AHC: All of Indonesia become densely populated?

King Helü of Wu

Banned
Many countries has become densely populated in one region but sparsely populated in another due to natural causes, for instance, Siberia is sparsely populated due to its temperature, western China due to low precipitation, Inland Australia due to the deserts.

Not the case for Indonesia. Despite having similar temperature and precipitation in the entire country, places like Java, Madura, Bali and Riau islands has been dominated by intensive farming and ancient empires, while in Papua, Kalimantan and Maluku it's largely jungles and shifting cultivation.

Your challenge, should you take it, is to make rest of the country developing agrarian civilisations able to support higher population density, not necessarily to the degree of Java, but close to that.

This would definitely be a disaster as long as bio-diversity is concerned, but not necessarily so for cultural-diversity, as this "civilization" can be formed with local cultures responding to challenges posted by agrarian empires like Java and Bali. Another way is an early transmigrasi of overpopulated islands to less populated ones.
 

EternalCynic

The Majapahit Empire gets a particularly badass king, who not content with controlling the trade routes of Asia, decides to exert direct political control. Learning extensively from the centralized bureaucracy of China, he institutes direct rule over all his tributaries.

Following that, he performs a vast transmigration program where soldiers, criminals, and paid settlers are settled across the archipelago, with the express intention of building a single entity.

When the Columbian Exchange occurs, the new settlers obtain plentiful New World crops, leading to explosive growth in their populations. For instance, potatoes greatly accelerate Malay settlement of the New Guinea highlands.

That satisfies the challenge.
 

Flocculencio

Donor
King Helü of Wu said:
Many countries has become densely populated in one region but sparsely populated in another due to natural causes, for instance, Siberia is sparsely populated due to its temperature, western China due to low precipitation, Inland Australia due to the deserts.

Not the case for Indonesia. Despite having similar temperature and precipitation in the entire country, places like Java, Madura, Bali and Riau islands has been dominated by intensive farming and ancient empires, while in Papua, Kalimantan and Maluku it's largely jungles and shifting cultivation.

Your challenge, should you take it, is to make rest of the country developing agrarian civilisations able to support higher population density, not necessarily to the degree of Java, but close to that.

This would definitely be a disaster as long as bio-diversity is concerned, but not necessarily so for cultural-diversity, as this "civilization" can be formed with local cultures responding to challenges posted by agrarian empires like Java and Bali. Another way is an early transmigrasi of overpopulated islands to less populated ones.
Click to expand...

That's because the actual terrain and local conditions vary hugely across the archipelago. Java, Bali and Madura have rich volcanic soil and a lot of their terrain is relatively gentle and easily cultivated.

The soils of Borneo, Sulawesi and Sumatra aren't as rich and once you get out of the coasts and river valleys the terrain is pretty rough and difficult for Javan-scale human settlement.

The Lesser Sunda Islands are, on the whole much drier than Java and Bali and therefore less suited to rice cultivation. Hence, they're unable to support as large a population.

The Moluccas are small and while rich and productive, are again highly mountainous so the amount of people they can carry is limited.

As you yourself say, when you look at population patterns there tends to be a reason why they are the way they are.
 

Flocculencio

Donor
EternalCynic said:
The Majapahit Empire gets a particularly badass king, who not content with controlling the trade routes of Asia, decides to exert direct political control. Learning extensively from the centralized bureaucracy of China, he institutes direct rule over all his tributaries.

Following that, he performs a vast transmigration program where soldiers, criminals, and paid settlers are settled across the archipelago, with the express intention of building a single entity.

When the Columbian Exchange occurs, the new settlers obtain plentiful New World crops, leading to explosive growth in their populations. For instance, potatoes greatly accelerate Malay settlement of the New Guinea highlands.

That satisfies the challenge.
Click to expand...

The local political setup doesn't allow for that. The idea of direct rule of vassal territory is very alien to the Indianised political setup. You impose your will on your vassals, kill those who defy you and set up more favourable substitutes but across the Indian cultural sphere, from the Khyber pass to Bali overlordship always tended to be distinct from direct local rule all the way from the Mauryas down to the Raj. For it to happen and stay stable you'd need a long process of change (as with the centuries long change from feudal states to centralised royal states in Europe) not one badass king.

