Agricultural Kingdoms of Australia

In my timeline China begins global exploration in the 1300's and starts to forge a global trade network. By the 1430's most of the world is linked together by this network. An industrial revolution begins in the early 1400's. From the 1400's onward traders will begin selling potatoes from South America to the Australians which could help boost their population. If nobody decides to colonize Australia then how long might it take for agricultural kingdoms to arise in Australia?

I do acknowledge what you guys have said on the other forums. It would be a big transition from hunter gatherers and they would be indeed far behind the rest of the world. Perhaps given a large enough timescale (centuries) with continual contact with the trade network they could eventually transition to an agricultural society?

Australia does have land bound reserves of both oil and coal which would be useful to an industrializing world. Resources such as iron would also be quite valuable.
 
rather than some places which have an annual wet and dry season,most areas of australia generally alternates between several very dry years followed by several very wet years. this meant that before steamships, trucks, etc. made it possible to transport crops en-masse internationally, most of australia could not sustain dense populations for long periods of time.
 
I take it you've read the fantastic and essentially canonical Lands of Red and Gold TL here, right?

But anyway, more specific to your OP, it would take at least a few centuries, without a doubt. But as we saw in OTL, when hunter gatherers and agriculturists meet, the hunter gatherers almost always lose, either by being absorbed, being displaced, or being outright killed. Fortunately, most of Australia isn't conducive to agriculture, except on the east coast, Tasmania, the southwest, and the southeast inwards along the coast and Murray-Darling river system.

And then who is doing this trading? Because if potatoes are in Australia, they are without a doubt in New Zealand, meaning you'll have a population explosion of the Maori, who will be looking for places to settle. And Australia is pretty much the perfect place, since the agricultural regions are good enough for farming and the people easy to subjugate, since the Maori will no doubt have firearms and much more advanced weapons than the Aboriginals, and most importantly, numbers. So you'd get a host of Maori states in Australia which claim a lot more land than they can actually control. But if there were agricultural Aboriginals, the Maori would rule over them and blend with them to some degree or another. But the sheer numbers of Maori would mean that the Maori element would remain dominant in most every case, since the Maori are one culture (divided into multiple iwi/tribes) and the Aboriginals are a highly diverse group of people who in the agriculturally useful parts of Australia spoke dozens of languages with oftentimes very different social customs/societies.

Basically, the timescale of a few centuries isn't enough to create any sustainable Australian Aboriginal kingdom. Maybe the best option is introducing a lot of camels to Australia as part of some Spanish/Portuguese mission type system (which notably they didn't do in the American Southwest/Mexico despite the extremely useful nature of camels there). Aboriginals learn camel usage at these missions, and eventually the missionised Aboriginals steal camels (which they'd already be doing, compare California mission Indians stealing horses which they did frequently). In addition to taming feral camels, these Aboriginals introduce camels into the continent, and end up becoming extremely successful camel nomads, probably defeating/absorbing/displacing many other peoples, and mounting raids on the settled Maori. They could in essence be the Comanche of Australia.
 
@Jonathan Streeton , perhaps we don't need to cover Australia completely with civilizations. There's a modest carrying capacity in some locations such as Northern or Eastern Australia which might support a small population.

@metalinvader665 , "Comanche of Australia"... I like the sound of that :) Could we perhaps get some of these raiders to become the "Mongols of Australia"? We've seen the OTL Turkic peoples from Central Asia sweeping into Anatolia and taking control of the region, eventually becoming the majority ethnic group there. Could we get the Maori establishing colonies in Australia which then fail due to a counter invasion by raider tribes? Just like the nomadic horsemen from Central Asia we could see them bootstrapping their civilization ahead using the captured tech and people from defeated nations. Perhaps much of the Maori population flees during the reconquest? How much of Australia would be under threat from the Maori?
 
You need good horses and camels first. Indonesia had their own horse breeds, but it would take the better part of a century to breed them into horses like something like highly effective horse breeds of the Great Plains the Comanche, Sioux, and other Plains Indians used. Camels are obviously more useful, but there isn't exactly a large population of camels in Indonesia to introduce to Australia.

