdlinger

I'm working on a timeline which illustrates the potential results of a collapse of European civilization prior to the period of extensive overseas European exploration. (This is a revision of my original idea involving a deadlier plague strain.) My foremost goal is to ensure that this timeline is realistic and plausible and involves no ASB elements. My attempts to develop this timeline actually led to my interest in alternate history, so I consider it to be my "baby" of sorts. Unfortunately, history is not my strong suit, so I'm hoping that the kind, more knowledgeable folks on this discussion board could review the basic outline I have for the timeline and check it for plausibility and accuracy. I would be most appreciative of any input. Previous threads on this timeline can be found here:

 https://www.alternatehistory.com/discussion/showthread.php?t=139303
 https://www.alternatehistory.com/discussion/showthread.php?t=139624
 https://www.alternatehistory.com/discussion/showthread.php?t=140323

 My intended POD is during the year 1348, when Europe is in the throes of the Black Plague. A small asteroid lands in northeast Greenland, melting a substantial amount of ice. The fresh meltwater from the impact flows into the Greenland Sea, interfering with the thermohaline circulation of the North Atlantic Current. The current does not shut down entirely, but slows significantly for a few years, temporarily depriving Europe of the Gulf Stream's warmth. Bitter cold winters set in, comparable to those experienced at similar latitudes in North America. This intense period of cold, which would be known as the "Black Winter," combined with the Black Plague ravaging Europe would produce a Black Death of even deadlier proportions than that which already devastated the rest of Eurasia. With crops dying and ports freezing over, starvation runs rampant throughout Europe. Chaos descends as governments fall and peasants revolt against the nobles. The Catholic Church collapses in the wake of the Black Death as its adherents' desperate prayers go unanswered. The southernmost parts of Europe which are affected least by the Black Winter (Iberia, southern Italy, southern Balkans) are drawn into the chaos by droves of refugees from the north. By the time the plague has run its course and the climate restabilizes in the 1350s, European civilization is in ruins. Later estimates would vary, but roughly two-thirds to three-fourths of all Europeans die during those terrible years. With Europe depopulated and its land and natural resources ripe for the picking, nearby Muslim civilizations such as the Ottoman Turks, the Mamluk Arabs, the Marinid Berbers, and the Timurids vie for control of the subcontinent. The Turks would eventually prevail, taking control of almost all of Europe. Islam becomes the dominant religion of the West, while Christianity exists only in a small minority of the European population from then on. The Scientific Revolution still takes place, although it is delayed by about 50-100 years and centered mainly in the Middle East and China. The Industrial Revolution would begin in the late 1800s(?) in two separate locations, northern China and Turkish-held Europe.

 In 1350, a group of Norwegian settlers fleeing the oncoming disaster in Europe make contact with the Americas via Newfoundland. They inadvertently introduce smallpox, measles, and the plague to the native American population, and the diseases spread southward, eventually reaching the Incas in the mid- to late 1400s(?). Despite taking heavy losses, the Americas recover from the pandemics in the absence of Old World conquistadors. A small Norwegian trading colony is established in Newfoundland whereby Old World agriculture and technology is disseminated throughout the Americas. Overseas exploration is set back without imperialist European conquistadors, delaying extensive contact between the major Old World powers and the Americas. The Chinese make contact with the Americas via the Pacific in the mid-1700s(?), around the same time that the Arabs and Turks do the same on the Atlantic side. Having adopted and adapted Old World technology (including iron-working and firearms), the Mexicans and Inkas are better able to defend themselves from Chinese and Muslim would-be colonists. By the start of the 21st century, the Mexican Empire (capital: Tenochtitlan) owns southern Aztlan (North America, incl. Central America), and the Caribbean Sea is a Mexican lake. The rival Inka Empire (capital: Qusqu), controls western and southern Tiqsimuyu (South America). Eastern Tiqsimuyu is held by the Arabs, eastern Aztlan is Turkish territory, western Aztlan is Chinese territory, and the plains of central Aztlan belong to a strong alliance of native tribes called the North Mexican Confederation, or NMC (capital: Cahokia).

China (capital: Beijing) winds up dominating eastern and southeastern Asia, Siberia, and the Pacific, resulting in an empire larger than even that of the Mongols. In eastern Asia, only the Japanese (capital: Kyoto) manage to avoid conquest by the Chinese, despite numerous attempted invasions. During the 19th and 20th centuries, China starts to become more liberal and democratic, leading to the formation of the Republic of China and the independence of several colonies in southeast Asia and Australia. The majority of Chinese are of the peaceful Buddhist faith (although, as in Turkey, progressive liberal reforms steadily increase the prevalence of secularism), but China is beset with racism toward its non-Han citizens. Democratization also occurs in Turkey, which has rivaled China for centuries in terms of economic and military power. By the 21st century, the Turkish Sultanate (capital: Istanbul) holds Anatolia and almost all of Europe from the Atlantic to the Urals, the Arab Sultanate (capital: Cairo) controls the Arabian Peninsula and northern Africa, the Iranian Empire (capital: Samarqand; descendant of the Timurid Empire) controls much of southern and central Asia, the mainly Hindu Bharat Republic (capital: Madurai; descendant of the Vijayanagara Empire) holds southern India, and the Kingdom of Delhi (capital: Delhi) has northern India. Sub-Saharan Africa is largely peaceful and is dominated by four major nations: the Ethiopian Empire, the Songhai Empire, the Kingdom of Kongo, and the Zimbabwe Empire.

A devastating attack in Istanbul by fundamentalist Christian terrorists in the early 21st century results in a severe, worldwide economic depression. In the wake of the depression, revolutionaries take over the corrupt Arab Sultanate, establishing the Arab Caliphate, an authoritarian Sunni socialist state. With the sultan dead and former caliph forced to abdicate, the rebel leader would combine the positions and appoint himself the new caliph. In the Iranian Empire, the response to the crisis is less violent. Discontent is spreading due to the depression and over the controversial new Cairo caliph. A dissident Shia nationalist organization led by a charismatic man claiming to be an Imam would soon take control of Iran, setting up an dictatorship to supplant the old Sunni regime and declaring the Cairo caliph illegitimate. The Turkish Sultanate, though primarily Sunni, grows increasingly secular, in part due to continual scientific and social progress and in part because many Turks are disillusioned by the parody of a valid religious leader in Cairo. The Turks and Arabs have historically been bitter enemies, competing for control of the Middle East and Mediterranean in numerous wars over the centuries. By the early to mid-21st century, though, their animosity for each other would wane as a common enemy emerges in Iran. The Imam rants to the Iranian public about the blasphemous Sunni socialists and Turkish secularists. He also directs his wrath toward the industrious Hindus of India, who the Muslims of southern Asia have long tried to subjugate, blaming them for causing the depression. The Imam's intense prejudice toward Hinduism and Hindus as a people becomes apparent, forcing many so-called "heathens" to flee Iran to escape persecution.

In the 2030s, Iran would anger the Turks and Arabs by forcibly annexing the western coast of the Kingdom of Delhi, along the Arabian Sea. When, shortly afterward, the Iranian army uses this new territory to invade Bharat, the Turks and Arabs, allies of Bharat, declare war on Iran. The Mexican Empire, allied with Iran, attacks and captures the Chinese colony of Hawaii, initiating a separate war over control of the Pacific. The strength of the Inka Empire has deteriorated over the years, allowing the Mexican army to spread southward and claim the northern part of the Inka Empire as the puppet state of South Mexico. Meanwhile, a civil war breaks out in the rest of the Inka Empire as Arab-supported Sunni socialists revolt against their imperial Inka overlords. A long global conflict ensues, drenching the world in blood. (N.B. Even though it's the early 21st century, the belligerent nations are going into the war with technology roughly equivalent to that of WWI in OTL. They are about a century behind us in that respect. And in case I couldn't make it more obvious, the war is for the most part analogous to WWII.)

 So what does everybody think? I'm especially concerned about the plausibility of the destruction of Europe by the asteroid impact and how the native Americans could have advanced far enough to successfully ward off Old World invaders. I'm also uncertain about how realistic certain dates are (these are followed by question marks). Thanks in advance for your help.
 

Falastur

OK, I'll try a few immediate observations. Just some stuff off the top of my head, so I could easily be wrong, feel free to argue my points if you have a different take.

1 - The asteroid cooling the Gulf Stream. Two points here. One is, Europe is already experiencing what is known as the "Little Ice Age", circa 1200-1600 AD. The world in general is colder at this point, and as an example, the Thames in London is recorded as freezing so solid every year that Londoners used to hold the city market on the river for about 2 months over winter - the Thames itself would be frozen for 3-4 months, which gives you an indication of the level of cold. I'd say it was already as cold as you want it to be, and perhaps worse. Second point: I'm no geophysical ace, but I think you'd need a ludicrously large asteroid to land to cause enough ice melt to change the Gulf Stream noticeably for several years. The kind of asteroid that would probably be felt landing all the way in Africa. I'm not sure this would be plausible really - ice melt certainly is, but this level of ice melt might need a devastating impact, which IMO is a little unlikely.

2 - The crop failure could certainly cause huge problems, but I think it would require truly exception circumstances to produce all of what you are suggesting - exceptional circumstances that go beyond a simple very cold winter. For example, the peasants are unlikely to go crazy and overthrow their nobles - it's just not in their character. Unlike the modern portrayal, peasants didn't have a natural tendency to revolt against the aristocracy when circumstances permitted. By and large they were very supportive of the nobility and royalty, having been taught all their life to view themselves as being incapable of producing a decent country with "social superiors" generally knowing their own limitations (better than we do today, I'd venture) and with no pro-democracy/libertarian propaganda around to make them doubt their beliefs. Yes, peasants would often rebel, but they needed a reason to rebel. Often, this reason was believing that the King was acting unwisely - in this case, their response wasn't to overthrow the King but to give him a list of changes they wanted him to make and sometimes to try to murder unpopular advisers so that they could promote nobles who were popular with the peasantry (there were many of these). In the example of an anarchy, the peasants would for a while enjoy their freedom but with crime running rampant they would quickly get scared, with no-one to protect them, and would run for safety to the protection of powerful nobles. On the other hand, you have the Black Death, which was widely regarded as a curse from God for poor piety. In the case of Europe being far worse off than OTL, the backlash will be against the priests for not doing a good enough job of correcting their sinful ways, and to an extent against themselves. Similarly, though, the Catholic Church won't "collapse" because the surviving peasants will be so scared of God's retribution that they will be doing all they can to cleanse themselves of sin, at least in the long term. To be a bit blunt, society at this point is sufficiently ingrained in Catholicism that the peasants wouldn't take this massive loss of life as a reason to turn away from God, because they would only see it as a warning to turn back to him. Considering that the Bible and their sermons actively taught that disloyalty against the King was punishable by God, they are unlikely to want to overthrow the standing order and in fact their support for the King could even increase. It's the period after the Black Death, when society normalises again that the social upheaval will really become a problem.

3 - 2/3 isn't actually that far away from some estimations of the true loss of life from Black Death ;). That figure will changes things, yes, but the social impact will at least be similar enough to RL that Europe TTL would probably mirror RL to a large degree. Also, if you want China to become the primary industrial centre (eventually) you'll probably want to exaggerate the death count even more to force Europe to take ages recovering.

4 - The Mongols and Turks had a huge problem with Black Death, too. They're going to be too weak for a while to capitalise. Also, without finding something truly radical and monolithic, I'm not sure western Europe could convert to Islam like that, and surely not that quickly. Also, if the plague itself is what causes your Catholic collapse, you should probably factor in that Muslims in the East are likely to experience a similar collapse of religion.

5 - Norwegians fleeing to America is perhaps a bit of an extreme reaction - something akin to emigrating to another continent because the news is predicting a record-breaking strong hurricane heading your way (bear in mind that if America was really well-known in Europe because of Lief Eriksson, and if it was considered an easy journey, America would have been properly colonised long before Columbus arrived) - but I'll roll with it for now. However, if there's plague on that ship, it's going to float into America with a dead crew. The incubation period for Black Death is 1-2 days and if you aren't dead within 7 days you've survived. Also, that settlement is going to essentially be cut off from Europe because of the distance, the Plague, and fear of the Plague, so you'd need to make that trading post essentially a self-sustaining site. Don't be entirely discouraged, but I'll point out here that the Scandinavians tried to colonise America in the 1200s and importantly they failed.

6 - China contacting the Americas is cool, though you'd need to find a way to get rid of isolationism. Also, if you want to you can fiddle events to make them discover it as early as 1431, I believe, and then just have them sit on the knowledge until they're ready to exploit it. Arguably, finding America would solve the isolationism thing, as I believe isolationism was a result of a failed naval expedition to impress the world and find sites to explore and expand to, but don't quote me on that.