Badass kings weren't uncommon in Indian political history- what happened is that the vassals all roll over and play nice and the moment he dies if his son isn't equally badass they start clawing back their autonomy.

AH.com tends to love the idea of magical Great Men who can defy local conditions but in real life this hardly ever happens.
 
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Nugax

Flocculencio said:
That's because the actual terrain and local conditions vary hugely across the archipelago. Java, Bali and Madura have rich volcanic soil and a lot of their terrain is relatively gentle and easily cultivated.

The soils of Borneo, Sulawesi and Sumatra aren't as rich and once you get out of the coasts and river valleys the terrain is pretty rough and difficult for Javan-scale human settlement.

The Lesser Sunda Islands are, on the whole much drier than Java and Bali and therefore less suited to rice cultivation. Hence, they're unable to support as large a population.

The Moluccas are small and while rich and productive, are again highly mountainous so the amount of people they can carry is limited.

As you yourself say, when you look at population patterns there tends to be a reason why they are the way they are.
Click to expand...

That's silly Flocc, we all know failure to generate high population densities and effective states is entirely due to laziness on the half of the indigenous peoples. :rolleyes:
 

Ridwan Asher

Every island with Javanese population density is just impossible. But perhaps you can start Javanese diaspora much earlier. Had Majapahit survive Paregreg, there's a chance for a handsome period of peace and stability where Java can build a population access to be channeled else where. This will likely be an organic process happening in pre-modern era rather then state-concerted like modern transmigrasi, so there will be differences, like lesser range. Sundanese can be very well more threatened here, with them sharing the island with the Javanese :< OTOH, surviving Majapahit could very well mean the retaining of Wijaya's memory between Majapahit and Pajajaran so the later can hope for some respect.
 

King Helü of Wu

Banned
Ridwan Asher said:
Every island with Javanese population density is just impossible. But perhaps you can start Javanese diaspora much earlier. Had Majapahit survive Paregreg, there's a chance for a handsome period of peace and stability where Java can build a population access to be channeled else where. This will likely be an organic process happening in pre-modern era rather then state-concerted like modern transmigrasi, so there will be differences, like lesser range. Sundanese can be very well more threatened here, with them sharing the island with the Javanese :< OTOH, surviving Majapahit could very well mean the retaining of Wijaya's memory between Majapahit and Pajajaran so the later can hope for some respect.
Click to expand...

For an organic process to take place, the key is that the demographic pressure and technological advantages of Java/Sunda/Bali/Madura must "spill over" to the outer islands.

Maybe this was just impossible due to the lack of volcanic soil like Floculencio suggested (until green revolution)? I hope I was an agriculture expert.

It's interesting how both you and Cynic want to save the a unified Majapahit empire. Did indianized kingdoms have a habit of mass migration to their vassal states?

It might not actually matter such process is carried out under what kind of political framework. The colonist could well have been a group of refugees, like Cakraningrat IV of Madura who escaped to Kalimantan after his failed rebellion against the Dutch. If more of such escape took place, then the outer island might have been accidentally populated.
 

Ridwan Asher

King Helü of Wu said:
It might not actually matter such process is carried out under what kind of political framework. The colonist could well have been a group of refugees, like Cakraningrat IV of Madura who escaped to Kalimantan after his failed rebellion against the Dutch. If more of such escape took place, then the outer island might have been accidentally populated.
Click to expand...

This is pretty much my thinking. Either this, or just simple natural settler push, but for the later the only sensible targets would be Pasundan and Nusa Tenggara (for Balinese).
 

Oba

Civilization from New Guinea?

