WI Dutch colonise Philippines and the Spanish Indonesia
- Thread starter La Rouge Beret
- Start date
Firstly, you need to alter either the Treaty of Tordesillas (1494) or the Treaty of Saragossa (1529), so that 'Indonesia' is in hemisphere assigned to Spain rather than the hemisphere assignedo Portugal... which would mean that Portugal was granted a significant westwards expansion to its sphere of influence in the Americas, instead, thus releasing whole flocks of butterflies.
Then you either have to stop Spain from colonising both areas or have the Dutch decide that seizing islands in the Philippines is a better idea than seizing islands in Indonesia, despite the facts that (a) the Philippines didn't then produce much [if anything] of the spices whose acquisition was a major reason for the initial OTL Dutch interest in Indonesia and (b) they'd have to sail past Spanish (and therefore usually hostile) colonies in Indonesia to get there.
Neither of those changes seems very likely to me.
Then you either have to stop Spain from colonising both areas or have the Dutch decide that seizing islands in the Philippines is a better idea than seizing islands in Indonesia, despite the facts that (a) the Philippines didn't then produce much [if anything] of the spices whose acquisition was a major reason for the initial OTL Dutch interest in Indonesia and (b) they'd have to sail past Spanish (and therefore usually hostile) colonies in Indonesia to get there.
Neither of those changes seems very likely to me.
Perhaps that westward change to the Tordesillas meridian doesn't have to be so drastic. The technology of the day didn't allow for a precise determination of where would the Tordesillas counter-meridian [Saragossa] be. The Philippines themselves would theoretically be within the Portuguese hemisphere and yet, since that was unclear at the time, it was later agreed IOTL that the Portuguese were left with the Moluccas and the Spaniards with the Philippines.
A "slightly" more westwards Tordesillas would alot to the Portuguese a lot of Brazil that eventually fell to the Portuguese crown over time anyway. At the same time it could leave everything east of, say, the Strait of Malacca on a gray area and the Spaniards may end up with the bulk of it.
An alternative to have the Dutch wanting the Philippines over Indonesia is the Dutch only succeeding to conquer the former and generally failing to conquer the latter. But, yeah, unless the Dutch control any part of the Strait, it's unworkable to control the Philippines and always have to pass through Spanish hostile territory...
After a point it's very easy for Spain to simply ignore it as Portugal did in South America and as the rest of Europe did in general.
Actually, Portgal eventually made a deal with Spain through a new treaty: Portugal got a legal claim to the interior of Brazil, beyond the line, and Spain got a legal claim to an area in west-central Africa [including at least the mainland section of what's now 'Equatorial Guinea'] as a place from which to obtain slaves for use in its own American colonies.