7 - If you can find a reason to keep the Norwegian outpost in the north going and trading with Europe (personally I prefer to avoid American colonisation before OTL as I think it's dubious, but a lot of people are fixated on the Vinland idea) then if you want them to have traded iron tech to the Aztecs and Incas you're probably going to need the Norwegians to have effectively colonised the entire OTL eastern seaboard of the USA. I'm not convinced they'd trade such a powerful ability with such a faraway people unless they'd A - expanded far closer to them, and B - had a lot of exposure to them and treated them as an equal power. Others may disagree. Just something to mull over.

8 - China dominating Asia is fine, but if you want the rise of democracy and secularism you'll need to invent a whole event arc for it. At present, events are suggesting a very strong autocratic, fiercely religious world. Remember that a lot of the work towards democracy and secularism came from the European countries that you have annihilated at the start of your TL. The rise of democracy isn't a given in every TL, it needs to be explained into existence.

9 - As for everything after the Christian terrorist attacks - well really, by this point you've had enough time that with the right event tweaking you can make just about any social conditions realistic, so this isn't unlikely. However, unless you are going for a deliberate analogy to real life, I'd advise you to consider that the progress of society and technology isn't likely to meet RL speeds. For instance, it might not be unrealistic to set back the rise of a capitalist, extremist-ridden society back to the 23rd century given the POD.
 

arctic warrior

DJC said:
In 1350, a group of Norwegian settlers fleeing the oncoming disaster in Europe make contact with the Americas via Newfoundland. They inadvertently introduce smallpox, measles, and the plague to the native American population, and the diseases spread southward, eventually reaching the Incas in the mid- to late 1400s(?).
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Norway was one of the areas hardest hit by the plague.
In addition going across the North Atlantic by ship tech in this age would be hazardous as the Little Ice Age had already descended and wrapped the area.

The Greenland settlements were dying out at this time. It was hard for travellers from Iceland to reach the Western Settlement due to pack ice at this time.

I don't say its totally ASB as the Norse did have quite large ships up to 30m long able to carry 120 tons. But the obstacles are against the effort.
 

cbrunish

Banned
Another problem is that the Black Death hit the Chinese just as hard as it did the Europeans! It was estimated that China also lost approximatly 1/3rd of their population.
 

superkuf

arctic warrior said:
Norway was one of the areas hardest hit by the plague.
In addition going across the North Atlantic by ship tech in this age would be hazardous as the Little Ice Age had already descended and wrapped the area.

The Greenland settlements were dying out at this time. It was hard for travellers from Iceland to reach the Western Settlement due to pack ice at this time.

I don't say its totally ASB as the Norse did have quite large ships up to 30m long able to carry 120 tons. But the obstacles are against the effort.
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I agree that the POD isn't enough to achive the goal. Scandinavia have had agriculture in semi-arctic areas with few problems during centuries. Also, the European border areas closest to Turk/Mongol areas would get a big reinforcement in form of refugees. Sure it would create problems, but it would also compensate for the dying off from the Plague - while I can't see the same migration patterns among the Turks and Mongols.

One possibility for the Norse North American colony would be that some traders in Norway decided to flee with their ships, ended up in Greenland and that the Norse there decided to give up their (already straggling) colony and move en masse to Vinland. It is slightly ASB, since the Greenlanders were extremely conservative in everything and probably lacked ships (at the end they didn't have trees to build even small fishing ships), but that could be solved by the traders new ships. At that time the Greenland colony had around 5 000 people - enough for a survivable settlement in North America.
 

Nerdlinger

Falastur said:
OK, I'll try a few immediate observations. Just some stuff off the top of my head, so I could easily be wrong, feel free to argue my points if you have a different take.

1 - The asteroid cooling the Gulf Stream. Two points here. One is, Europe is already experiencing what is known as the "Little Ice Age", circa 1200-1600 AD. The world in general is colder at this point, and as an example, the Thames in London is recorded as freezing so solid every year that Londoners used to hold the city market on the river for about 2 months over winter - the Thames itself would be frozen for 3-4 months, which gives you an indication of the level of cold. I'd say it was already as cold as you want it to be, and perhaps worse. Second point: I'm no geophysical ace, but I think you'd need a ludicrously large asteroid to land to cause enough ice melt to change the Gulf Stream noticeably for several years. The kind of asteroid that would probably be felt landing all the way in Africa. I'm not sure this would be plausible really - ice melt certainly is, but this level of ice melt might need a devastating impact, which IMO is a little unlikely.
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Yes, I was concerned about the amount of meltwater required and how big an impact would be needed to disrupt the North Atlantic Current. The math is also a bit beyond me. Using the impact simulator here, I could estimate the amount of ice melted by an asteroid "x" meters in diameter, but I still don't know how much meltwater would need to be generated. I did ask a geologist on allexperts.com about this, and below are some snippets of his responses (the full questions and answers are here and here).

The current could be disrupted by the influx of fresh water diluting the hypersaline water flowing south which would upset the Gulf Stream fed North Atlantic current which keeps N. Europe warm.

One look at a map of the world with an eye to the northern latititudes should tell you what would happen to N. Europe should the current be disrupted. Great Britain is on the same latitude as Hudson Bay. France is on the same latitude as the Dakota's and Montana. Norway and Findland...forget about it. Large areas of the most productive agricultural land in W. Europe would see massive temperature drops, and areas that usually have ice free ports year round would start to freeze up. Almost all of most populous areas of W. Europe are on the same latitude as Montana and S. Canada. There is a reason most of the Canadian population lives within 300 miles of the U.S. border. N. Canada turns into a deep freeze in winter. I have seen -30F below zero in the Montana flatlands in November.

I should think that the a meteor impact which could cause a rapid melting if only temporary surge of fresh water could cause a major albeit temporary disruption of the current, leading to a series of horrible winters, leading to ice bound ports, destruction of fishing fleetes

The drainage of Greenland appears to to to the east, but a large impact would really stir things up. Looking at the diagrams in the article, it looks like a large influx of fresh water from the large fiord would disrupt the hypersaline south bound loop between Greenland and Iceland. So that would work I think. The placement isn't that important as an impact would melt ice and the runnoff would go to the south and east. An impact in the central part of the continent would be in the area of the thickest ice so you'd expect a larger volume of melt water cascading to the east.

 So it seems feasible in his opinion, although he didn't have exact numbers either regarding the requisite amount of meltwater. If anybody can help me out with the math on that, I'd appreciate it.

To make the impact idea work, it's about finding a happy medium: the impact can't be so small that not enough meltwater is generated to temporarily disrupt the current for a few years, but it can't be so big that it either permanently shuts down the current or winds up creating a global impact winter.

 Here's an idea which occurred to me just now: suppose that instead of hitting in Greenland and interfering with the North Atlantic Current, the asteroid hits somewhere along the OTL Canada-US border. If the impact is sized just right, a massive debris cloud will be kicked up which will head eastward, following the prevailing winds. If the cloud isn't so big that it covers the whole planet, it could be limited just to a certain range of latitudes north and south of the impact (perhaps those covering most of Europe). This would affect OTL south Canada, north US, Kazakhstan, Mongolia, Manchuria, etc., but the most populous area by far at these latitudes is Europe. The pall of dust would last for a few years, depriving European crops of sunlight and dropping temperatures even further than the Little Ice Age would have already done. Have this happen around the same time as the Black Plague in Europe, and the collapse of European civilization seems quite likely to me.
Falastur said:
2 - The crop failure could certainly cause huge problems, but I think it would require truly exception circumstances to produce all of what you are suggesting - exceptional circumstances that go beyond a simple very cold winter. For example, the peasants are unlikely to go crazy and overthrow their nobles - it's just not in their character. Unlike the modern portrayal, peasants didn't have a natural tendency to revolt against the aristocracy when circumstances permitted. By and large they were very supportive of the nobility and royalty, having been taught all their life to view themselves as being incapable of producing a decent country with "social superiors" generally knowing their own limitations (better than we do today, I'd venture) and with no pro-democracy/libertarian propaganda around to make them doubt their beliefs. Yes, peasants would often rebel, but they needed a reason to rebel. Often, this reason was believing that the King was acting unwisely - in this case, their response wasn't to overthrow the King but to give him a list of changes they wanted him to make and sometimes to try to murder unpopular advisers so that they could promote nobles who were popular with the peasantry (there were many of these). In the example of an anarchy, the peasants would for a while enjoy their freedom but with crime running rampant they would quickly get scared, with no-one to protect them, and would run for safety to the protection of powerful nobles. On the other hand, you have the Black Death, which was widely regarded as a curse from God for poor piety. In the case of Europe being far worse off than OTL, the backlash will be against the priests for not doing a good enough job of correcting their sinful ways, and to an extent against themselves. Similarly, though, the Catholic Church won't "collapse" because the surviving peasants will be so scared of God's retribution that they will be doing all they can to cleanse themselves of sin, at least in the long term. To be a bit blunt, society at this point is sufficiently ingrained in Catholicism that the peasants wouldn't take this massive loss of life as a reason to turn away from God, because they would only see it as a warning to turn back to him. Considering that the Bible and their sermons actively taught that disloyalty against the King was punishable by God, they are unlikely to want to overthrow the standing order and in fact their support for the King could even increase. It's the period after the Black Death, when society normalises again that the social upheaval will really become a problem.
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In a prior thread on this topic, Polish Eagle discussed what the demise of the nobles and the church would do to European civilization:
Polish Eagle said:
Black plague eliminates enough members of the "cultured" class (Priests, nobles, kings) that the peasants and soldiers are left to fend for themselves. They form various tribal cultures that, while clearly descended of a common, Christian ancestor, are wildly different, and may even have reverted to paganism. The thing that makes it affect Europe more is that Europeans relied on the "cultured" class.
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Polish Eagle said:
While Muslims, for example, were better educated as a whole, Europeans were restricted to monks, priests, and a few nobles. If enough of them are wiped out, the rest of society is based on subsistence farming with almost no connection to the outside world. Like after Rome fell. Except this time, we might be looking at a collapse of the single Imperial institution that survived the earlier disaster: The Church. If the Catholic Church hierarchy is irreparably damaged by a plague, Europe will fall after it.
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Polish Eagle said:
Like I said, to wipe out European civilization, you don't need to kill everyone. Just wipe out the nobility and Church hierarchy. This makes it more plausible than a Years of Rice and Salt scenario.
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So basically, I was looking for a way to wipe out the nobles and the church hierarchy. I see your point, though, Falastur. Perhaps as a response to the combination of the Black Plague and the Black Winter, a radical cult arises which promotes the overthrow of the nobles, but I don't know how realistic that is.

 Could the collapse of the Catholic Church be brought on by the deaths of the pope and some high-ranking cardinals? The pope during the Black Death was Clement VI. According to his Wikipedia article:

Clement VI's physicians advised him that surrounding himself with torches would block the plague. However, he soon became skeptical of this recommendation and stayed in Avignon supervising sick care, burials, and the pastoral care of the dying (Duffy, 167). He never contracted the disease.

So it's definitely possible for him to have been infected and died. In OTL, he died in 1352, toward the end of the Black Death, after the plague already had passed through Avignon, and obviously the church didn't collapse. But if he were to die in 1348 or '49 of the plague itself, maybe that would do more damage to the church. I still might have to take out a few cardinals or something, though.

 I could always have a climatic catastrophe occur during the post-Black Death recovery, if that might be more damaging in terms of social upheaval.

Falastur said:
3 - 2/3 isn't actually that far away from some estimations of the true loss of life from Black Death. That figure will changes things, yes, but the social impact will at least be similar enough to RL that Europe TTL would probably mirror RL to a large degree. Also, if you want China to become the primary industrial centre (eventually) you'll probably want to exaggerate the death count even more to force Europe to take ages recovering.
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AFAIK, the most commonly quoted figure for the loss of life due to the Black Death is 1/3 of the population of Europe, though this rate is an average and varied from place to place. I'm not wedded to a particular death toll in my TL, though. My original plan was to have 90-95% of Europeans die from a deadlier strain of the black plague, but this was overruled as unrealistically high. I'd settle for 80% or so, if this would debilitate Europe enough.

Falastur said:
4 - The Mongols and Turks had a huge problem with Black Death, too. They're going to be too weak for a while to capitalise. Also, without finding something truly radical and monolithic, I'm not sure western Europe could convert to Islam like that, and surely not that quickly. Also, if the plague itself is what causes your Catholic collapse, you should probably factor in that Muslims in the East are likely to experience a similar collapse of religion.
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Oh, believe me, I know that pretty much all of Eurasia and North Africa was hit by the same plague which hit Europe. The pandemic began in China in the 1330s and spread west from there. The Black Death did so much damage in OTL to the Golden Horde that they never recovered. And, as pointed out to me in a prior thread, Anatolia lost about 1/2 its population to the Black Death. However, in OTL, the Ottomans recovered well enough to carve themselves out quite a sizable empire (including much of southeast Europe) which lasted for centuries. And in this TL, Turkey is not hit so hard by the Black Winter as most of Europe due to its lower latitudes.