What about having Indonesia's development be based out of New Guinea? I know it would make things radically different from the Indonesia of OTL but hang in there with me for a wee bit if you will:

Correct me if I am wrong but, after Mesopotamia, New Guinea is where agriculture first started: Kuk Swamp saw the cultivation of taro and other crops as well as irrigation for these crops as starting as much as one myriad years ago. Furthermore, New Guinea is the home of not just the excellent crops of taro and bananas, which can be used to make a high-quality fabric in addition to producing a staple food as fruit, but also toddy palms and sugar cane, protein-rich winged bean, rattan palms, the sturdy fibre-producing banana relative known as abacá, coconut palms, Pandanus spp. palms, bottle gourds and a tree that yields the galip nut - a complete protein like tempeh, dog meat or beef. Note that New Guinea was also the first place where crop rotation was practised and that many of the various nations of New Guinea practised, and often continue to practice, silviculture (tree farming) of a fast growing nitrogen-fixing conifer (whose name I forgot :-(...). Finally (I know this is a long paragraph), taro irrigation of indigenous and ancient origins is still being practised in Papua New Guinea's Rabaraba district and it is beyond reasonable doubt, especially given the date of the earliest comprehensive irrigation systems at Kuk Swamp, that such advanced irrigation predates contact with Austronesian-Speakers by quite a great deal.

Well, that was long. Now then, WI then, New Guinea independently and pristinely develops state-level societies before it falls behind India and China, as has occured in OTL? Could we see a "Trans-New Guinean Expansion" across Maritime Southeast Eurasia and/or [at least the rainforest-dominated Top End of] Australia and maybe even Oceania?
 

Flocculencio

Donor
Ridwan Asher said:
Every island with Javanese population density is just impossible. But perhaps you can start Javanese diaspora much earlier. Had Majapahit survive Paregreg, there's a chance for a handsome period of peace and stability where Java can build a population access to be channeled else where. This will likely be an organic process happening in pre-modern era rather then state-concerted like modern transmigrasi, so there will be differences, like lesser range. Sundanese can be very well more threatened here, with them sharing the island with the Javanese :< OTOH, surviving Majapahit could very well mean the retaining of Wijaya's memory between Majapahit and Pajajaran so the later can hope for some respect.
Click to expand...

But even so I don't think that would result in a higher population, but rather a "Javanisation" of the existing population because no matter what, before modern technology there are natural limits to the carrying capacity of each island.
 

Flocculencio

Donor
Oba said:
What about having Indonesia's development be based out of New Guinea? I know it would make things radically different from the Indonesia of OTL but hang in there with me for a wee bit if you will:

Correct me if I am wrong but, after Mesopotamia, New Guinea is where agriculture first started: Kuk Swamp saw the cultivation of taro and other crops as well as irrigation for these crops as starting as much as one myriad years ago. Furthermore, New Guinea is the home of not just the excellent crops of taro and bananas, which can be used to make a high-quality fabric in addition to producing a staple food as fruit, but also toddy palms and sugar cane, protein-rich winged bean, rattan palms, the sturdy fibre-producing banana relative known as abacá, coconut palms, Pandanus spp. palms, bottle gourds and a tree that yields the galip nut - a complete protein like tempeh, dog meat or beef. Note that New Guinea was also the first place where crop rotation was practised and that many of the various nations of New Guinea practised, and often continue to practice, silviculture (tree farming) of a fast growing nitrogen-fixing conifer (whose name I forgot :-(...). Finally (I know this is a long paragraph), taro irrigation of indigenous and ancient origins is still being practised in Papua New Guinea's Rabaraba district and it is beyond reasonable doubt, especially given the date of the earliest comprehensive irrigation systems at Kuk Swamp, that such advanced irrigation predates contact with Austronesian-Speakers by quite a great deal.

Well, that was long. Now then, WI then, New Guinea independently and pristinely develops state-level societies before it falls behind India and China, as has occured in OTL? Could we see a "Trans-New Guinean Expansion" across Maritime Southeast Eurasia and/or [at least the rainforest-dominated Top End of] Australia and maybe even Oceania?
Click to expand...

IIRC even IOTL some elements of New Guinean style agriculture (sago/taro/banana based diets) were prevalent among the aboriginal groups which made up the interior population of the Indonesian islands. I suppose if a state model did develop allowing for more efficient use of this system it could mean higher interior populations. The East Indies pattern of settlement could be Malay rice-cultivating states in the lowlands with Melanesian sago-cultivating states in the highlands.
 

Ridwan Asher

Flocculencio said:
But even so I don't think that would result in a higher population, but rather a "Javanisation" of the existing population because no matter what, before modern technology there are natural limits to the carrying capacity of each island.
Click to expand...

