1310: The Year Mali Discovered America

Hendryk

Banned
What's interesting is whether or not the imported New World crops would begin to migrate north from West Africa at any point... I'd think their introduction to Europe would promote population growth under other circumstances, but not if they arrive shortly before or during the Plague. The Europeans could very well even suspect that the plague came from new plants themselves (here they'd actually have every reason to suspect the tomato is poisonous!)
The spread of New World crops in the Old one is going to follow quite a different pattern in TTL. I expect them to spread fairly quickly throughout the Muslim world, and from there to India and China, but Europe may indeed be initially bypassed. It's possible that when potato, corn and other crops reach Europe, it will be by riding the coattails of the Ottomans.

BTW if I remember GGS correctly, Africa and the Americas are faced with the same problem of narrow horizontal biotopes in an otherwise vertical continent. One wonders how much difference a pooling of their respective crops would make.
 
Wow, pretty Impressive Pa Dutch...Ive been wanting a to do a tl based on this POD, but never really no where to start. You have done a pretty good job with the first installment.

What Im am having a hard time with is the Mayan Contact, and the significane it would make? The Mayans at this time were several squabbling greek-like city states and not the powerhouse they once were. I would be more Interested if the Mali were to come in contact through the secret roads of the Amazon and meet the Tawantinsuya Civilization.

I just think it would be more plausible and possibly more benefical to the Mali to create an alliancewith the Tawantinsuya.They could learn great things from eachother....

Also what are the chances of the Chinese stumbling upon Boure Bambouk during the great Ming Voyages? Would word of mouth spread that far from the Mansa Munsa expeditions to china?
 
What Im am having a hard time with is the Mayan Contact, and the significane it would make? The Mayans at this time were several squabbling greek-like city states and not the powerhouse they once were. I would be more Interested if the Mali were to come in contact through the secret roads of the Amazon and meet the Tawantinsuya Civilization.
Actually the Yucatec Mayans were united under Mayapan, and the Tawantinsuyu was non-existant (the empire only really began in the 1400's). The Inca were in the valley of Cuzco though.
 
The spread of New World crops in the Old one is going to follow quite a different pattern in TTL. I expect them to spread fairly quickly throughout the Muslim world, and from there to India and China, but Europe may indeed be initially bypassed. It's possible that when potato, corn and other crops reach Europe, it will be by riding the coattails of the Ottomans.

I doubt they'll just pass by Europe. Guns Germs and Steel mentioned that the New World Crop package quickly reached China, about as far away (by the trade routes) as you could get in Eurasia from the Americas. As the trade routes of the Mali are generally to the north, those crops will certainly be spread in that direction, so, the European will get them.
 
Wow! Thanks for everyone's feedback, it's been very helpful. It has given me a lot more interesting points to consider.

As to West Africa. I think you will see the emergence of several smaller but stronger states in terms of manpower if Mali collapses. Songhai might still emerge as major Empire centred on Gao and Timbuktu but smaller in the East-Central Sahel between Kanem-Bornou and the remnants of Mali and resurgent Wagadu. the introduction of new crops will have a profound effect when introduced to the Hausa Bakwai.

I agree, plus having a more divided, contentious Sahel will be a good spur for technological development.

have him sail instead from Granada, If they survive, then like Portugal they would end up a small maritime trading state. Have them retain Andalucia, Murcia and the Algarve. Mind you if the tales of Boure Bambuk have preceded him at this point to the Italian states, He may indeed get more initial interest there or from France. Imagine him sailing for Genoa, Florence hmm Pisa ( are they still even a major concern by that point ) or the Valois of France instead of Castile.

That would be a very interesting idea... Would a Christian explorer have any moral objections to sailing for non-Christian court? I would think it wouldn't be too much of a problem, but of course the Iberian Peninsula wasn't anywhere near the best example of religious harmony at this point.

Germs spread both ways. That syphilis originated in the New World seem almost beyond doubt now; but its effects are still mostly underestimated, although it may well be argued that the spread of syphilis contributed not only to the Reformation but to the rise of nationalism as well (as everyone blamed their western neighbors :D)

How would syphilis spread in this TL and what effects would it have? Frankly, I don't know much about sexual mores in medieval Mali...

I have put some thought into this, but there is also evidence of Pre-Columbian syphilus cases present in the Old World. Rather than having it play a significant plot point, I may just have syphilus just another part of the disease-ridden world before the advent of modern medicine.