Geography is key. States along the Murray-Darling river system are much more vulnerable from invasions from the interior. States along the east coast are sheltered by the Great Dividing Range. Southwestern Australia is vulnerable in general. But as long as no one can introduce horses and camels to the region, it's as secure of a border as the Sahara is, limited to occasional raids by various Aboriginals looking to get some extra food/whatever which isn't really a problem for any state.

Tasmania might as well be Maori, since the Tasmanian Aboriginals were small in number and highly divided. Give them potatoes and advanced weaponry and armour, and the Tasmanian Aboriginals will be absorbed fairly quickly. We only need to look at the Chatham Islands for an example of what might happen. The rest of Australia it will be impossible to evict the Maori from. They can conquer and settle most everywhere beyond the Great Dividing Range, and the more agricultural areas in the southeast (Victoria and the eastern part of South Australia), and with potatoes, they have a great agricultural package to support it. Maori kumara can grow much better in Queensland than in Aotearoa, and potatoes can grow well in the southern inland, plus if we have Maori trade, they can get rice from Indonesia which will help them out along the rivers of the Murray-Darling. Maybe incorporating some Aboriginal practices, since the Murray-Darling had a rudimentary system of agriculture and aquaculture and was relatively densely populated compared to the rest of Australia, meaning some pencil yam, murnong, and wattleseed gathering to supplement their diet (not like Lands of Red and Gold domestication, though), especially in lean years. The Maori would end up decently mixed in terms of race and culture, I think, at least in the interior.

I think the biggest success our "Comanche of Australia" would have is against a potential Maori state in the Murray-Darling area. Mounted on camels and horses, they'd win at least a few encounters and do what they would to the locals. But would the local Maori really not adopt horses and camels in turn, or employ strategies to defeat mounted cavalry? After all, you just need a wall of spears to defeat melee cavalry, although horse/camel archers are a bit trickier to deal with, but after gunpowder, horse archers were not invincible. But I don't think you'd see the Maori flee, just see their ruling class get replaced by horse/camel lords from the interior.
 
@metalinvader665 so the Maori colonize Australia with a few mixed cultures here and there.

The nations doing the exploration and most of the trade are Asian nations such as China, Korea, various nations in South East Asia etc. If the Asians are exploring South Asia what approach might they take? Would they simply strike out into the open ocean from their home nations or would they perhaps try to perhaps try setting off from southernmost landmass they know of in Asia? If they went to OTL Indonesia and went south they'd soon hit Australia.

New Zealand is surrounded by vast swathes of water in all directions(making it a relatively small target to find in the Pacific). The thought that there should be land in the southern hemisphere to balance out the north seems to be an odd quirk of our timeline and wouldn't likely exist in another. This means that the explorers in this timeline aren't so certain that there's a large continent left unexplored (something that helped spur the discovery of Australia and New Zealand OTL). On the other hand New Zealand is located on the Roaring 40's, a useful navigational wind. Might the discovery of New Zealand work out in this timeline? Would it be set back?
 
@metalinvader665 so the Maori colonize Australia with a few mixed cultures here and there.

The nations doing the exploration and most of the trade are Asian nations such as China, Korea, various nations in South East Asia etc. If the Asians are exploring South Asia what approach might they take? Would they simply strike out into the open ocean from their home nations or would they perhaps try to perhaps try setting off from southernmost landmass they know of in Asia? If they went to OTL Indonesia and went south they'd soon hit Australia.

New Zealand is surrounded by vast swathes of water in all directions(making it a relatively small target to find in the Pacific). The thought that there should be land in the southern hemisphere to balance out the north seems to be an odd quirk of our timeline and wouldn't likely exist in another. This means that the explorers in this timeline aren't so certain that there's a large continent left unexplored (something that helped spur the discovery of Australia and New Zealand OTL). On the other hand New Zealand is located on the Roaring 40's, a useful navigational wind. Might the discovery of New Zealand work out in this timeline? Would it be set back?

I don't see why Asians wouldn't just go to the ends of what they know (eastern fringe of Indonesia) and continue from there, which would lead them south to Australia. And if you're sailing along the Roaring 40s, you'll get to New Zealand eventually if you sail east from the Cape of Good Hope (although of course you'll run into Australia first).

