Madagascar was one of the last places to be settled by humans, most think that around the year 350 - 400 AD, humans came there.How long can that be prevented ? would it be possible to have a Madagascar without humans even in the colonial times 16th century ? so madagascar would most likely colonized by a colonial power.
Empty Madagascar till the colonial times ?
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Cuāuhtemōc
Banned
If it isn't colonized by Malays, it's likely that you're going to have Bantu peoples ending up discovering Madagascar and colonizing it. If not them, perhaps it would be Arab traders who might settle it?
You could keep it totally empty until around the 900-1000 time period; while the first people to settle Madagascar were Austronesians, they were'nt the only ones, Arabs, mainland Africans and Indians all started migrating to the island from around that time onwards.
Now, without a native population established you could get a situation where by 1800 the population is only around 400,000, as opposed to the roughly 1.5 million of OTL.
Now, without a native population established you could get a situation where by 1800 the population is only around 400,000, as opposed to the roughly 1.5 million of OTL.
So i guess in my timeline it will be like this:
Around the year 1000 it will get discovered by humans, and they etablish some settlements, however it wasnt as heavily colonized as OTL, so you still can see Giant Lemurs there, even though they are very rare and live in remote mountain regions. Later it will get colonized, maybe by french. They might settle it a bit, but not too much. it remains very remote.
So in this timeline Madagascar would have a population of barely over 1 Mio, in the 21th century, would that be possible ?
would this allow Madagascar to be a dependant territory for example France, even in the modern time ? kinda like french guinea is today.
Around the year 1000 it will get discovered by humans, and they etablish some settlements, however it wasnt as heavily colonized as OTL, so you still can see Giant Lemurs there, even though they are very rare and live in remote mountain regions. Later it will get colonized, maybe by french. They might settle it a bit, but not too much. it remains very remote.
So in this timeline Madagascar would have a population of barely over 1 Mio, in the 21th century, would that be possible ?
would this allow Madagascar to be a dependant territory for example France, even in the modern time ? kinda like french guinea is today.
No, it'd be much more populous, IOTL Madagascar went from only about 2.2 million in 1900 to having 22 million today.
Now, that said, if ATL Madagascar has a small population like that, and thus no real powerful organized political structures (most likely independent towns and confederations of said), their's a good chance it could end-up being colonized by Europeans, so you might end-up with a Madagascvar ITTL 2012 that's 50% White (Europeans and Arabs), 30% Mixed, 15% African and 5% Other (Indian, Chinese, SE Asian).
"Alright men, they may be as well equipped as us, but we've the advantage; they sleep most of the day and my great aunt millie is faster than they are on foot. For God, Glory and the British Empire!"
Did the Bantu have any kind of seagoing tradition?
Madgascar is about 275 miles from Africa at its closest. Average distance is more like 500 miles. Nor are there a lot of likely Islands to leapfrog from. The Mozambique strait is pretty extreme.
Now, the Swahili did expand to the Comorros. But was this from an indigenous Swahili seagoing or boating capacity? Or was their 'sea capacity' acquired from contact with the Malay. If no contact with the Malay, would the Bantu have gone exploring? Maybe, maybe not.
So it's possible that there was no Swahili discovery and colonization. I don't know that we have enough information available to say for sure one way or the other.
The next candidates were the Arabs who wandered down the coast of Africa as far as Mozambique. Well, we know that the Arabs were good at coast hopping, no question, and that they had a lively trading network up and down the coast.
what was their deep sea capacity like? How far did the Arab sailors venture from known shores? Did they engage in deep sea fishing? Whaling?
It's possible that they didn't find it.
It's possible that they did indeed venture into deep waters. Possible that they found Madagascar.
But if they did find it, would they do anything with it? My impression was that the Arabs were traders. An empty land had little to trade for. They might have found a few exotic animals, maybe gone hunting, but otherwise done little. It's at least hypothetical that Madagascar might have been left an empty land, except for a few outposts.
I think that really examining this would require a lot more insight and detail than we have available here.
Madgascar is about 275 miles from Africa at its closest. Average distance is more like 500 miles. Nor are there a lot of likely Islands to leapfrog from. The Mozambique strait is pretty extreme.