 My assumption is that the Mongols will collapse as in OTL (there were already on their way by the mid-1300s), but the Muslims of North Africa and the Middle East will be able to recover faster than most of Europe. Though they were hit with the same plague, they did not suffer the effects of the Black Winter.

 It's not so much a matter of Europe converting to Islam, it's just that so many Christian Europeans will be dead that the influx of Muslim colonists will make Islam the majority religion of Europe. The plague itself is not what would cause the collapse of Catholicism in this TL; instead it's the combination of the plague and the Black Winter which is to blame.

Falastur said:
5 - Norwegians fleeing to America is perhaps a bit of an extreme reaction - something akin to emigrating to another continent because the news is predicting a record-breaking strong hurricane heading your way (bear in mind that if America was really well-known in Europe because of Lief Eriksson, and if it was considered an easy journey, America would have been properly colonised long before Columbus arrived) - but I'll roll with it for now. However, if there's plague on that ship, it's going to float into America with a dead crew. The incubation period for Black Death is 1-2 days and if you aren't dead within 7 days you've survived. Also, that settlement is going to essentially be cut off from Europe because of the distance, the Plague, and fear of the Plague, so you'd need to make that trading post essentially a self-sustaining site. Don't be entirely discouraged, but I'll point out here that the Scandinavians tried to colonise America in the 1200s and importantly they failed.
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Well, I need to establish a continual low-level contact between the Old World and the Americas as soon as possible after my POD in ~1348. From previous discussions, the general opinion seems to be that this is the best way to provide the native American civilizations with the best chance to advance far enough to avoid being conquered by the Old World. I liked the idea of Norwegians (or some other north Europeans) establishing the first successful colony in Newfoundland because their fair skin would hopefully deter them from spreading too far south and endangering the sovereignty of the native Americans. It doesn't have to be Norwegians making the contact; they were just the closest to the Americas (via their Greenland colony). I was hoping to avoid having one of the future major powers in the Old World (Turks, Arabs, Chinese, etc.) establish this connection due to the possibility of their overrunning the Americas even earlier than the Europeans did in OTL.

 No one on the boat necessarily has to be infected with the plague; they just need to bring along a few flea-infested rats. I don't think the colony needs to be much more than an intermittently-used trading post between the Americas and the Old World. It just has to feed the native Americans (esp. the Aztecs and Incas) a steady stream of Old World technology, agriculture, and the knowledge that goes with them. With the proper initiative, both civilizations could adopt iron-working, firearms, horses, etc., and make themselves into formidable opponents for any would-be conquistadors from the Old World. The trading post doesn't even need to be Newfoundland; in fact, the closer to the Aztecs and/or Incas, the faster they should be able to adopt Old World tech.
Falastur said:
6 - China contacting the Americas is cool, though you'd need to find a way to get rid of isolationism. Also, if you want to you can fiddle events to make them discover it as early as 1431, I believe, and then just have them sit on the knowledge until they're ready to exploit it. Arguably, finding America would solve the isolationism thing, as I believe isolationism was a result of a failed naval expedition to impress the world and find sites to explore and expand to, but don't quote me on that.
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I agree that it's a very cool idea, but I have received varying opinions on the potential of the Chinese to contact the Americas in the 1400s. It has been considered quite feasible or so improbable that it's ASB. Zheng He's grand voyages into the Indian Ocean were eventually deemed frivolous and were cancelled by the Chinese emperor, who focused resources on solving internal problems instead. Even if I go with this idea, there are few problems. (1) If my POD is around 1350, this butterflies away Zheng He, Chinese explorer-extraordinaire. I don't know if an analogue would arise to take his place. (2) Apparently, Zheng He mostly followed established trade routes, making a trip across the Pacific unlikely. (3) Having the Chinese make a contact with the Americas in the 1420s or '30s would provide even less time for the American civilizations to adopt Old World technology; could be redundant if contact is already established between the Old World and the Americas via the much narrower Atlantic; and could result in the Chinese conquering the Aztecs and/or Incas instead of the Europeans.
Falastur said:
7 - If you can find a reason to keep the Norwegian outpost in the north going and trading with Europe (personally I prefer to avoid American colonisation before OTL as I think it's dubious, but a lot of people are fixated on the Vinland idea) then if you want them to have traded iron tech to the Aztecs and Incas you're probably going to need the Norwegians to have effectively colonised the entire OTL eastern seaboard of the USA. I'm not convinced they'd trade such a powerful ability with such a faraway people unless they'd A - expanded far closer to them, and B - had a lot of exposure to them and treated them as an equal power. Others may disagree. Just something to mull over.
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I know, colonization of the Americas earlier than in OTL seems contrary to my desire to keep the Aztecs and Incas alive and strong to the present, but at least some connection needs to be maintained with the Old World for the American civilizations to get their hands on more advanced Old World technology. So I'm going for the most limited contact possible without having it cut off entirely.

 I expected the Norwegians to eventually establish trading posts further south, say, down to the Chesapeake, shortening the distance to the Aztecs (who would have expanded northward and who in turn would trade with the Incas). I don't think the Norwegians would see it as trading a powerful ability, but rather as just regular trade -- supply and demand. (E.g., "I give you these guns if you give me those potatoes.") Ultimately, once the Turks find out that their Norwegians vassals have a semi-profitable trade going with the Americas, the Turks will appropriate the trading posts for themselves and spread even further into the Americas. Since this could threaten the Aztecs before they're capable of warding off the Turks, I would hope that the Norwegian trade route would not become too popular.
Falastur said:
8 - China dominating Asia is fine, but if you want the rise of democracy and secularism you'll need to invent a whole event arc for it. At present, events are suggesting a very strong autocratic, fiercely religious world. Remember that a lot of the work towards democracy and secularism came from the European countries that you have annihilated at the start of your TL. The rise of democracy isn't a given in every TL, it needs to be explained into existence.
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That's another concern I have. The thing is that I already have overall global societal and technological progress in the absence of European civilization about a century behind OTL. I don't want to make it seem like the civilizations of the Middle and Far East were so backward when compared to Europe in the 1300s. Were they that far behind Europe? Is an average 100-year lag not long enough?

 I had figured democracy and secularism were bound to spring up somewhere at some point even without Europe. This is just my take on the matter, but it seems to me that in general the more scientific knowledge a society acquires, the more educated its people are. The more educated (and the less ignorant) the people are, the better they can see the injustice in the old autocracies and the folly in their ancient superstitions. Thus the society gradually trends toward liberalism, democracy, and secularism. This has occurred and is occurring in the developed world in OTL, particularly in Europe, but also in the US (albeit to a lesser extent with regard to secularism). The most developed parts of the world in the ATL are China and Turkey, though it took a longer time for them to reach the same level of progress that Europe did in OTL.

Falastur said:
9 - As for everything after the Christian terrorist attacks - well really, by this point you've had enough time that with the right event tweaking you can make just about any social conditions realistic, so this isn't unlikely. However, unless you are going for a deliberate analogy to real life, I'd advise you to consider that the progress of society and technology isn't likely to meet RL speeds. For instance, it might not be unrealistic to set back the rise of a capitalist, extremist-ridden society back to the 23rd century given the POD.
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Therein lies one of my biggest problems: what level of societal and technological progress would be realistic? The laissez-faire capitalism of late 1800s/early 1900s America or the bastardized version of communism in 20th century Russia might well be delayed for centuries, if analogues even arise at all. I know it's hard to quantify "progress," but in Robinson's The Years of Rice and Salt, it seemed that technological progress remained on par with OTL while social progress was a bit slower, while in Silverberg's The Gate of Worlds both levels of progress were about a century behind OTL (e.g., steam-powered cars in 1985). Turtledove's In High Places was even more pessimistic, as progress virtually froze, leaving the world with a 14th century society and technology in the late 21st century.

Currently, I have a 100-year gap on average, although different milestones were achieved at varying paces. The Americas weren't extensively colonized until about 200 years after the Europeans did in OTL, but medical and electronic technology of the 21st century is only about 50-75 years behind OTL while technology of war is over 100 years behind. This is all tentative, though, and I can change the timing as needed. So I would really appreciate opinions from everyone as to the average "progress gap" that can reasonably be expected given the demise of European civilization.

 BTW, I thought it was ironic to have fundamentalist Christian terrorist organizations waging a holy war against a largely Islamic society. I have no particular love for any religion, but the role reversal was too tempting for me to exclude from the TL.
 

Nerdlinger

arctic warrior said:
Norway was one of the areas hardest hit by the plague.
In addition going across the North Atlantic by ship tech in this age would be hazardous as the Little Ice Age had already descended and wrapped the area.

The Greenland settlements were dying out at this time. It was hard for travellers from Iceland to reach the Western Settlement due to pack ice at this time.

I don't say its totally ASB as the Norse did have quite large ships up to 30m long able to carry 120 tons. But the obstacles are against the effort.
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Those are good points. My original thought was that it would be a bunch of refugees fleeing the mainland for one of the colonies (either Iceland or Greenland) as the plague encroaches and their crops die. The pack ice could divert this voyage further south, landing them in Newfoundland or the Maritimes. After some successful trade with the native Americans, the refugees head back home, where the land is recovering from the Black Plague and Black Winter. A trade route is established, and although it is not frequented often, it gradually moves further south along the Atlantic coast to get closer to the Aztecs, who have the most demand for Old World supplies. It doesn't have to be Norwegians who make the contact, though. Did you have another country in mind?

cbrunish said:
Another problem is that the Black Death hit the Chinese just as hard as it did the Europeans! It was estimated that China also lost approximatly 1/3rd of their population.
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True, but in this TL, Europe is not just hit by the plague as in OTL but also by the Black Winter, which doesn't affect China very much at all.

superkuf said:
I agree that the POD isn't enough to achive the goal. Scandinavia have had agriculture in semi-arctic areas with few problems during centuries. Also, the European border areas closest to Turk/Mongol areas would get a big reinforcement in form of refugees. Sure it would create problems, but it would also compensate for the dying off from the Plague - while I can't see the same migration patterns among the Turks and Mongols.

One possibility for the Norse North American colony would be that some traders in Norway decided to flee with their ships, ended up in Greenland and that the Norse there decided to give up their (already straggling) colony and move en masse to Vinland. It is slightly ASB, since the Greenlanders were extremely conservative in everything and probably lacked ships (at the end they didn't have trees to build even small fishing ships), but that could be solved by the traders new ships. At that time the Greenland colony had around 5 000 people - enough for a survivable settlement in North America.
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I figured the refugees heading into areas less affected by the Black Winter would be faced with mass starvation, as those areas would not have the agricultural base to support a sudden massive influx of population. I think southern Iberia and the southern Balkans could act as buffer zones in this regard to protect the Muslims in North Africa and the Middle East from being similarly swamped. The Golden Horde is already doomed, given that the plague alone weakened them to the point of collapse in OTL. Other, more southern Muslim peoples such as the Ottomans, Mamluks, and Marinids would fare better though.

I like the idea of the Greenland colony migrating to Vinland, although as you say they would need extra motivation and ships from mainland Europe to do so. Is it necessary to establish a 5000-strong colony in North America to achieve the desired effect though? The desired effect is simply to have a steady trade route from the Americas to the Old World through which Old World diseases, technology, agriculture, and knowledge could be disseminated to the native Americans (esp. the Aztecs and Incas). Could some intermittently frequented trading posts along the Atlantic coast of North America achieve this desired effect, or is more extensive colonization required?
 

DuQuense

Several Years ago -- A Volcano erupted under a Glacier in Iceland, It melted a large Dome of warm water. This dome eventfully collapsed when the Water melted its way out.
There were several newspaper articles about whether the Melt water would effect the Gulf Stream [It didn't].

I would suggest forgetting about the Meteor, and going with a eruption of several of Greenland's volcanoes.
 

Nerdlinger

DuQuense said:
Several Years ago -- A Volcano erupted under a Glacier in Iceland, It melted a large Dome of warm water. This dome eventfully collapsed when the Water melted its way out.
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DuQuense said:
There were several newspaper articles about whether the Melt water would effect the Gulf Stream [It didn't].