You're not wrong, but I think it's manageable. And yeah, it won't be all that higher, too. But at least we can count on more advanced Javanese agriculture to create this minor increase.

Oba said:
What about having Indonesia's development be based out of New Guinea? I know it would make things radically different from the Indonesia of OTL but hang in there with me for a wee bit if you will:

Correct me if I am wrong but, after Mesopotamia, New Guinea is where agriculture first started: Kuk Swamp saw the cultivation of taro and other crops as well as irrigation for these crops as starting as much as one myriad years ago. Furthermore, New Guinea is the home of not just the excellent crops of taro and bananas, which can be used to make a high-quality fabric in addition to producing a staple food as fruit, but also toddy palms and sugar cane, protein-rich winged bean, rattan palms, the sturdy fibre-producing banana relative known as abacá, coconut palms, Pandanus spp. palms, bottle gourds and a tree that yields the galip nut - a complete protein like tempeh, dog meat or beef. Note that New Guinea was also the first place where crop rotation was practised and that many of the various nations of New Guinea practised, and often continue to practice, silviculture (tree farming) of a fast growing nitrogen-fixing conifer (whose name I forgot :-(...). Finally (I know this is a long paragraph), taro irrigation of indigenous and ancient origins is still being practised in Papua New Guinea's Rabaraba district and it is beyond reasonable doubt, especially given the date of the earliest comprehensive irrigation systems at Kuk Swamp, that such advanced irrigation predates contact with Austronesian-Speakers by quite a great deal.

Well, that was long. Now then, WI then, New Guinea independently and pristinely develops state-level societies before it falls behind India and China, as has occured in OTL? Could we see a "Trans-New Guinean Expansion" across Maritime Southeast Eurasia and/or [at least the rainforest-dominated Top End of] Australia and maybe even Oceania?
Click to expand...

We've had discussed something like this a while ago, yes ?
 
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Flocculencio

Donor
Ridwan Asher said:
You're not wrong. I think it's manageable. And yeah, it won't be all that higher, too. But at least we can count on more advanced Javanese agriculture to create this minor increase.
Click to expand...

Minor but still, it's not going to do anything to utilise, say, the incredibly rugged Borneo interior.
 

eliphas8

Flocculencio said:
Minor but still, it's not going to do anything to utilise, say, the incredibly rugged Borneo interior.
Click to expand...

Would potatos being introduced do something about that? I know in a lot of cases across Europe and Asia the introduction of the potato caused the more rugged marginal land to experience a population explosion, could that happen here?
 

Oba

Ridwan Asher: I am not clear about what you are trying to say; if you are talking about back when I was on the board before, I have long since forgotten about it.

Civilizations arose in far more unlikely environments than New Guinea.

Think about the Andes and its bone-dry coastal deserts, its equally barren Altiplano and even more mountainous highlands than New Guinea. Yet, as I am sure you know, civilization arose over four millennia ago there with Caral-Supe and by the time of the arrival of Pizarro and his invaders, the Andes were home to a a culture in many ways more advanced than that of the conquistadors. Or for that matter have a look at how civilization thrived in Europe despite both the climate and relative isolation compared to the Subcontinent or the Middle East.
 

Oba

Flocculencio said:
IIRC even IOTL some elements of New Guinean style agriculture (sago/taro/banana based diets) were prevalent among the aboriginal groups which made up the interior population of the Indonesian islands. I suppose if a state model did develop allowing for more efficient use of this system it could mean higher interior populations. The East Indies pattern of settlement could be Malay rice-cultivating states in the lowlands with Melanesian sago-cultivating states in the highlands.
Click to expand...
Why couldn't my alternate New Guineans simply take the place of the Austronesians in developing Maritime Southeast Asia? After all, New Guinea is far closer than Taiwan...
 
kasumigenx

kasumigenx

eliphas8 said:
Would potatos being introduced do something about that? I know in a lot of cases across Europe and Asia the introduction of the potato caused the more rugged marginal land to experience a population explosion, could that happen here?
Click to expand...
I think the Polynesians could transport Potato, Cassava and Sweet Potato to the Malay Archipelago from the Americas..
 
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