But why wouldn't the idea that there should be land in the southern hemisphere to balance the north exist in other TLs? It's straight from Antiquity via Aristotle and Ptolemy and repeated by numerous other Greco-Roman scholars. The real question was whether anyone actually lived there. If no one lives there (since after all, it's impossible for people to live in the Antipodes according to some theories), then why bother going there since there's no one to trade with?
 
@Petike, Good timeline, thanks for that.

@metalinvader665, good point about the land theory. That might make it even more likely for exploration fleets to find Australia. With all the resources in Australia how would the Asian powers react to the Maori attacking? I expect the Asians would probably cut a deal with the Australian Aboriginals to mine or use the resources in Australia. Would the Asians start attacking the Maori or just swap to making a deal with the Maori instead? Would such deals be able to be formed with the Australian Aboriginals before the Maori started launching attacks?
 
@PetikeI expect the Asians would probably cut a deal with the Australian Aboriginals to mine or use the resources in Australia.
Asians could cut the same deal with Australians as OTL Europeans cut with Africans in the nineteenth century. "You can sign this treaty that we are taking over your country or we can conquer you. Your choice." Alternatively, they can do who OTL Americans did and just run them out.
 

Teejay

Gone Fishin'
Northern Australia is semi-arid or has very poor soils, that is the reason why the Austronesians never colonized it. In OTL they colonized Papua New Guinea and the various Eastern islands of what is now Indonesia. Also rainfall varies a lot from year to year, because the ENSO cycle affects Australia very much. Plus Australia has the poorest soils of any continent, those are the reasons why the Aborigines never developed the intensive agriculture, which allows for the development of civilizations people on other continents developed.

The only region of Australia which is not affected by the ENSO cycle is in the South West corner of Western Australia in OTL it had a relatively dense Aboriginal population. There are fertile areas of South-Eastern Australia, however they are strongly under the sway of the ENSO cycle. The ENSO cycle means that one year can have lots of rainfall and the next very little.

*The ENSO cycle is the El-Nino/La Nina cycle.
 

Zachariah

Banned
They did IOTL. It's now known that the native Australians did in fact practice sedentary agriculture IOTL, with clear archaeological evidence that yams, native millet, ngardu and bush onions were sown by broadcast seeding, and a wide array of European explorers, drovers, pioneers and the like attesting that the natives planted and harvested vast fields of these crops. However, their lack of pottery and ceramics severely limited their methods of food preservation and storage to skin bags and wooden dishes, which had a far lower capacity, and were only capable of storing 50-60kg of grain at most, thus limiting the maximum population size of these observed sedentary Aboriginal farming villages to an average of 200-500 people. With pottery though, which would almost certainly come into being ITTL as it did in neolithic Japan, the capability to create true granaries, with storage capacities exceeding a ton, would facilitate the growth of these settlements from small villages to towns, and to cities; and thus, would have facilitated the transition of Aboriginal Australian civilization (centred in the Corners Region of eastern central Australia, in an arc from western NSW through south-west Queensland, north-east South Australia and the southeast of the Northern Territory) to an agro-pastoralist economy, along with the emergence of organized states and kingdoms. Basically, all you needed to have this happen was the introduction of pottery. Which would have been literally the first thing Chinese traders would introduce upon their arrival. No potatoes necessary.
 

Lusitania

Donor
If the goal is for Europeans to arrive in the area and find agricultural societies in Australia you need a POD of around 1000 AD for any group to establish a agricultural society in the right areas of Australia. Any group that settles in Australia will have failures as they discover what areas are good for agriculture and which are not. Plus having the population base to survive and expand.
 