 I would suggest forgetting about the Meteor, and going with a eruption of several of Greenland's volcanoes.
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The clever idea of volcano meltwater interrupting the North Atlantic Current was first suggested by Nugax here, but since AFAIK there no volcanoes in Greenland, I replaced the volcano with an impact instead, as the two can generate similar effects. I know that Iceland, straddling the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, is chock full of volcanoes, but I didn't think it had enough ice to melt. However, I just now found a list on Wikipedia indicating the volume of the four largest glaciers on Iceland. While there's nowhere near the amount of ice on Iceland as there is on Greenland, there might be enough on Iceland to do the job. But how much is needed to do the job? The biggest problem I'm facing is how much meltwater would be necessary to disrupt the North Atlantic Current. It can't be too much, or otherwise the current could shut down entirely; I'm just looking for it to slow down for a few years to cause some very bad winters in Europe. A volcanic eruption of the right size on Iceland might be adequate for my needs, but an impact in either Greenland or Iceland has the advantage of being located wherever I need it to be.

 The most common type of meteorite is the low iron (L) ordinary chondrite, which comes from asteroids. According to this Wikipedia article, 80% of meteorites are chondrites, 90% of chondrites are ordinary, and 50% of ordinary chondrites are low iron (L). Thus 36% of all meteorites are L chondrites. This website indicates that the average bulk density of L chondrites is 3.35 g/cm^3, or 3350 kg/m^3. Heading to the impact simulator here, I can input 3350 kg/m^3 as the projectile density. For the other values, the distance from the impact doesn't matter (I just put 100 km), and the target type is water of depth 0 meters (or ice). The variables to fiddle with are projectile diameter, impact velocity, and impact angle. My first calculation used a 1000 m diameter projectile moving at 17 km/s (average for asteroids) and hitting at the most probable angle of 45 degrees. This melted or vaporized 1.58 km^3 of the target (the ice). If this volume of meltwater all flowed into the ocean, it would only be about half as much as that generated by the 1996 Grimsvotn caldera eruption (3 km^3), which may be the eruption you mention. But if I tweak the figures, for instance making it a 2000 m diameter projectile moving at 34 km/s and hitting at 60 degrees, the impact melts 62.3 km^3 of the target. So it's feasible to have a impact somewhere in the middle of those parameters which generates substantially more than 3 km^3 of meltwater.

 If the impact idea is too ASB, I'm fine with changing it. Alternately, I could have (1) a volcanic eruption in Iceland (bigger than the 1996 one) creating the current-disrupting meltwater or (2) an asteroid impact in the northern US or southern Canada, creating a pall of debris which would circle the world at European latitudes, dropping temperatures and killing crops. With the latter idea, the trick would be to have the impact sized just right so as to limit the negative effects to European latitudes and not to create a world-wide impact winter. What does everyone think about these ideas?
 
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arctic warrior

DJC said:
Those are good points. My original thought was that it would be a bunch of refugees fleeing the mainland for one of the colonies (either Iceland or Greenland) as the plague encroaches and their crops die. The pack ice could divert this voyage further south, landing them in Newfoundland or the Maritimes. After some successful trade with the native Americans, the refugees head back home, where the land is recovering from the Black Plague and Black Winter. A trade route is established, and although it is not frequented often, it gradually moves further south along the Atlantic coast to get closer to the Aztecs, who have the most demand for Old World supplies. It doesn't have to be Norwegians who make the contact, though. Did you have another country in mind?
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The OTL Little Ice Age as recorded in the settlements on Greenland seem to imply that travel from Iceland to Greenland was becoming ever more troublesome post 1350.

Anybody fleeing Norway may get the tale in Iceland that it is close to impossible to island hop all the way to the old temporary settlement in Vinland. Add to this the conflict with the skrealing living in Vinland greatly outnumbering the Norse and things do get very rough.
Even Eric the Red lost half his ships travelling to Greenland during the Medieval optimum! Now things is much, much worse.

I don't say its impossible I've even tried arguing for such a thing to happen in earlier threads during the optimum but I'm uncertain as to the ability of the Norse to sustain any Vinland settlement communications during the Little Ice Age or in this worse condition. And especially if the settlement is to be made this late.

Moving the Greenlanders off the settlements to Vinland at this time would be difficult without the Vinland settlement to deliver the necessary timbers for shipbuilding (and norse stubbornness to change) even if some fugitives of the Black Death etc. should come along offering a ride.

Actually I don't see anybody else undertaking the experiment.
 

Kalan

If there is a further drop in temperature during the already cold little ice age, you won't get a recovery so quickly, because the additional ice and snow will start to reflect more sunlight thus further cooling the earth. If the process becomes strong enough it triggers a new ice age. Climate models imply that a decrease of 2 C would be enough, as the temperature during the little ice age was already 1 degree lower an impact would probably suffice to to lower the temperature enough to cause the formation of a permanent snow layer on Scandinavia (no gulf stream) and which would in turn increase the albedo sufficiently to promote a new ice age.

Anyway I don't see why you would need such drastic means to stop Europe from exploring and ultimatly dominating the rest of the world. A continued Mongol invasion should also be enough if you ask me. During their height the mongols defeated the Germans at the battle of legnica (or Schacht an der Wahlstatt) and the Hungarians at the Battle of Mohi. In both cases the conquered areas were extensivly looted, cities destroyed and many nobels died during the battles. In 1242 the mongols reached the adria. As the fate of Bohemia showed mountains did not stop the mongols for longer time, so an invasion of italy is possible. And the cities of northern italy were the birth place of the renaiscance. If the mongols sack those (and possibly rome as well) the develpment of Europe will be set back by centuries.

 
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Nerdlinger

arctic warrior said:
The OTL Little Ice Age as recorded in the settlements on Greenland seem to imply that travel from Iceland to Greenland was becoming ever more troublesome post 1350.

Anybody fleeing Norway may get the tale in Iceland that it is close to impossible to island hop all the way to the old temporary settlement in Vinland. Add to this the conflict with the skrealing living in Vinland greatly outnumbering the Norse and things do get very rough.
Even Eric the Red lost half his ships travelling to Greenland during the Medieval optimum! Now things is much, much worse.

I don't say its impossible I've even tried arguing for such a thing to happen in earlier threads during the optimum but I'm uncertain as to the ability of the Norse to sustain any Vinland settlement communications during the Little Ice Age or in this worse condition. And especially if the settlement is to be made this late.

Moving the Greenlanders off the settlements to Vinland at this time would be difficult without the Vinland settlement to deliver the necessary timbers for shipbuilding (and norse stubbornness to change) even if some fugitives of the Black Death etc. should come along offering a ride.

Actually I don't see anybody else undertaking the experiment.
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Eric the Red sailed over 350 years before the Black Death. Wouldn't seafaring technology and techniques have advanced since then? The technological gap from 1350 to 1492 is much narrower than from 982 to 1350. My good friend Wikipedia indicates that the Little Ice Age wasn't in full swing until around 1550, the "theorized beginning of worldwide glacial expansion." Granted, Atlantic pack ice began to grow in 1250, and weather was erratic from then on. But after 1350, there's about 200 years for a steady trade route to be established before the trip really gets bad.

 Also, it doesn't need to be the Norwegians who make the contact with the Americas, it could be anyone. (It's just that Norway had explored closer to the Americas than any other nation to that point.) I hesitate to have it be the British, French, Spanish, or Portuguese, given their track record with native American relations in OTL. Admittedly, the odds that the first to make contact with the Americas after 1348 (the POD) would not be European, since they would be substantially less numerous in the wake of the Black Death (Black Plague + Black Winter). More likely, it would be Europe's Muslim successors, like the Turks or Arabs; it could even be Chinese on the Pacific side, although the trip is longer, and might have to be delayed until the early to mid-1400s instead of 1350. (The earliest contact after the POD, the more time the Americas have to prepare for Old World colonists.)

 I don't even think a full-fledged colony needs to be established -- wouldn't simple trading posts be sufficient to allow for exchange of technology and knowledge? The trade route doesn't have to be popular, it just has to be used every so often so that Old World goodies can spread to the Americas. While it might not be the most profitable trade route, wouldn't some Old World traders find the trip worthwhile, given all the useful crops the Americas have to offer (corn, potatoes, tobacco, cocoa, etc.)? Furthermore, the area of contact doesn't have to be Newfoundland. The Norwegians (or whoever's making the trips) could land in the Mid-Atlantic, or Florida, or the Caribbean, or Brazil, or wherever.
Kalan said:
If there is a further drop in temperature during the already cold little ice age, you won't get a recovery so quickly, because the additional ice and snow will start to reflect more sunlight thus further cooling the earth. If the process becomes strong enough it triggers a new ice age. Climate models imply that a decrease of 2 C would be enough, as the temperature during the little ice age was already 1 degree lower an impact would probably suffice to to lower the temperature enough to cause the formation of a permanent snow layer on Scandinavia (no gulf stream) and which would in turn increase the albedo sufficiently to promote a new ice age.

Anyway I don't see why you would need such drastic means to stop Europe from exploring and ultimatly dominating the rest of the world. A continued Mongol invasion should also be enough if you ask me. During their height the mongols defeated the Germans at the battle of legnica (or Schacht an der Wahlstatt) and the Hungarians at the Battle of Mohi. In both cases the conquered areas were extensivly looted, cities destroyed and many nobels died during the battles. In 1242 the mongols reached the adria. As the fate of Bohemia showed mountains did not stop the mongols for longer time, so an invasion of italy is possible. And the cities of northern italy were the birth place of the renaiscance. If the mongols sack those (and possibly rome as well) the develpment of Europe will be set back by centuries.
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I know about the vicious circle involving temperature drops and increased albedo due to wider ice/snow coverage. I don't intend for the Black Winter to escalate into an ice age though. Rather, I'm trying to find a way to create just a temporary period (a few years) of abnormally cold weather in Europe, preferably during the Black Plague for maximum damage. AFAIK, the North Atlantic Current is capable of restabilizing in the event of a brief but substantial influx of fresh meltwater which acts to slow the current without stopping it entirely. There are two plausible causes for this rush of meltwater: a meteor impact in Iceland or Greenland, or a volcanic eruption in Iceland.

 If I scrap the North Atlantic Current disruption idea, an alternate way of producing the desired Black Winter in Europe is to have the meteor impact in southern Canada or the northern US. This could kick up a big cloud of dust which encircles the earth at latitudes covering most of Europe, thus obscuring sunlight, dropping temperatures, and killing crops. The impact has to be just the right size; otherwise, the dust cloud will be too widespread and would affect other areas of the world at more southerly latitudes. After a few years, the dust cloud disperses and settles, and the weather returns to normal, but not before destroying most of Europe. Does this idea seem more plausible?

 There have been quite a few discussions on this site regarding the feasibility of a more extensive conquest of Europe by the Mongols. A popular POD involves having Ogedei Khan live longer than in OTL. Some people claim it is quite likely that the Mongols could have spread significantly further into Europe, with a few supporting the possibility of a complete Mongol conquest of Europe. But many others deem this an improbable scenario, for various reasons ranging from the Mongols overextending themselves to the terrain and decentralized defense of Europe serving as a substantial impediment to further Mongol advances. I don't know enough about the matter to make an informed opinion. However, if you're right, a complete conquest is unnecessary. If the Mongols had gone just a little further and wiped out northern Italy, this could have set the Renaissance back indefinitely. While this wouldn't necessarily result in the demise of European civilization, it could level the playing field and allow other civilizations to surpass Europe and dominate the world from there on.

 A concern I have is that simply retarding European progress isn't enough to save the Americas from being overrun, since the native American civilizations were still well behind Europe in technology in the 1200s. In this scenario, what would prevent the Europeans from exploring across the Atlantic and conquering the Aztecs and Incas as in OTL? I suppose if the Mongols were able to sit on Europe for a few centuries, that might do it, but the Mongols' ability to hold onto their gains in Europe is questionable, especially if the eventual fragmentation of their tremendous empire occurs as in OTL. To me, the best possible way to save the Americas is by totally wrecking Europe, something the Mongols may not have been capable of doing. What does everyone think about this?
 

arctic warrior

DJC said:
Eric the Red sailed over 350 years before the Black Death. Wouldn't seafaring technology and techniques have advanced since then? The technological gap from 1350 to 1492 is much narrower than from 982 to 1350. My good friend Wikipedia indicates that the Little Ice Age wasn't in full swing until around 1550, the "theorized beginning of worldwide glacial expansion." Granted, Atlantic pack ice began to grow in 1250, and weather was erratic from then on. But after 1350, there's about 200 years for a steady trade route to be established before the trip really gets bad.