Now, the Swahili did expand to the Comorros. But was this from an indigenous Swahili seagoing or boating capacity? Or was their 'sea capacity' acquired from contact with the Malay. If no contact with the Malay, would the Bantu have gone exploring? Maybe, maybe not.
So it's possible that there was no Swahili discovery and colonization. I don't know that we have enough information available to say for sure one way or the other.
The next candidates were the Arabs who wandered down the coast of Africa as far as Mozambique. Well, we know that the Arabs were good at coast hopping, no question, and that they had a lively trading network up and down the coast.
what was their deep sea capacity like? How far did the Arab sailors venture from known shores? Did they engage in deep sea fishing? Whaling?
It's possible that they didn't find it.
It's possible that they did indeed venture into deep waters. Possible that they found Madagascar.
But if they did find it, would they do anything with it? My impression was that the Arabs were traders. An empty land had little to trade for. They might have found a few exotic animals, maybe gone hunting, but otherwise done little. It's at least hypothetical that Madagascar might have been left an empty land, except for a few outposts.
I think that really examining this would require a lot more insight and detail than we have available here.
Some did, some did'nt, just as some Europeans did and some did'nt, Bantu is more an umbrella term for a greatly varied people who share a general common ancestry than an acual single group.
Actually, their are quite a few, aside from the Comoros their are the Seychelles as well as the Mozambique Channel islands.
AFAIK the mainland Africans did'nt have any contact with the Austronesian groups until they went to Madagascar, so they'd have their own ability, most likely expanded upon by the introduction of Arab designs and expertise.
They did IOTL; the majority of the Malagasy are roughly 50% Austronesian, 35% African and 15% Other (Arab and Indian mostly) in terms of descent.
Arab traders ventured as far as Sumatra, so they would have had some experitise.
I can't be sure, but I think Whaling is something that has traditionally only been practiced by peoples bordering the Northern Atlantic and Pacific.
Their would probably be some trading posts and a few small towns established, with one probably turning into a major trade destination point, possibly taking Zanzibar's place at some point, but yes, otherwise I agree their likely would not be much colonization by the Arabs.
It's not that ASB to stop the Austronesian settlement. Madagascar is pretty far from Indonesia. Just have the first two expeditions to Madagascar fail.
The first settlers of Madagascar literally just went into open ocean and hoped they'd find something. This was from the Sunda Islands, not from Polynesia, so there wasn't as much of a precedent for doing that.
Once people 'know' that there's nothing out there they won't try again until they forget. But by then, they would be assimilated by, replaced by, or become the more modern ethnic groups of Indonesia, and stop ranging outward.
Or they can see Madagascar cockroaches and say, "Screw it I'm out."
The first settlers of Madagascar literally just went into open ocean and hoped they'd find something. This was from the Sunda Islands, not from Polynesia, so there wasn't as much of a precedent for doing that.
Once people 'know' that there's nothing out there they won't try again until they forget. But by then, they would be assimilated by, replaced by, or become the more modern ethnic groups of Indonesia, and stop ranging outward.
Or they can see Madagascar cockroaches and say, "Screw it I'm out."
They are descendants of people from Borneo, I think stopping the destruction of the Sri Vijayan Empire by Chola would help, but in this POD the Immigration would have stopped earlier giving them a longer time to multiply.
well ok, lets say it doesnt even have to be completly empty, but there should be less human impact than OTL, so that Giant lemurs have a better chance of surviving.
Indris are taboo to get hunted, maybe Archeoindris (biggest lemur ever, was roughly gorilla sized) could become a sacred animal and thus they leave them alone ?
Indris are taboo to get hunted, maybe Archeoindris (biggest lemur ever, was roughly gorilla sized) could become a sacred animal and thus they leave them alone ?
For what it's worth, historically quite a few of the now-extinct large lemurs survived into the 1500s, based on carbon dates, including some of the extremely interesting baboon-like ones. Presumably that means that delaying the initial colonization by a few hundred years would let the Europeans at least see some of those animals in the flesh, assuming that the settlement pattern remained roughly the same.
