A large Chinese ship full of mandarins and attendants is wrecked off the Mesoamerican coast.

trurle

Banned
It depends mostly if Chinese will be able to make a peace treaty with local king at the wreck area. Mesoamerica was politically fragmented and unstable in 15th century. Well, Chinese sailors may even proceed to rule the local kingdom, with their grenades, primitive guns and superior iron metallurgy. The conquistadors ~100 years later will be very amused to see some Chinese customs in area, and works of Amerigo Vespicci recognizing America as separate continent will be likely delayed by few decades.
Of course, chance of Chinese remaining independent after European arrival are small, but the overall course of colonization will be slower due additional local weapons and less susceptibility to the diseases after some diseases were brought by Chinese. May be we will see some Native American states surviving into modern period.
 
To elaborate on what I've said earlier.Mandarins during this period are generally untrained in war--unlikely preceding periods.A lot of people will die due to diseases.It must be noted that the conquistadors are fully equipped for war and often had translators dedicated to native American languages with them whereas the passengers of this 'large' ship most likely won't be so.These people probably don't have horses with them either--given that in Zheng He's fleet,there are dedicated horse transport ships,so a junk full of mandarins and attendants most likely won't have any horses with them,so they won't be able to use horses against the natives.Also,how big is this ship?Iirc,the behemoth junks in Zheng He's fleets are completely unseaworthy and are just there to please the bureaucrats and the populace.The stragglers most likely won't be able to communicate at all given whatever translators on that ship probably aren't equipped to deal with local language and would take quite some time to learn it--time they they won't have.They also most likely won't be able to fight the locals effectively as the Spanish because of the reasons I have established earlier.Even if there are some troops onboard,I don't think they will be as numerous as the Spanish expeditions.It's also noteworthy that the Spanish can always get supply from Havana whereas this Chinese expedition can't.Finally,there's the problem of food....
 
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PhilippeO

Banned
even if they brought horse and succeed in not getting massacred, they impact might simply disappear in a generation.

It was difficult to maintain technology without underlying infrastructure.

it was extremely difficult to change society.

metalworking would need forge and blacksmith. even if they have blacksmith onboard, its unlikely he knows how to build forge, also its unlikely he can build one without bricks and other necessities.
horse would need male and female to breed, even if they have both, some grass would be poisonous to horse, even if they can keep it alive in menagerie, they might succeed to convince others to breed it en masse.
and that assuming they received and welcomed by local Kings. they could easily forced to join local craftsman/farmer for a living. or even enslaved.
and without immediate benefit, their technology could easily ended up as curiosities instead of absorbed and utilized by succeeding generation.

tech transfer or 'uplift' is very difficult.
 
Huh, so where I'm from, manderin is a small orange and I was wondering if Scurvy was a major issue on the pre Contact West Coast. Or if the point of the POD was to butterfly Orange county
 
Yeah. Bureaucrats? They likely die quickly and no evidence shows up in history.

If it were an army with horses and smiths and wainwrights and coopers and ....
THEN it might make a huge difference. Bureaucrats? Not so much.
 
There IS, however, a relatively simple technology they may be able to transfer without much infrastructure. The wheel.
Of course, without draft animals, it would be of limited use - perhaps not enough to offset the negative impact a major plague, if they happen to carry some of those. Still, they come from a culture that has developed practical uses of the wheel even without draft animal, uses that had never occurred to the Mesoamericans despite their knowledge of the principle because they had no animals to develop it. It is easily transferable when you know it, and would be possible to adapt it to uses the Mesomericans would readily find advantageous (wheelbarrows come to mind).
 

PhilippeO

Banned
wheel is quite complicated technology. how to make strong axle. how to make wheel round instead of egg-shaped. how to make left-right same shape. how to handle friction between rotating axle and cart. it also had limited area to be useful, mountainous Inca and swampy Maya, might think it is not useful. And even wheelbarrow, a) failed to spread far from East Asia b) British fail to spread it to India. coastal area with water transport also would find it less useful.
 

trajen777

Banned
Most likely Disease spreads quickly kills off 95% of native population in 10 years. The Chinese might be able to carve out a society, town , village, and then it comes down to if they can repair (build) a new ship to go back to china and perhaps then start a colony. The Chinese interest in this would most likely be minimal.
 

PhilippeO

Banned
a single ship couldn't contain that many diseases. plus there are time spent on ship. the disease that crew carries must 1) had symptompless life carrier or 2) had long infection/transmission time so that its carrier not dead during journey.

a 90% death rate in OTL happen because Europe continuous contact, each ship bringing new diseases.
 
Please measure the distance from China to West Mexico.

Now consider the ocean-crossing capability of 1400s junks.

All crewmen aboard are dead.
 
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