Also, it doesn't need to be the Norwegians who make the contact with the Americas, it could be anyone. (It's just that Norway had explored closer to the Americas than any other nation to that point.) I hesitate to have it be the British, French, Spanish, or Portuguese, given their track record with native American relations in OTL. Admittedly, the odds that the first to make contact with the Americas after 1348 (the POD) would not be European, since they would be substantially less numerous in the wake of the Black Death (Black Plague + Black Winter). More likely, it would be Europe's Muslim successors, like the Turks or Arabs; it could even be Chinese on the Pacific side, although the trip is longer, and might have to be delayed until the early to mid-1400s instead of 1350. (The earliest contact after the POD, the more time the Americas have to prepare for Old World colonists.)

I don't even think a full-fledged colony needs to be established -- wouldn't simple trading posts be sufficient to allow for exchange of technology and knowledge? The trade route doesn't have to be popular, it just has to be used every so often so that Old World goodies can spread to the Americas. While it might not be the most profitable trade route, wouldn't some Old World traders find the trip worthwhile, given all the useful crops the Americas have to offer (corn, potatoes, tobacco, cocoa, etc.)? Furthermore, the area of contact doesn't have to be Newfoundland. The Norwegians (or whoever's making the trips) could land in the Mid-Atlantic, or Florida, or the Caribbean, or Brazil, or wherever.
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Thing is that seafaring tech was only taking on around 1350. The Coq had only been around about a hundred years and was only reaching the size of the Viking/Norse freight ships I mentioned earlier.

Real cross Atlantic tech didn't surface untill the Carrac around 1400. So we are close now.

My answering were specifically aimed at the Norse - thats my field - anybody else may go on in theirs.

Problem with the Norse outpost in Vinland was conflict with natives and besically it is the concensus that the Norse were just about as positive towards natives as anybody else on the European continent! ;)

And BTW the effect of the Early Medieval Optimum was vaning and temperatures falling causing the icelock of the Western Settlement in Greenland 1350 and the last recorded event, a wedding in the Eastern Settlement 1408. That was it.
The black death had killed off any effort to keep communications with Greenland. You're making it worse!
 

Nerdlinger

arctic warrior said:
Thing is that seafaring tech was only taking on around 1350. The Coq had only been around about a hundred years and was only reaching the size of the Viking/Norse freight ships I mentioned earlier.

Real cross Atlantic tech didn't surface untill the Carrac around 1400. So we are close now.

My answering were specifically aimed at the Norse - thats my field - anybody else may go on in theirs.

Problem with the Norse outpost in Vinland was conflict with natives and besically it is the concensus that the Norse were just about as positive towards natives as anybody else on the European continent!

And BTW the effect of the Early Medieval Optimum was vaning and temperatures falling causing the icelock of the Western Settlement in Greenland 1350 and the last recorded event, a wedding in the Eastern Settlement 1408. That was it.
The black death had killed off any effort to keep communications with Greenland. You're making it worse!
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I had a feeling my Norwegian contact idea was a stretch, especially considering how they are among the Europeans who I'm trying to destroy. So, given the destruction of European civilization, what other folks could reasonably be first to make contact with the Americas by 1350 or later? Arctic warrior, I know your forte is the Norse, so this question is going out to anyone and everyone.

My suggestions for the first 1350+ contact with the Americas:

(1) The Marinids

I'm still toying with how exactly to bring about the Black Winter on top of the Black Plague, but I am assuming that southernmost Europe around the Mediterranean will fare best, as they won't be as severely affected by the Black Winter. However, I anticipate refugees from northern Europe will flood into Iberia, Italy, and Greece, resulting in mass starvation due to the inability of these regions to produce enough food for that big a population. Theoretically, the refugees could flee further by crossing Istanbul into Anatolia or Gibraltar into Morocco, but the Byzantines/Ottomans and the Marinids could blockade these chokepoints to prevent a massive influx of starving, disease-ridden Europeans. When the chaos settles (that is, mostly everyone who will die of the Black Winter/Plague has died), the Marinids would be free to reclaim lost territory in Iberia.

Perhaps this expansionist attitude could lead to some overseas exploration. How good was Marinid naval transportation? I know virtually nothing about them, but if their name is any indication, they had at least some boats. Crossing the Atlantic may have to wait until the 1400s, since apparently ship-building technology hadn't advanced far enough by the time of Black Death to make a successful crossing. Could the Marinids reasonably pull this off? Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think a massive colony needs to be established in the Americas. Would a few trading posts along a moderately often used trade route be sufficient to supply the Americas with the technology and education needed to master Old World iron-working and other technologies? Eventually, I'm planning to have the Mamluks conquer the Marinids, which could be a way to delay extensive colonization of the Americas by the Old World.

(2) The Chinese

There's also the possibility of the Chinese reaching the Americas, either by sailing along the Pacific coasts of Siberia and Alaska or by heading east across the Pacific, perhaps using Hawaii as a stopover. Unfortunately, with a POD of 1348, Zheng He is butterflied away. Without him, would the Chinese still have the initiative to explore in the same manner in the early 1400s? Also, how good was Chinese naval tech? They may have had ships designed for traveling along coasts, but did they have open ocean vessels which could potentially make the trip across the Pacific? If so, all it might take is a bold Columbus-type adventurer to eschew traditional trade route and seek a shorter naval route east to Europe and Africa. With Hawaii as a rest stop, the trip from China to the Americas wouldn't be so bad despite the Pacific being much wider than the Atlantic. If this route is unfeasible, the northern coastal route could be used instead. What does everyone think?
 

arctic warrior

I do really think you have to find somebody in the south in TTL to colonize the West (or East if you're going with the Chinese).

I've only touched upon the various Berber peoples scantily and haven't heard of the Marinid before so refrain from an assesment. :D

I try to keep within my limits.
 

Falastur

Sorry for my absence from the thread, had I seen your reply I would have commented before. You make some good points, here are my thoughts on them:

DJC said:
In a prior thread on this topic, Polish Eagle discussed what the demise of the nobles and the church would do to European civilization:

 So basically, I was looking for a way to wipe out the nobles and the church hierarchy. I see your point, though, Falastur. Perhaps as a response to the combination of the Black Plague and the Black Winter, a radical cult arises which promotes the overthrow of the nobles, but I don't know how realistic that is.

 Could the collapse of the Catholic Church be brought on by the deaths of the pope and some high-ranking cardinals?
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Polish Eagle makes some very accurate comments, and I agree with what he says. However, the issue is not what would happen if European society collapsed, it's how to make European society collapse. Remember that the nobility are in the minority but it will take more than a King and a few nobles dying to collapse a state. In a state of emergency actions can be taken to continue the line of legitimate government so the only realistic way to collapse central control is to kill off virtually the whole upper class in one go - but I think you already noted this. The same goes for religion. However, in my heart of hearts I just can't quite go with the cult idea, or the anarchist's paradise theory. It just doesn't fit with the psyche of people then. These were people who, when crisis threatened, looked up to figures of authority as if they were their saviours. Killing off the powerful classes is a bit like the zombie film theory where you get a crackpot who declares that all is lost and every survivor should commit suicide and embrace their zombie brothers, before trying to go on a murderous rampage and gets killed by one of the heroes straight away. Yes, there will be some who can't take the psychological stress of a virtual apocalypse, and they may come up with some very dangerous ideas, but society as a whole will not convert like this - 99.99% of the survivors will keep their wits and control the .01% who can't. In the same way, you'll never see an entire US state or European country convert to some stupid suicide cult in the modern day. It's just too deranged an idea to be popular, there's no perceivable advantage to doing it. The Church is seen as the only way that Europe can repent and free themselves of the plague and the nobles are seen as the only way the continent can continue ruling itself. I just don't see where the potential is for a pogrom against influential figures. The only option here is to make the plague so devastating that it wipes out a quorum of them, and even then I suspect it will be patchy - say, the Church in Scotland and parts of Italy and Germany collapse, but not so much other places, as a completely random example. It's far more plausible - and probably far easier - to let the post-plague stuff do this work for you, though. If you want Islamic countries to take over Europe, why bother making Christian society collapse first? Just make them weak if you think the Islamists can win, and then when they are conquered Christian society ceases to exist anyway.

On a brief thing on the Pope, just to tie up the loose ends, yes that story is real, but given the death of the Pope and many cardinals, the likely outcome is not the collapse of the Catholic Church's control, but a brief panic for a few months followed by either a united European resurrection of Papal control (i.e. the Kings of Europe appointing new cardinals and sending them to a conclave so they can quickly get a new Pope) or a breakdown to a state where Kings and Cardinals can't agree on a single Pope, so you'll end up with a series of Anti-Popes. Maybe even a situation where every powerful country tries to sponsor its own Pope. This itself could probably shatter European harmony enough to let Christendom be overrun (combined with the other stuff, obv.) if that's your ultimate aim.
DJC said:
I could always have a climatic catastrophe occur during the post-Black Death recovery, if that might be more damaging in terms of social upheaval.
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Yeah. Best to stick to just one Armageddon, I think.
DJC said:
AFAIK, the most commonly quoted figure for the loss of life due to the Black Death is 1/3 of the population of Europe, though this rate is an average and varied from place to place. I'm not wedded to a particular death toll in my TL, though. My original plan was to have 90-95% of Europeans die from a deadlier strain of the black plague, but this was overruled as unrealistically high. I'd settle for 80% or so, if this would debilitate Europe enough.
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80% probably works here, I'd say 2/3 is still just a bit too low for what you are suggesting. This is a pretty radical thing, remember, so you need a radical death count. The thing to remember here, and this is a crunch factor, is that if there's a catastrophic death rate in Europe like this, it has to fit the conditions. If it's all down to the altered weather conditions you have to bear in mind that the north is going to be horribly ravaged and the south won't be nearly so bad off. Also, there may be reverberating effects which cause a worse death rate outside of Europe too. If you're partly doing this by making the Black Death worse, you can't just make it worse in Europe, it has to be bad in Asia too. Either way, I think you need to remember, even if not rewrite stuff because of, that Asia is going to be weaker too. If you want Islamic states to stroll into Europe, it's not likely that they'll be waiting on the borders like the start of the 100m sprint for the first chance to invade. It's going to take decades, even centuries before they can properly subdue Europe and even a few decades just to get going in the first place. Minor point maybe, but I'd just advise caution about your timing. Writing a TL where Europe is decimated can rarely get away with assuming that the rest of the world will survive untouched and instantly jump in to grab the spoils.
DJC said:
Well, I need to establish a continual low-level contact between the Old World and the Americas as soon as possible after my POD in ~1348. From previous discussions, the general opinion seems to be that this is the best way to provide the native American civilizations with the best chance to advance far enough to avoid being conquered by the Old World. I liked the idea of Norwegians (or some other north Europeans) establishing the first successful colony in Newfoundland because their fair skin would hopefully deter them from spreading too far south and endangering the sovereignty of the native Americans. It doesn't have to be Norwegians making the contact; they were just the closest to the Americas (via their Greenland colony). I was hoping to avoid having one of the future major powers in the Old World (Turks, Arabs, Chinese, etc.) establish this connection due to the possibility of their overrunning the Americas even earlier than the Europeans did in OTL.
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Hmm. Generally on the Norwegian colonisation of Vinland thing, I take an approach which is very rare (for me). Considering the options and the conditions behind it all, my theory is essentially that if Vinland could have worked as a permanent colony, it would have. That doesn't mean it was immune to failure, just that if it was a constantly viable option, there would have been more attempts to make it work. There weren't, and that's the frank truth. It's my opinion that it just becomes impractical to sustain that colony until much later on than the Black Death, and as someone else mentioned, no, 400 years of sea travel hadn't equalled 400 of upgrades to seaborne technology. Europe learned how to do coastal travel very well in this period. Frankly, they sucked at sea travel away from the coast. The north Atlantic makes this even more important, and your Black Winter (which in my very unknowledgable experience wouldn't last only one year) is going to make the North Atlantic an ice-strewn nightmare, with much of it, maybe even Newfoundland, iced up for (100s of?) miles out to sea. I appreciate what you're trying to do here, but I just can't bring myself to see the Vinland thing as viable.

Incidentally, it doesn't help that 99% of the members of this forum love the Vinland thing, and do believe it by all rights should have lasted. It's your choice who you side with, but...yeah... Someone has to be wrong ;) Might be me, but I'm rarely convinced by the arguments of a Vinland supporter. You should make up your own mind, though.

You aren't going to overrun the Americas faster than IRL in this TL, by the way. Pizarro's conquest of the Americas was by all accounts godlike-fast, and there's only 120 years before he arrives. I'm not sure that's enough time for the destiny of Europe (vis a vis conquered) to be settled, speculation on the Indies to grow (remember that Portuguese travels round Africa towards China sparked this off, your TL somewhat removes this as Portugal has just gone down the toilet and been annexed by Islamics) and the more Asiatic-centric conquerors are going to be more interested in overland eastbound travel. It's not impossible, though. I'm not saying there's no desire there for American exploration, but I think you should move your timescale back.