Of course the settlement patterns might not be remotely similar. I seem to recall reading that the genetic patterns show that the Austronesians are probably all descended from a very small founder population--a couple of boatloads. That small founder population might have given the lemurs time to adapt to human presence to a greater extent than a later but larger population influx would have.
Which population would put more pressure on the lemurs quicker? I'm guessing that the subfossil lemurs died out as a consequence of human hunting, burning down dry forests and clearing land for farming. Which colonizing culture is likely to have done those things most extensively?
If you want to go with the OP's theme of no humans on the island until Europeans arrived, about the only way I can see that is if there was some disease indigenous to the island that caused a very high mortality rate among humans. Maybe some of the lemurs carried a disease similar to malaria that could jump to humans and had a very high fatality rate when it did. That could probably wipe out the initial Austronesian colony attempt and deter subsequent ones by other candidates for colonizing the island, though ships would undoubtedly visit from time-to-time.
That could actually lead to some cool scenarios (though not so cool to the people involved) where some very good natural harbor becomes a ghost harbor, with deserted ships littering the bottom and the shores and maybe the last victim vessel sitting intact but with the entire crew dead.
Of course the settlement patterns might not be remotely similar. I seem to recall reading that the genetic patterns show that the Austronesians are probably all descended from a very small founder population--a couple of boatloads. That small founder population might have given the lemurs time to adapt to human presence to a greater extent than a later but larger population influx would have.
Which population would put more pressure on the lemurs quicker? I'm guessing that the subfossil lemurs died out as a consequence of human hunting, burning down dry forests and clearing land for farming. Which colonizing culture is likely to have done those things most extensively?
If you want to go with the OP's theme of no humans on the island until Europeans arrived, about the only way I can see that is if there was some disease indigenous to the island that caused a very high mortality rate among humans. Maybe some of the lemurs carried a disease similar to malaria that could jump to humans and had a very high fatality rate when it did. That could probably wipe out the initial Austronesian colony attempt and deter subsequent ones by other candidates for colonizing the island, though ships would undoubtedly visit from time-to-time.
That could actually lead to some cool scenarios (though not so cool to the people involved) where some very good natural harbor becomes a ghost harbor, with deserted ships littering the bottom and the shores and maybe the last victim vessel sitting intact but with the entire crew dead.
BlondieBC
Banned
ASB if you don't bother to research and come up with mystery disease X. If you spend the time to research some disease and keep it realistic, it is not ASB. A lot is just how much flexibility you want as a writer. If you use something like malaria it will be able to slow but not stop settlement. It goes in the pre-1900. If you want "Lemur fever" with 100% fatality rate in humans, you probably are best in ASB section.
Well yes. But I'm not arguing for a general survey of Bantu or Swahili seamanship. I'm just trying to get some assessment of the 'peak seagoing' capacity.
The Comoros aren't actually that much closer to Africa than Madagascar is, and are actually due north. It's not really more feasible to Island Hop from the Comoros to Madagascar. The Seychelles are due north of Madgascar, even further from Africa, and had no history of Swahili colonization - solely Austronesian.
There aren't that many Mozambique channel islands and they don't actually contribute all that much in terms of way stations.
This is not racist, but I am seriously wondering about the Bantu ability or willingness to travel 250 to 500 miles over open ocean to discover Madagascar, or their ability to return with news, and ability to outfit colonizing expeditions.
Do you have any references or foundations for that? I would have assumed that any significant seagoing capacity would have been acquired from the Austronesians or the later Arabs. What's the evidence for any significant Swahili seagoing capacity or deep sea capacity that precedes possible Austronesian contact?
Well yes and no. But the OTL African colonization followed rather than preceded Austronesian colonization. I think its much more likely that the Austronesians discovered the African mainland and precipitated exchange and contact.
Well, except that Sumatra was well known among Austronesian sailing traditions, and Arab traders were basically following the Austronesians back. Sumatra was separated from the mainland by a strait of less than a hundred miles.
So the deep water/exploring capacity isn't necessarily a given.
It would make sense to set it up their since you'd have a good, safe natural harbor that you could set-up as a major trade point without having to worry about defending it from indigenous populations and overall being on the coast of a large landmass makes a port easier to defend than if it's on a small island.