They did IOTL. It's now known that the native Australians did in fact practice sedentary agriculture IOTL, with clear archaeological evidence that yams, native millet, ngardu and bush onions were sown by broadcast seeding, and a wide array of European explorers, drovers, pioneers and the like attesting that the natives planted and harvested vast fields of these crops. However, their lack of pottery and ceramics severely limited their methods of food preservation and storage to skin bags and wooden dishes, which had a far lower capacity, and were only capable of storing 50-60kg of grain at most, thus limiting the maximum population size of these observed sedentary Aboriginal farming villages to an average of 200-500 people. With pottery though, which would almost certainly come into being ITTL as it did in neolithic Japan, the capability to create true granaries, with storage capacities exceeding a ton, would facilitate the growth of these settlements from small villages to towns, and to cities; and thus, would have facilitated the transition of Aboriginal Australian civilization (centred in the Corners Region of eastern central Australia, in an arc from western NSW through south-west Queensland, north-east South Australia and the southeast of the Northern Territory) to an agro-pastoralist economy, along with the emergence of organized states and kingdoms. Basically, all you needed to have this happen was the introduction of pottery. Which would have been literally the first thing Chinese traders would introduce upon their arrival. No potatoes necessary.

But how many more people could that area, a desert, realistically support, given the soil? I think we need to make a distinction between "agricultural" peoples and peoples who practiced agriculture to the degree that they had a much larger population and societal complexity (like, say, the Eastern Woodlands in pre-Columbian North America). And although I'm not too familiar with these groups of Aboriginals, were their crops as valuable (in terms of nutrition) as those farmed by, say, the American Indians of Eastern Woodlands? Although given the range of those plants, which includes the Murray Valley and Riverina, the main center of this civilisation could be in that region with the Corners region reduced to little but a frontier (like the Mississippians and the Great Plains). There could be branches of this civilisation in the Kimberley and Northern Territory along the rivers, which would be where they are introduced to the wider world.

If we assume pottery takes root at 1 AD, how far do you think the Aboriginals might get by 1000 AD, especially considering they'll be whacked with epidemics from the Indonesians if/when they establish trade. Key to this would be domestication of various crops, like those acacia trees which supply a lot of protein in addition to firewood. A cultural exchange with Indonesia/New Guinea would supply some tropical crops like bananas, sugarcane, and taro as well as getting horses, cats, and other Asian domesticates.

Getting the Maori to arrive in New Zealand as soon as possible would be great. Getting kumara from the New World is very nice, and ideally the Maori could give some new sailing technology for the Aboriginals. Although the Maori might play a role akin to the Germanic peoples or Turkic peoples (or similar groups in many cultures from the Mongols to the Chichimecs) in raiding Aboriginal chiefdoms and states, since New Zealand has population limits given Maori agriculture (not sure how well the transmission of Aboriginal agriculture will work for Aotearoa). I'd expect many Australia states to be ruled by a Maori-descended ruling class. Although depending on how Aboriginal Australia evolves, the proto-Maori could end up meeting an island full of Australian Aboriginals when they arrive in the early 2nd millennia AD.
 
I once had the idea for an Indiana Jones style ripping yarn set in an alternative Australia where about 800 years before British settlement the son of Javanese traders who had converted to Islam was wash ashore in northern Australia and saved by the local aboriginals. Crediting Allah with his survival he vows to return and gift them with the holy word, with help of Macassan traders he makes it home where his parents hope to quench his religious zeal by supporting a Hajj to Mecca. However in Mecca the Sultan realizes he can build up his esteem in the eyes of the people & God as well as removing a potential trouble making nephew by sponsoring a return flotilla. The fleet with the nephew, the holy man and their followers arrive in northern Australia along with camels, goats, grains etc to create settlement called Port Darius. Several years after settlement there is a split in group with those more religiously inspired travelling south to build a madras & teach not just the Quran but the handling of camels. The Darians remaining seize control of the trepang trade, cut down the eucalyptus trees to burn to extract the oil from the leaves and enslave the locals to work in mines. After several generations the port of Darius is struck by a cyclone destroying its trading fleet, a slave revolt follows and soon the kingdom of Port Darius is just legend to the Muslim world like Prestor John to the Christians.

Isolated from rest of the world until 1813 when Europeans cross the Blues mountains to find vast inland trading routes with camel trains contacting small farming and mining communities. The camel trains would be run by the Kalkadoon a tribe original inhabiting the north west of Queensland http://cherneesutton.com.au/kalkadoon-history.html.
 
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