Incidentally, I would consider how RL went when thinking of pawning off secrets such as gunpowder tech and ironmongering to the American empires. These were very expensive luxuries and extremely powerful. My concern wasn't with the Norwegians/whoever being able to reach the Aztecs so much as for the Europeans to consider themselves a major enough rival to trade gun tech. In RL Europeans only traded guns when they felt they had the capacity to control those states. American Indians got guns when the colonies were rivals to those states. Polynesians got guns when the Europeans were trying to vassalise them. Japanese daimyos got guns from the Portuguese in exchange for important trade concessions that made the Portuguese very wealthy and influential, China didn't get guns until the late 19th century. Before guns were traded wholesale, in the 16th century they were only sold in ones and twos as prizes to prevent them from becoming regular weaponry and being turned on the original owners. It's your call ultimately, I just think Vinland or any early colony is a bit too throw-away to trade guns. It would just be dangerous, frankly. For the same reason, the USA doesn't sell nuclear warheads to any country it comes across. If Europeans sell guns to the Aztecs etc it has to be for a huge price. Also, just something to think about: if the Aztecs are given guns they won't trade them with the Incas. They'll steamroller the Incas instead, just like Spain did. If you want the American states armed before Europeans arrive, you probably need to think long and hard about how to do it well, because there's always a backlash. Not saying you can't do it, it's just personally my philosophy that major actions like this need to be well considered.
DJC said:
No one on the boat necessarily has to be infected with the plague; they just need to bring along a few flea-infested rats. I don't think the colony needs to be much more than an intermittently-used trading post between the Americas and the Old World. It just has to feed the native Americans (esp. the Aztecs and Incas) a steady stream of Old World technology, agriculture, and the knowledge that goes with them. With the proper initiative, both civilizations could adopt iron-working, firearms, horses...
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Well, yes, but remember that flea-infested rats were what gave Europe the plague. The merchants weren't impounded or dead on arrival because the travel was much shorter across the Med. In this scenario, the fleas pretty much WILL bite the humans, and the humans will die. A boat is just too small a place for the infection not to get out and manifest itself majorly.

Oh, and one other thing: horses weren't native to America. You'd need a constant supply of them to get the Aztecs and Incas on horseback, and that kind of thing would be noticed. It'd also be hard for Norway to do, too, since horses were a bit of a luxury there too...

Oh, and another comment I've thought of and can't think where best to write it so I'll shove it in hear. If Europe is going to be overrun, this trade with the New World is either going to be severed or inherited by the conquering powers. Something to consider, there.
DJC said:
<snip>

re: China in America.
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Your call. I can't say much more than that, I don't know enough to advise except that it's my personal instinct that with such a huge fleet as Zheng He had (54 ships iirc) that some would make it there and back. There's quite a few islands he can hop along too, in a fairly linear pattern. Hawai'i being four of them.
DJC said:
That's another concern I have. The thing is that I already have overall global societal and technological progress in the absence of European civilization about a century behind OTL. I don't want to make it seem like the civilizations of the Middle and Far East were so backward when compared to Europe in the 1300s. Were they that far behind Europe? Is an average 100-year lag not long enough?
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A "100-year lag" is a deceptive idea. In fact it's part of a noticeable trend I spotted which I have a bit of a thing about, it's a pet peeve. Not to criticise, not at all, but there is a discernable trend in modern day takes on history to see history as one continuous path towards the modern day. It wasn't. That's just totally off the mark. Putting obstacles in humanity's way doesn't produce a calculable delay to "modernisation" and democratisation etc. Instead it changes the meaning of those two terms. In a world where China is the centre of industry, "modern" is what China makes of it. China wasn't 100 years behind Europe - ok, so maybe in technology it was progressing kind of like that because the better tech got traded, but political and social thought didn't get traded. It either got imposed or nothing. China won't necessarily eventually conform to modern-day standards in this TL. Our current cultural status isn't "enlightened", it's "different to 500 years ago". There's nothing to say that the situation we live in nowadays is either perfect, natural, correct, the most advanced, anything. It's entirely possible that RL democracy and secularism is a phase. Scientific thought could become a cult just as violent or clique-y as medieval religions. Democracy could pass with time just like the Roman Republic. We could go back to monarchy, or find a new political system. Oligarchy could take over the world, or corporations could cease control of governments, or anarchy could eclipse governmental ideas, etc.

Ok, so I'm yammering on, but hopefully you see my point. China wasn't following Europe in a 100-year lag IRL, and it won't in this TL either. It was going down a completely different path altogether, and the domination of Europe forced it to change before the Communists took control. It will react to external and internal stimuli, not some supernatural pressure to conform. More likely the dominant political thoughts will become very powerful as autocratic monarchy did in the 18th century, before eventually being replaced with whatever seems logical. The Middle East in the medieval eras was all about theocracy. This world could see a huge trend towards theocratic governments instead. Or perhaps under the strain of being so large, centralised and under the pressure of being a world leader, China will buckle, fragment and spawn numerous countries none of which can ever meet RL China's destiny as a world power. Maybe your world will produce a world in which there are 2-4 political spheres, and none is powerful enough to make a major impact on each other. As the author it's your job to decide what happens, but if you want to produce a secular, democratic society, it's your job too. It's cool if you want that. It's plausible and manageable. But you can't just rest on the laurels of modern advancement and assume that society will come to eventually be what it is today. You'll need to script events which bring about these changes, and you'll need to make sure each event is realistic, and often that means writing precursor events to make your events realistic. If you find yourself realising that you can't find a reason to make something work, like for instance the collapse of religious thought (Islam was very much science-holding-hands-with-God, after all, and China's religious outlook was laid back and somewhat malleable to go with the times) then you may have to make the decision that that is how society needs to be instead.

DJC said:
Therein lies one of my biggest problems: what level of societal and technological progress would be realistic? The laissez-faire capitalism of late 1800s/early 1900s America or the bastardized version of communism in 20th century Russia might well be delayed for centuries, if analogues even arise at all. I know it's hard to quantify "progress," but in Robinson's The Years of Rice and Salt, it seemed that technological progress remained on par with OTL while social progress was a bit slower, while in Silverberg's The Gate of Worlds both levels of progress were about a century behind OTL (e.g., steam-powered cars in 1985). Turtledove's In High Places was even more pessimistic, as progress virtually froze, leaving the world with a 14th century society and technology in the late 21st century.
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Let it be what you think is natural. Take some examples from history, work what you want society to be into it to an extent, and go with the flow. A lot of people when writing TLs will either manufacture economics tending towards real life, or combine two systems in a kind of "signature move" cross-over that defines their TL, almost like signing your name on a cheque. Both of these are cool, just don't do anything if you think it's unrealistic.

DJC said:
BTW, I thought it was ironic to have fundamentalist Christian terrorist organizations waging a holy war against a largely Islamic society. I have no particular love for any religion, but the role reversal was too tempting for me to exclude from the TL.
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Parodies are always good, and having a desired end condition is what motivates most people to write Alt-History. As stated, the only thing is ensuring that your ideals and desires don't become so compulsory that you press on with them where they don't work. This idea is cool and plausible, so go with it. Just don't get fixated on it and lose sight of the bigger picture, is all.
 

Hobelhouse

DJC said:
The clever idea of volcano meltwater interrupting the North Atlantic Current was first suggested by Nugax here, but since AFAIK there no volcanoes in Greenland, I replaced the volcano with an impact instead, as the two can generate similar effects. I know that Iceland, straddling the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, is chock full of volcanoes, but I didn't think it had enough ice to melt.
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If Greenland doesn't have any volcanoes, then make that your POD. Mt. Paricutin showed up in 1952 and 50 years later it looks like
paricutin5.jpg
this. Say a hot spot forms in the mantle under Greenland, a big one, and sends a ton of lava out. After all, you're playing with the formation of the solar system with your asteroid, so why not play with geology too?
 

Nerdlinger

Falastur said:
Sorry for my absence from the thread, had I seen your reply I would have commented before. You make some good points, here are my thoughts on them:

Polish Eagle makes some very accurate comments, and I agree with what he says. However, the issue is not what would happen if European society collapsed, it's how to make European society collapse. Remember that the nobility are in the minority but it will take more than a King and a few nobles dying to collapse a state. In a state of emergency actions can be taken to continue the line of legitimate government so the only realistic way to collapse central control is to kill off virtually the whole upper class in one go - but I think you already noted this. The same goes for religion. However, in my heart of hearts I just can't quite go with the cult idea, or the anarchist's paradise theory. It just doesn't fit with the psyche of people then. These were people who, when crisis threatened, looked up to figures of authority as if they were their saviours. Killing off the powerful classes is a bit like the zombie film theory where you get a crackpot who declares that all is lost and every survivor should commit suicide and embrace their zombie brothers, before trying to go on a murderous rampage and gets killed by one of the heroes straight away. Yes, there will be some who can't take the psychological stress of a virtual apocalypse, and they may come up with some very dangerous ideas, but society as a whole will not convert like this - 99.99% of the survivors will keep their wits and control the .01% who can't. In the same way, you'll never see an entire US state or European country convert to some stupid suicide cult in the modern day. It's just too deranged an idea to be popular, there's no perceivable advantage to doing it. The Church is seen as the only way that Europe can repent and free themselves of the plague and the nobles are seen as the only way the continent can continue ruling itself. I just don't see where the potential is for a pogrom against influential figures. The only option here is to make the plague so devastating that it wipes out a quorum of them, and even then I suspect it will be patchy - say, the Church in Scotland and parts of Italy and Germany collapse, but not so much other places, as a completely random example. It's far more plausible - and probably far easier - to let the post-plague stuff do this work for you, though. If you want Islamic countries to take over Europe, why bother making Christian society collapse first? Just make them weak if you think the Islamists can win, and then when they are conquered Christian society ceases to exist anyway.

On a brief thing on the Pope, just to tie up the loose ends, yes that story is real, but given the death of the Pope and many cardinals, the likely outcome is not the collapse of the Catholic Church's control, but a brief panic for a few months followed by either a united European resurrection of Papal control (i.e. the Kings of Europe appointing new cardinals and sending them to a conclave so they can quickly get a new Pope) or a breakdown to a state where Kings and Cardinals can't agree on a single Pope, so you'll end up with a series of Anti-Popes. Maybe even a situation where every powerful country tries to sponsor its own Pope. This itself could probably shatter European harmony enough to let Christendom be overrun (combined with the other stuff, obv.) if that's your ultimate aim.

Yeah. Best to stick to just one Armageddon, I think.
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What would the post-plague stuff you mention consist of? After the plague subsided in OTL, Europe was in a pretty bad way, but did eventually recover rather well. But is the early phase of recovery really the post when European civilization is most vulnerable to collapse, as opposed to during the plague? What about that time period could be exploited and how? Would the aforementioned cold spell be more effective then?

 I was planning on having the Catholic Church collapse because it's the central authority on Christianity, and my goal is to have the world inherited by non-Europeans and non-Christians. (This doesn't mean Christianity will disappear, though; Orthodox Christianity will survive, and I expect various new sects will arise to replace Catholicism.) I'm not particular about how the church falls though. If the downfall isn't caused by desperate and disappointed former adherents, I would think a severe depopulation of Europe (80% or so) followed by Muslim conquest of Europe could put the kibosh on Catholicism.

 In OTL, even with the plague, Europe was strong enough after the Black Death to avoid being wholly conquered by Muslim powers, including the Golden Horde, the Ottomans, and the remaining Muslims in Iberia. This was likely due in large part to the fact that the Muslim powers were also crippled by the plague and had to recover from it themselves. I had thought my original idea of somehow decimating the Christian European population more than the surrounding Muslim population was the best way to prevent them recovering in time to avoid conquest. However, if you think simply weakening Europe a bit more than in OTL would be sufficient for near total Muslim conquest, then I'm all for it. I wanted Europeans to for the most part become assimilated into the society of their conquerors and to have Islam almost entirely supplant Christianity as the dominant religion of Europe. Bastions of Christianity might remain perhaps in Britain or Scandinavia and in small devout clusters scattered across Europe, but the religion would remain in the minority.