There is some evidence (although not widely excepted, I only add this to see if it interests you) that at this time there were large scale farming activites in the amazon. These weren't slash and burn (almos timpossible with stone tools), but orchards (there are 138 domesticated species, or somewhere near that, from the amazon, of which from 50-80% are fruit trees. It depends on your definition of domesticated). These were small hamlets, often surrounded by walls of wood. Some very good evidence of this comes from terra preta (oddly fertile soil of charcoal found and pottery) and the earthen burial mounds, along with some stunning pottery. Now considering that they were all killed by diseas fairly quickly (if this theory is true), you can of this what you will.

Thirdly Although they may dislike the human sacrifing mayas, I doubt they'd be able to project their power and deal with them. Also Most major religions are remarkably supple.

First, thanks for your input on the llamas. Camels and horses are likely reach these areas in time, but regardless it won't be very soon.

I'm very intrigued by the complexity of Amazonian societies such as the Marajoara and the Xinguano... They'll likely be devestated by diseases, but nonetheless they show the potential of the Amazon to support settled populations once Boure Bambouk begins to move inward. As an equatorial people, Africans will likely have an easier time settling Brazil's interior than the Europeans. The escaped-slave quilombos are good evidence of this.

I agree, the Malians will certainly frown upon the practises of many New World cultures, but to stage an attack on the most powerful ones might be suicide. As settlers in a foreign land they need all the local help they can get.
 
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The spread of New World crops in the Old one is going to follow quite a different pattern in TTL. I expect them to spread fairly quickly throughout the Muslim world, and from there to India and China, but Europe may indeed be initially bypassed. It's possible that when potato, corn and other crops reach Europe, it will be by riding the coattails of the Ottomans.

BTW if I remember GGS correctly, Africa and the Americas are faced with the same problem of narrow horizontal biotopes in an otherwise vertical continent. One wonders how much difference a pooling of their respective crops would make.

I doubt they'll just pass by Europe. Guns Germs and Steel mentioned that the New World Crop package quickly reached China, about as far away (by the trade routes) as you could get in Eurasia from the Americas. As the trade routes of the Mali are generally to the north, those crops will certainly be spread in that direction, so, the European will get them.

Right, Europe won't be completely left in the dark but it will certainly take longer. Potatos and tomatos struggled for acceptance in OTL, and here we have the unfortunate additional factor that the spread of the new crops coincides with the spread of the Plague.

The crops will naturally find more acceptance spreading from Muslim societies to neighboring Muslim societies than to European Christiandom. Plus, most of the entry ways into Europe appear to be big zones of conflict... The Iberian Peninsula is facing the Reconquista, Greece and Anatolia have the Turks. In India and China, however, we have places where Muslims are more directly a functional part of society rather than just infidel pests... Though Venice might be an exception.

I agree with Jared Diamond, but in this case we have to consider the east-west axis of North Africa rather than the north-south axis of Africa as a whole. The new crops should spread easily enough around the Sahel, while much of Africa below the equator might still be left in the dark. That is, unless ATL Senegalese Wolofs with a stronger seafaring tradition bring the crops southward via ocean routes... :D

Wow, pretty Impressive Pa Dutch...Ive been wanting a to do a tl based on this POD, but never really no where to start. You have done a pretty good job with the first installment.

What Im am having a hard time with is the Mayan Contact, and the significane it would make? The Mayans at this time were several squabbling greek-like city states and not the powerhouse they once were. I would be more Interested if the Mali were to come in contact through the secret roads of the Amazon and meet the Tawantinsuya Civilization.

I just think it would be more plausible and possibly more benefical to the Mali to create an alliancewith the Tawantinsuya.They could learn great things from eachother....

Thanks!

As noted by Atom, you're thinking of the political situation the Europeans ran into nearly two hundred years after my POD. In the 14th century, the Mayans in the Yucatan are actually a united civilization (one of the only times this happened in history).

Plus, I never suggested an alliance between Boure Bambouk and the Mayans... At least, not this early in the game. The two civilizations are still pretty far from each other. Right now, I'm simply sowing the seeds for indirect trade.

The Tawantinsuyo and the Aztecs are insignificant city-states right now... I wonder if the Incas would even rise to power at all. They don't begin their expansion until the 1420's, which will be well after the Andes are hit by Old World diseases and innovations. Considering the Chimu still dominate the Peruvian coast, they might be the first to reap the benefits...