 Perhaps instead of a climatic catastophe (by volcano, meteor, etc.), my POD could be the death of Pope Clement to the plague. While this in and of itself would not topple the church, it could initiate a chain reaction of events whereby the cardinals from all over Europe cannot agree on a new pope and a bunch of anti-popes are appointed in different countries, like you suggested. Decentralization of the church combined with the effects of the plague devastating Europe might destabilize society enough to sufficiently weaken Europe, making them vulnerable to hostile Muslim incursions. But is this too improbable, too much of a long shot?
Falastur said:
80% probably works here, I'd say 2/3 is still just a bit too low for what you are suggesting. This is a pretty radical thing, remember, so you need a radical death count. The thing to remember here, and this is a crunch factor, is that if there's a catastrophic death rate in Europe like this, it has to fit the conditions. If it's all down to the altered weather conditions you have to bear in mind that the north is going to be horribly ravaged and the south won't be nearly so bad off. Also, there may be reverberating effects which cause a worse death rate outside of Europe too. If you're partly doing this by making the Black Death worse, you can't just make it worse in Europe, it has to be bad in Asia too. Either way, I think you need to remember, even if not rewrite stuff because of, that Asia is going to be weaker too. If you want Islamic states to stroll into Europe, it's not likely that they'll be waiting on the borders like the start of the 100m sprint for the first chance to invade. It's going to take decades, even centuries before they can properly subdue Europe and even a few decades just to get going in the first place. Minor point maybe, but I'd just advise caution about your timing. Writing a TL where Europe is decimated can rarely get away with assuming that the rest of the world will survive untouched and instantly jump in to grab the spoils.
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If I stick with the climatic catastrophe on top of an unmodified plague, I realize the north will be hurt worse than the south. But my thought was that refugees from the north would overrun southern Europe and cause mass starvation because the land cannot support so many extra people. If this doesn't happen and southern Europe remains strong, that means the Turks and other Muslim powers wouldn't really have an easier time invading Europe than in OTL.

 I have abandoned the idea of modifying the plague to be deadlier in large part because it would head back east from Europe and hit all of Eurasia just as hard. And yes, I do understand the Muslims won't be just waiting at the gate; they themselves would have to recover from the plague and it would take some time to organize an expedition. If the Europeans are damaged worse than the Muslims, though, the Europeans' recovery time will be even longer than the Muslims'. I imagine the Ottomans would lead the charge, as they did invade the Balkans in OTL and got pretty far before running out of steam.

Falastur said:
Hmm. Generally on the Norwegian colonisation of Vinland thing, I take an approach which is very rare (for me). Considering the options and the conditions behind it all, my theory is essentially that if Vinland could have worked as a permanent colony, it would have. That doesn't mean it was immune to failure, just that if it was a constantly viable option, there would have been more attempts to make it work. There weren't, and that's the frank truth. It's my opinion that it just becomes impractical to sustain that colony until much later on than the Black Death, and as someone else mentioned, no, 400 years of sea travel hadn't equalled 400 of upgrades to seaborne technology. Europe learned how to do coastal travel very well in this period. Frankly, they sucked at sea travel away from the coast. The north Atlantic makes this even more important, and your Black Winter (which in my very unknowledgable experience wouldn't last only one year) is going to make the North Atlantic an ice-strewn nightmare, with much of it, maybe even Newfoundland, iced up for (100s of?) miles out to sea. I appreciate what you're trying to do here, but I just can't bring myself to see the Vinland thing as viable.

Incidentally, it doesn't help that 99% of the members of this forum love the Vinland thing, and do believe it by all rights should have lasted. It's your choice who you side with, but...yeah... ;) Might be me, but I'm rarely convinced by the arguments of a Vinland supporter. You should make up your own mind, though.

You aren't going to overrun the Americas faster than IRL in this TL, by the way. Pizarro's conquest of the Americas was by all accounts godlike-fast, and there's only 120 years before he arrives. I'm not sure that's enough time for the destiny of Europe (vis a vis conquered) to be settled, speculation on the Indies to grow (remember that Portuguese travels round Africa towards China sparked this off, your TL somewhat removes this as Portugal has just gone down the toilet and been annexed by Islamics) and the more Asiatic-centric conquerors are going to be more interested in overland eastbound travel. It's not impossible, though. I'm not saying there's no desire there for American exploration, but I think you should move your timescale back.

Incidentally, I would consider how RL went when thinking of pawning off secrets such as gunpowder tech and ironmongering to the American empires. These were very expensive luxuries and extremely powerful. My concern wasn't with the Norwegians/whoever being able to reach the Aztecs so much as for the Europeans to consider themselves a major enough rival to trade gun tech. In RL Europeans only traded guns when they felt they had the capacity to control those states. American Indians got guns when the colonies were rivals to those states. Polynesians got guns when the Europeans were trying to vassalise them. Japanese daimyos got guns from the Portuguese in exchange for important trade concessions that made the Portuguese very wealthy and influential, China didn't get guns until the late 19th century. Before guns were traded wholesale, in the 16th century they were only sold in ones and twos as prizes to prevent them from becoming regular weaponry and being turned on the original owners. It's your call ultimately, I just think Vinland or any early colony is a bit too throw-away to trade guns. It would just be dangerous, frankly. For the same reason, the USA doesn't sell nuclear warheads to any country it comes across. If Europeans sell guns to the Aztecs etc it has to be for a huge price. Also, just something to think about: if the Aztecs are given guns they won't trade them with the Incas. They'll steamroller the Incas instead, just like Spain did. If you want the American states armed before Europeans arrive, you probably need to think long and hard about how to do it well, because there's always a backlash. Not saying you can't do it, it's just personally my philosophy that major actions like this need to be well considered.
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I am certainly not wedded to the neo-Vinland idea -- it's just the best one I had up till now. To best prepare the Americas for an eventual colonization effort by the Old World (which I expect would be delayed in TTL with a Marinid controlled Iberia), I was trying to establish, as early as possible, a limited connection across the Atlantic so the Aztecs and Incas could deal with the epidemics and adopt more advanced technology in relative peace. Serious attempts at conquest by the Old World would need to be delayed as much as possible.

I was trying to engineer the Black Winter to last for a few years, not just one. And you're right that it would ice up the North Atlantic, making it even less likely the Norwegians would make the journey. I was thinking that the Marinids might instead make the first post-plague contact with the Americas (either them or the Chinese). If Spain and Portugal were leaders in OTL in cross-oceanic travel, perhaps the acquisition of their knowledge and technology by invading Marinids could allow the Marinid to eventually make the journey. With the Ottomans and/or Mamluks in charge of trade across Arabia, the Marinids might be motivated by the same thing as Columbus -- to find an overseas route west to Asia. They might be able to establish a much shorter trade route from the Old World to the Aztecs and Incas than the Norwegians could.

 I see your point about handing potentially dangerous technology out to just anyone. But the donation of iron-working and firearms technology and knowledge by the Old World traders to the Americas wouldn't necessarily have to be voluntary. Perhaps a few ships go astray and are captured (along with their contents) by the Aztecs. A similar accident could result in the Incas acquiring such technology. I was also thinking of having the Aztecs and Incas fight in proxy wars. In TTL, the Ottoman Turks and the Mamluk Arabs will remain bitter rivals for centuries, often fighting over control of the Mediterranean and the Middle East. As knowledge of the Americas grows, the two Western powers seek to grab their share of the land and resources across the Atlantic. By this time, the Americas have already recovered from OW epidemics and have begun to adopt OW tech (esp. the Aztecs and Incas). The Turks colonize the eastern US while the Arabs colonize eastern Brazil. The Aztecs dominate Central America and the Caribbean, and the Inca control northwestern, west central, and southern South America. The Turks might enlist the aid of the Aztecs and supply them with weaponry and other technologies so as to have a pliable American ally against the Arabs. The Arabs might do the same with the Incas. The Aztecs and Incas aren't friends either, and are more than willing to engage the other in combat. However, the American experiment goes awry from the perspective of the Turks and Arabs as the Aztecs and Incas turn out not to be so pliable as assumed. Instead, they make use of the "charity" of their former Old World allies to defend their borders from foreign incursion and become world powers in their own right (if not as powerful as some of the older powers). Is this even at all realistic?

 Also, forgive my gaping lack of knowledge here, but you say China didn't get guns until the 19th century? Didn't they invent firearms? Why didn't/couldn't they use them before then?
Falastur said:
Well, yes, but remember that flea-infested rats were what gave Europe the plague. The merchants weren't impounded or dead on arrival because the travel was much shorter across the Med. In this scenario, the fleas pretty much WILL bite the humans, and the humans will die. A boat is just too small a place for the infection not to get out and manifest itself majorly.

Oh, and one other thing: horses weren't native to America. You'd need a constant supply of them to get the Aztecs and Incas on horseback, and that kind of thing would be noticed. It'd also be hard for Norway to do, too, since horses were a bit of a luxury there too...

Oh, and another comment I've thought of and can't think where best to write it so I'll shove it in hear. If Europe is going to be overrun, this trade with the New World is either going to be severed or inherited by the conquering powers. Something to consider, there.
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The plague isn't the most crucial disease for me to have cross the Atlantic, as in OTL it somehow didn't arrive there until the late 1800s at the earliest. Perhaps that's when ships became fast enough to cross the Atlantic before everyone aboard died of the plague. It's more important that smallpox and the measles reach the Americas so as to immunize the native Americans to them before foreign conquerors arrive.

 Yes, I do know horses are not native to the Americas and were imported from the Old World. I had hoped the demand for horses by the native Americans could in part motivate Old World traders to pawn horses off for American goods.

 My plan to have the trade severed involves the Turks and/or Arabs eventually conquering the Marinids (if I get them to make first contact). Up until that point, trade with the Americas would have been relatively small scale, since the Marinids were massively overshadowed by the Turks and Arabs in the western Old World. Hopefully by then the Aztecs and Incas will have acquired enough OW tech and agriculture and knowledge to keep them from being instantly overrun when the Turks and Arabs decide to make their own cross-oceanic voyages of conquest. (This might be much later if the two powers are preoccupied with border warfare.)
Falastur said:
Your call. I can't say much more than that, I don't know enough to advise except that it's my personal instinct that with such a huge fleet as Zheng He had (54 ships iirc) that some would make it there and back. There's quite a few islands he can hop along too, in a fairly linear pattern. Hawai'i being four of them.
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The Chinese making the first post-plague contact is now my backup idea after the Marinids. It seems less feasible to me, and if Zheng He is butterflied away, perhaps unfeasible. I liked the idea of a Chinese Columbus analogue trying to find an overseas passage east to Europe and Africa.
Falastur said:
A "100-year lag" is a deceptive idea. In fact it's part of a noticeable trend I spotted which I have a bit of a thing about, it's a pet peeve. Not to criticise, not at all, but there is a discernable trend in modern day takes on history to see history as one continuous path towards the modern day. It wasn't. That's just totally off the mark. Putting obstacles in humanity's way doesn't produce a calculable delay to "modernisation" and democratisation etc. Instead it changes the meaning of those two terms. In a world where China is the centre of industry, "modern" is what China makes of it. China wasn't 100 years behind Europe - ok, so maybe in technology it was progressing kind of like that because the better tech got traded, but political and social thought didn't get traded. It either got imposed or nothing. China won't necessarily eventually conform to modern-day standards in this TL. Our current cultural status isn't "enlightened", it's "different to 500 years ago". There's nothing to say that the situation we live in nowadays is either perfect, natural, correct, the most advanced, anything. It's entirely possible that RL democracy and secularism is a phase. Scientific thought could become a cult just as violent or clique-y as medieval religions. Democracy could pass with time just like the Roman Republic. We could go back to monarchy, or find a new political system. Oligarchy could take over the world, or corporations could cease control of governments, or anarchy could eclipse governmental ideas, etc.

Ok, so I'm yammering on, but hopefully you see my point. China wasn't following Europe in a 100-year lag IRL, and it won't in this TL either. It was going down a completely different path altogether, and the domination of Europe forced it to change before the Communists took control. It will react to external and internal stimuli, not some supernatural pressure to conform. More likely the dominant political thoughts will become very powerful as autocratic monarchy did in the 18th century, before eventually being replaced with whatever seems logical. The Middle East in the medieval eras was all about theocracy. This world could see a huge trend towards theocratic governments instead. Or perhaps under the strain of being so large, centralised and under the pressure of being a world leader, China will buckle, fragment and spawn numerous countries none of which can ever meet RL China's destiny as a world power. Maybe your world will produce a world in which there are 2-4 political spheres, and none is powerful enough to make a major impact on each other. As the author it's your job to decide what happens, but if you want to produce a secular, democratic society, it's your job too. It's cool if you want that. It's plausible and manageable. But you can't just rest on the laurels of modern advancement and assume that society will come to eventually be what it is today. You'll need to script events which bring about these changes, and you'll need to make sure each event is realistic, and often that means writing precursor events to make your events realistic. If you find yourself realising that you can't find a reason to make something work, like for instance the collapse of religious thought (Islam was very much science-holding-hands-with-God, after all, and China's religious outlook was laid back and somewhat malleable to go with the times) then you may have to make the decision that that is how society needs to be instead.
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Your analysis here is sound. I guess the use of temporal technological "lags" is just a convenient way of simplifying a difference which is much more complex than can be described succinctly. Progress is relative and subjective. In my inherently subjective opinion, a democratic society is more progressive than an autocratic, liberal more than conservative, secular more than theocratic, and scientific/rational more than fundamentalist. While many people today in OTL share this opinion, there are plenty who think the loss of religious/superstitious beliefs is bad for the progress of society. In my TL, I don't think religions and mythologies will have a reduced impact on world society than in OTL; to the contrary. I think democracy, secularism, and scientific thought have a better chance of arising in the most industrial areas of the world, if OTL is any guideline. In my TL, these areas will (probably) be in Turkish-held northwest Europe and northern China. A more liberal form of Islam will arise in northern Europe, spurred on by the acceptance of the otherwise taboo consumption of pork and beer (the idea comes from an suggestion in an earlier discussion on this TL). Ideally, I'd like to have ATL achievements occur at different times than the analogous OTL achievements, some earlier, some later, some not at all, and maybe even some which haven't yet occurred in OTL. I'm just not sure engineering all this in detail will be beyond me or not. Sorry if this paragraph doesn't flow -- I'm sort of writing in train of thought style.
Falastur said:
Let it be what you think is natural. Take some examples from history, work what you want society to be into it to an extent, and go with the flow. A lot of people when writing TLs will either manufacture economics tending towards real life, or combine two systems in a kind of "signature move" cross-over that defines their TL, almost like signing your name on a cheque. Both of these are cool, just don't do anything if you think it's unrealistic.
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Falastur said:
Parodies are always good, and having a desired end condition is what motivates most people to write Alt-History. As stated, the only thing is ensuring that your ideals and desires don't become so compulsory that you press on with them where they don't work. This idea is cool and plausible, so go with it. Just don't get fixated on it and lose sight of the bigger picture, is all.
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I have learned not to cling onto ideas when they turn out to be clearly unrealistic. That's why I had to ditch my original idea of a deadlier European strain of the Black Death. Thanks very much for your in-depth responses, and please continue to provide them, if you would.
 

Nerdlinger

Hobelhouse said:
If Greenland doesn't have any volcanoes, then make that your POD. Mt. Paricutin showed up in 1952 and 50 years later it looks like
paricutin5.jpg
this. Say a hot spot forms in the mantle under Greenland, a big one, and sends a ton of lava out. After all, you're playing with the formation of the solar system with your asteroid, so why not play with geology too?
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I know that if my TL involves an asteroid impact, my actual POD is well before 1348. This irks me, but would be unavoidable. Even if the asteroid which makes the impact was produced by a chance collision in the asteroid belt (rather than going back to the formation of the solar system), it would take a long while for it to reach Earth. Granted, it would probably have virtually no effect on events on Earth until it actually hit, but butterflies work in mysterious ways.

If I go with a volcanic eruption, I was thinking instead of creating a new one, I could either use one on Iceland (which has a lot of ice to convert to meltwater) or one in North America, like Mount St. Helens. Using the latter would ditch the idea of disrupting the North Atlantic Current, but if it were to erupt big enough, then maybe there'd be a big dust pall which would be blown east by the prevailing winds toward Europe. I don't know how to limit the volcanic pall to mostly European latitudes, but it's just another idea I'm throwing out. I also don't know how to trigger a premature eruption (in OTL, Mount St. Helens erupted in 1480 on a scale several times larger than the 1980 eruption -- I think I would need one bigger than even this), or how far back in the past the geological POD would be.

~~~~~

Given the complications involved in climatic and geological catastrophes, I'm also soliticing ideas for more subtle PODs which could wreck Europe. One idea I'm playing with is the death of Pope Clement VI by the plague, which somehow results in the decentralization or collapse of the Catholic Church and weakens Europe enough to allow Muslim invaders to conquer the continent. The word "somehow" is key here. Opinions as to the possibility of this idea are welcome, as are suggestions of alternate means of wrecking Europe civilization.
 

Falastur

Okie-dokie, so let's see here. Incidentally, you made some very good points there, which has changed my tack here a bit. You'll probably see what I mean in a minute.

DJC said:
What would the post-plague stuff you mention consist of? After the plague subsided in OTL, Europe was in a pretty bad way, but did eventually recover rather well.
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I meant the Islamic invasions. Collapse of European society is not a necessary precursor to Islamic conquest. In fact the Muslims had shown themselves to have the potential to conquer Europe before, without anything like this to tie Europe's hands behind its back first. Ravaging Europe brutally makes for interesting TLs, but isn't necessarily needed to produce your end result. It just makes it all the easier, is all. But yes, Europe will recover, and if we're spreading the deaths out evenly, Europe/Asia, then you probably will need some destabilisation, but the collapse of government isn't necessary to secure your Islamist victory. Collapse of centralised Catholicism would be useful, though.
DJC said:
However, if you think simply weakening Europe a bit more than in OTL would be sufficient for near total Muslim conquest, then I'm all for it. I wanted Europeans to for the most part become assimilated into the society of their conquerors and to have Islam almost entirely supplant Christianity as the dominant religion of Europe. Bastions of Christianity might remain perhaps in Britain or Scandinavia and in small devout clusters scattered across Europe, but the religion would remain in the minority.
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It should be. And Christendom will become assimilated over time. The Balkans and southern Spain show this very well. Islam, or rather Islamic countries, tended to be tolerant of Christianity far more than Christians were tolerant of Islam. They forced Christians to pay high taxes to keep their religion, banned them from high office and largely used them as serf labour, but there was no Inquisition, no heresy charges, no incentive to convert except through volunteering to do so, and over time, especially with access to the Pope and Archbishops etc cut off, Christians there did convert in droves. I suspect the same would be said of any contemporary Islamic country which gained a tolerant Christian ruling party. Over time, resistance is chipped away, much of the accusations of Islam being inherently evil will be disproved (though of course the root of those accusations will likely be very real events happening somewhere else, Islam isn't all happy happy fun times, as Christianity wasn't either) and cultural conversion would follow. The Balkans showed that centuries of Islamic rule could turn Catholic areas into 80% Islamic areas and higher without introducing more than 10-15% Arabic population. Take nowadays Bosnia for example.

Incidentally, I'd put question marks on Britain and/or Scandinavia surviving the conquest. With no support for continental Europe, they're going to succumb to an invasion soon. The only reason they would go unconquered is if the Islamic states directly south of them collectively shrugged their shoulders and refused to do anything about them, but there's no reason for such apathy when those lands are ripe for the plucking.
DJC said:
Perhaps instead of a climatic catastophe (by volcano, meteor, etc.), my POD could be the death of Pope Clement to the plague. While this in and of itself would not topple the church, it could initiate a chain reaction of events whereby the cardinals from all over Europe cannot agree on a new pope and a bunch of anti-popes are appointed in different countries, like you suggested. Decentralization of the church combined with the effects of the plague devastating Europe might destabilize society enough to sufficiently weaken Europe, making them vulnerable to hostile Muslim incursions. But is this too improbable, too much of a long shot?
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If there is genuine belief that sending cardinals will result in them just dying of plague somewhere along the line, then I see no reason why Europe wouldn't fail to appoint a new Pope. This could be made considerably more plausible by Europe trying to appoint a new Pope, and being proved right. For instance, each major country agrees to send one Bishop to be a new Cardinal to elect a new Pope (I'm still going on the idea of the Cardinals' College being ravaged too), and en route a number of them die of exposure, which is quite possible, and then only weeks after the election of a new Pope, the new Pope is himself killed from exposure to the plague. On the way home, even more Cardinals die. Europe tries to cooperate to elect a new Pope but the fear of death is so great that many Kings elect to do nothing until the plague is gone. With a lack of spiritual leadership, there are sporadic attempts to produce a new Pope in Italy which fail to get anywhere when key personnel die or get scared back into hiding, at which point certain Kings try electing their own national Pope, hoping to solve the theological dilemma after the plague. This, however, provokes other rulers to produce their own Popes, and the situation spirals out of control, effectively eliminating the chance of a resolution any time soon. It did, after all, take 100 years just to solve the issue of one Anti-Pope in RL, and that crisis is still on-going at this point. It could take 2-300 years to solve all of these, and that's going to be really divisive to Europe.
DJC said:
If I stick with the climatic catastrophe on top of an unmodified plague, I realize the north will be hurt worse than the south. But my thought was that refugees from the north would overrun southern Europe and cause mass starvation because the land cannot support so many extra people. If this doesn't happen and southern Europe remains strong, that means the Turks and other Muslim powers wouldn't really have an easier time invading Europe than in OTL.
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Possibly, though I would question the historical likelihood of large portions of Scandinavian (and let's face it, British) society migrating to foreign countries. The usual result of migration was that the Kings of the lands they attempted to enter refused to allow anyone in, consigning them to their deaths if necessary in order to preserve his own state. I mean, yeah, failed crops are still a quite plausible result of the Black Winter, but the migrations aren't likely. You might get intra-national migration, with people in the north flooding into the south of their own country, but cross-border migration isn't likely to occur. More likely the result is that the northern countries are half-wiped out by the extreme cold, and the more southern countries just have to cope with failed crops. Of course, in a situation where half of Europe is dead from plague, any result of failed harvests will be 100% easier to cope with anyway, since there are 50% less mouths to feed...
DJC said:
I am certainly not wedded to the neo-Vinland idea -- it's just the best one I had up till now. To best prepare the Americas for an eventual colonization effort by the Old World (which I expect would be delayed in TTL with a Marinid controlled Iberia), I was trying to establish, as early as possible, a limited connection across the Atlantic so the Aztecs and Incas could deal with the epidemics and adopt more advanced technology in relative peace. Serious attempts at conquest by the Old World would need to be delayed as much as possible.
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Well it's your choice here. I dislike the Vinland idea but others worship it. If it works for you, try to find a way to make it work. I like the idea of the Marinids doing a Columbus, though. Seems quite possible, I really wasn't considering the fracturing of the universal Caliphate when I said Islam was focused on land-trade with the East.
DJC said:
Perhaps a few ships go astray and are captured (along with their contents) by the Aztecs. A similar accident could result in the Incas acquiring such technology. I was also thinking of having the Aztecs and Incas fight in proxy wars.
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That's quite possible, but remember that it's one thing having Americans acquire gun tech, and another thing having them acquire the ability to reverse engineer it. For a start, barrels of gunpowder are going to baffle them - they won't know how to make it. Even if a tortured/shipwrecked European tells them the ingredients those words aren't going to work in Aztec, so they'll probably work out charcoal from burning trees, but potassium nitrate and sulphur...much harder. I don't actually know if Mexico has the right ingredients. But it could probably acquire them in time, so let's move on. The other problem here is that the Inca Empire was Pacific-based. It had no Atlantic or Caribbean coastline. The Spanish found and conquered them by marching through the Aztec lands. Makes the proxy war thing a little harder to engineer. Your best bet may be to have the Aztecs conquer the Incas and then pose a single united front against colonists. That, or Central American civilisations were known for disappearing and being replaced. Perhaps Aztec civilisation could be rocked by contact with the Marinids, some generic event sets them on a path to destruction, and two rival (and better-placed) empires arise in their place? There's several things you could probably get away with here, but you might want to consult a native America specialist on this forum, I'm not so good at the specifics of their cultures.
DJC said:
Also, forgive my gaping lack of knowledge here, but you say China didn't get guns until the 19th century? Didn't they invent firearms?
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Close but no cigar. They invented gunpowder, but not firearms. They used gunpowder in ceramic jars as catapulted bombs. I don't think they ever figured out that gunpowder could be used to propel projectiles at colossal speed, though they might have had crude siege cannon, I can't remember exactly. They certainly didn't have hand-held gunpowder weapons. The Chinese never worked out how to produce European-style weaponry until it was given to them, and the European style proved far more efficient.
DJC said:
Yes, I do know horses are not native to the Americas and were imported from the Old World. I had hoped the demand for horses by the native Americans could in part motivate Old World traders to pawn horses off for American goods.
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Possibly, but do consider how long it takes to transport horses. You can probably only get up to 10 horses on any one ship, especially the smaller early ships being used. Oftentimes less than 10, and some of those are going to die on the crossing. It's going to take a while before America has enough horses to be seating armies.
DJC said:
The Chinese making the first post-plague contact is now my backup idea after the Marinids. It seems less feasible to me, and if Zheng He is butterflied away, perhaps unfeasible. I liked the idea of a Chinese Columbus analogue trying to find an overseas passage east to Europe and Africa.
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I'll go with that. My knowledge of Zheng He isn't exactly first-rate either. He's probably better as a backup.
 
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