Also what are the chances of the Chinese stumbling upon Boure Bambouk during the great Ming Voyages? Would word of mouth spread that far from the Mansa Munsa expeditions to china?

It is possible for the Chinese to play a role in the New World colonization, but I'm not sure I want to go that route... It is certainly an interesting topic to consider, but nonetheless is different from the topic I'm trying to focus on. For a very interesting and well-thought out take on a Chinese America, I'd really encourage you to check out Hendryk's great 1435 timeline.
 

Hendryk

Banned
Also what are the chances of the Chinese stumbling upon Boure Bambouk during the great Ming Voyages? Would word of mouth spread that far from the Mansa Munsa expeditions to china?
Well, Zheng He's expeditions took him to the Persian Gulf in 1414, and to eastern Africa in 1417. If word of the western continent has spread throughout the Muslim world by then, and it's quite certain that it has, then Zheng will hear about it. But the Chinese would probably hear about it much earlier thanks to their trade contacts both land-based and sea-based with the Muslim world. Ibn Battuta, in OTL the most world's most widely-travelled man of the 14th century, visited China in the late 1330s, and as he came from Morocco he would have been aware of the discovery of Boure Bambouk.

I doubt they'll just pass by Europe. Guns Germs and Steel mentioned that the New World Crop package quickly reached China, about as far away (by the trade routes) as you could get in Eurasia from the Americas.
Except that in OTL New World crops didn't reach China by way of Eurasian trade routes :p They got them from the Spanish in the Philippines. China, in fact, started growing such crops as corn decades if not centuries before Europe.
 
That would be a very interesting idea... Would a Christian explorer have any moral objections to sailing for non-Christian court? I would think it wouldn't be too much of a problem, but of course the Iberian Peninsula wasn't anywhere near the best example of religious harmony at this point.

This is the early 1300's, right? You should know that there weren't Jewish persecutions in Castile, for example, before the assassination of Peter I and the takeover of his bastard brother Henry II in 1369. The reason was that the Jewish minority (and to a lesser extend, the Muslim) were mainly urban communities and, like the rest of the burgesses, they had supported Peter in the last civil war against Henry, who was supported by the feudal nobility. Spreeding an until then rare or unknown antisemitism among the Christian population was the way Henry used to have the population forgot his "unconventional" way to get the throne. Up to then, and not rarely after also, the population didn't have any problem to live and deal with Muslims and Jews as long as they lived in their own neigbourghoods and accepted the Christian overlordship. Same happened in the Muslim kingdoms with the exception of the brief Almohad period and the fact that, obviously, in these cases the Muslims had the political power. In short words, if there was a "tolerant" region outside of Sicily in Europe, it was the Iberian Peninsula. It's quite ironic how this tolerance ("the Spanish little sin", as it was called by the Italians) was then the main target of foreign propaganda in times of war, and how centuries later that target was the Catholic fanaticism that was born mostly to demonstrate that the Spaniards weren't worse Christians or more friends to the infidels that the rest of Europe. It's almost unbelievable how the people of today believe that Spain have been always the home of Inquisition persecutions and religious fanaticism. Kinda reminds me of the people that take the Armenian genocide and say that the Ottoman Empire was always ruled by Islamic fanatics and Turkish supremacists. :rolleyes:

As for the "moral" objections... well, that depends of what type of "moral" followed the person itself. I'm pretty sure that Columbus would never sail under a Muslim banner, but at the same time I can provide a list of Dutch, English and Spaniards that worked for the King of Morocco in the 16th-17th centuries and didn't have any apparent problem to violate the 10 Commands of the Bible if ordered. And there is always the possibility of a man that, after being forced to leave his mother country for whatever reason, to emigrate to another nation and adopt the culture, language of religion of his new adopting country. Did you know that Rodrigo de Triana, the dude that first exclaimed "Land!" in 12 October, 1492, died as a Muslim hermit in North Africa?

Now, returning to the thread, I have a comment about the crops question related to what I said in my first paragraph. The Western Sahel trade routes drove mostly ivory, gold and slaves to Morocco, and with Tangiers (Portuguese occupied) and mostly Melilla as the Mediterranean gate of these trade. From Melilla these riches passed to Granada, were they were sold (along luxurious crops like sugarcane) to Castilian, Aragonese and Genoese merchants in exchange of meat and grain, goods that weren't enough to feed all of Granada's overpopulation. Yes, the Granadine-Castilian trade was always high, even during the own conquest of Granada, so it's not a problem in this TL to have new exotics goods from Africa and beyond passing to the Iberian Christian kingdoms from Granada. Can you figure the potential effects of, let say, Mali potatos and tomatos?

-First, they can be grown in the small mountainous kingdom of Granada, in regions where grain cannot be. Granada is less dependent of foreign exportations and less vulnerable to maritime blockades during wars. It has more chances to survive in the future.

-Second, the new crops first enter the Western Mediterranean, and the Ottomans and other eastern Mediterranean countries receive them later, from Aragonese, Italian and Algerian ships.
 
The Tawantinsuyo and the Aztecs are insignificant city-states right now... I wonder if the Incas would even rise to power at all. They don't begin their expansion until the 1420's, which will be well after the Andes are hit by Old World diseases and innovations. Considering the Chimu still dominate the Peruvian coast, they might be the first to reap the benefits...



It is possible for the Chinese to play a role in the New World colonization, but I'm not sure I want to go that route... It is certainly an interesting topic to consider, but nonetheless is different from the topic I'm trying to focus on. For a very interesting and well-thought out take on a Chinese America, I'd really encourage you to check out Hendryk's great 1435 timeline.

Interesting, Very Interestin...Hm A TL, where the Tawantinsuya don't rise to power would be nice. A stronger, more expansionist Chimor Empire might arise in its place with use of Mali Horses/Camels and Guns. But We may have to wait and see how the Epidemic Old World diseases afect them.

Ive read Hendryk's timeline and it is great...But I wasn't trying to suggest turning this tl into a sinowank. But I was intrigued about the possiblity, of Zheng He with the knowlede of some western ocea in the Atlantic. Would they after landing in East Africa, would want to continue onwards to Boure Bambouk?

Also, I would love to see the indirect consequences of their contact, such as Boure Bambouk begins to design vessels based on Chinese design to make further exploration of the Americas possible?

BTW, With the Recent findings of the National Academy of Sciences Bones found in Chile were radiocarbon-dated to between 1304 and 1424, well before the documented arrival of the Spanish. DNA sequences taken were exact matches to those of chickens from the same period in American Samoa and Tonga, both over 5000 miles away from Chile. The genetic sequences were also similar to those found in Hawaii and Easter Island, the closest island at only 2500 miles, and unlike any breed of European chicken

So if not, Contact with Zheng He and his chinese, what after Boure Bambouk wants to continue exploring their continent they stumble upon the Polynesians and their chickens?
 
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It's almost unbelievable how the people of today believe that Spain have been always the home of Inquisition persecutions and religious fanaticism. Kinda reminds me of the people that take the Armenian genocide and say that the Ottoman Empire was always ruled by Islamic fanatics and Turkish supremacists. :rolleyes:

Fair enough, but I never stated that the Spanish were fanatics. I simply suggested that there was religious tension in the region.

Also, I would love to see the indirect consequences of their contact, such as Boure Bambouk begins to design vessels based on Chinese design to make further exploration of the Americas possible?

BTW, With the Recent findings of the National Academy of Sciences Bones found in Chile were radiocarbon-dated to between 1304 and 1424, well before the documented arrival of the Spanish. DNA sequences taken were exact matches to those of chickens from the same period in American Samoa and Tonga, both over 5000 miles away from Chile. The genetic sequences were also similar to those found in Hawaii and Easter Island, the closest island at only 2500 miles, and unlike any breed of European chicken

So if not, Contact with Zheng He and his chinese, what after Boure Bambouk wants to continue exploring their continent they stumble upon the Polynesians and their chickens?

Direct Chinese contact would be interesting, but I wouldn't expect it to happen for quite some time. Also, Polynesia is probably likewise too far away for Boure Bambouk to do much with them... Maybe Andeans could at some later point.
 
Direct Chinese contact would be interesting, but I wouldn't expect it to happen for quite some time. Also, Polynesia is probably likewise too far away for Boure Bambouk to do much with them... Maybe Andeans could at some later point.

Hm, A silk Road for the Americas....The Possiblity, with the Andeans serving as possible middlemen, it is possible for the trade to get established later on perhaps?
 
Another quick note:

The goverment system of Mail would, if transplanted, seem to make it easy to absorb existing local polities whole.
 
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