AHC: Have more nations colonize Australia

CaliGuy

Banned
Also, if you want split colonization of Australia, what about having China give parts of Australia to its various vassal states (Korea, Vietnam, et cetera) while keeping other parts of Australia for itself?
 
The problem with China its that it wasn't a colonist nation. In fact, most of their expension were continental.
The Zheng He trips were more about opening trade route and showing off their power to already known nations then discovery for colonization. For the discovery of Australia, well, China would have needed to go through already existing kingdoms in Indonesia and, basically, discover a land without much advantage.
 

CaliGuy

Banned
The problem with China its that it wasn't a colonist nation. In fact, most of their expension were continental.
The Zheng He trips were more about opening trade route and showing off their power to already known nations then discovery for colonization. For the discovery of Australia, well, China would have needed to go through already existing kingdoms in Indonesia and, basically, discover a land without much advantage.
Why can't China have an Emperor who is more open-minded in regards to colonialism, though?
 

Zachariah

Banned
What about having the equivalent of Boer Republics springing up in Australia? Or perhaps even a Scottish colonial effort, with the Scottish Darien Company getting involved? IOTL, the Darien Compnay was awarded a monopoly of Scottish trade to India, Africa and the Americas upon its creation in 1695, similar to English charter companies' monopolies, along with extraordinary sovereign rights and temporary exemptions from taxation. The governors were divided between those residing and meeting in Edinburgh and those in London, amongst whom were both Scots and Englishmen, and they were also divided by business intentions; some intended to trade in India and on the African coast, as an effective competitor to the English East India Company, while others were drawn to William Paterson's Darien scheme, which ultimately prevailed. Perhaps, in an ATL in which the Darien Company joined the ranks of the East India Trading Companies instead, turned a profit instead of draining Scotland of an estimated quarter of its liquid assets, and played a key role in encouraging the country not to accept the 1707 Act of Union ITTL, Cook could be leading a Scottish expedition to Australia, and the Scottish, English, Dutch, Portuguese and Spanish could eventually compete with one another in a colonial scramble for Australia (paralleling the Scramble for Africa, and potentially viewed as being part of it ITTL) instead?
 
Why ? They were in Philippines OTL, so they simply could go southward.
Because there was nothing there for them early enough when they had that ability. By the time Australia is found and mapped and colonized the Spanish are a dying empire and the British and Dutch won't let them set up. Even if you get a Spanish colony in the late 1700s one of the two will take it in the 1800s or Germany will buy it in 1898-1900 period.
 
This is a decent map of who went where, when. However it doesn't include the 1627 voyage of François Thijssen along the southern coast to present day Ceduna, nor does it speculate on the theory of Portuguese discovery in 1521-24 of the east coast all the way to present day Warrnambool Victoria.

Australia_discoveries_by_Europeans_before_1813_en.png


As can be seen there is easily scope for the Spaniard Torres to discover NE Australia in 1606, de Houtmann having a better look at Perth in 1616, Thijssen making it to the fertile areas near Adelaide, Tasman discovering the Torres St in 1642 or 1644 and maybe the Englishman Dampier doing a bit more in 1699. These discoveries could have changed the course of colonisation, opening up the way for some of the suggestions people have made earlier in this thread. But without expanded knowledge I doubt colonisation can be much different.
 
What about a freebooter? Could you have a situation where a charismatic upstart with a personal army and delusions of grandeur tries to take a piece of Australia for himself?
 
This is a decent map of who went where, when. However it doesn't include the 1627 voyage of François Thijssen along the southern coast to present day Ceduna, nor does it speculate on the theory of Portuguese discovery in 1521-24 of the east coast all the way to present day Warrnambool Victoria.

Australia_discoveries_by_Europeans_before_1813_en.png


As can be seen there is easily scope for the Spaniard Torres to discover NE Australia in 1606, de Houtmann having a better look at Perth in 1616, Thijssen making it to the fertile areas near Adelaide, Tasman discovering the Torres St in 1642 or 1644 and maybe the Englishman Dampier doing a bit more in 1699. These discoveries could have changed the course of colonisation, opening up the way for some of the suggestions people have made earlier in this thread. But without expanded knowledge I doubt colonisation can be much different.
And the Spanish knew of Virginia before the English, and the French knew of NY harbor before the Dutch. Exploring and colonizing are two different things. For colonizing you need a reason such as a strategic position, mineral or agricultural resources that are rare or scarce, and you need a way to protect. As I pointed out about why a Spanish colony wouldn't last longer than 1900 at best with a hand of God protecting it, and more likely lost during the Napoleonic Wars (and please no f'ing talk about butterflies and how Australia can make Napoleon not exist!)
 
And the Spanish knew of Virginia before the English, and the French knew of NY harbor before the Dutch. Exploring and colonizing are two different things. For colonizing you need a reason such as a strategic position, mineral or agricultural resources that are rare or scarce, and you need a way to protect. As I pointed out about why a Spanish colony wouldn't last longer than 1900 at best with a hand of God protecting it, and more likely lost during the Napoleonic Wars (and please no f'ing talk about butterflies and how Australia can make Napoleon not exist!)

How valuable was sandalwood during the 1600's? At first glance I thought that a Dutch and Portuguese outpost in the north was ridiculous, but there does seem to be sandalwood to harvest in northern Australia.

That said, sandalwood is slow to grow, so this colony would probably fall apart after if there are no more resources to exploit.
 
And the Spanish knew of Virginia before the English, and the French knew of NY harbor before the Dutch. Exploring and colonizing are two different things. For colonizing you need a reason such as a strategic position, mineral or agricultural resources that are rare or scarce, and you need a way to protect. As I pointed out about why a Spanish colony wouldn't last longer than 1900 at best with a hand of God protecting it, and more likely lost during the Napoleonic Wars (and please no f'ing talk about butterflies and how Australia can make Napoleon not exist!)

My point was that the Spanish or any other group can't colonise what they don't know about, and until 1770 what any European knew about Australia was not worth colonising. However if Australia was better known in the 1600s then hairbrained schemes such as the Darrien Scheme or the Dutch schemes Jurgen mentioned or others that may have been seriously proposed but dropped due to lack of prospects may have been launched at Australia with varying degrees of success.

What happens to them afterwards I have no idea and would depend on all sorts of specific circumstances.
 
How valuable was sandalwood during the 1600's? At first glance I thought that a Dutch and Portuguese outpost in the north was ridiculous, but there does seem to be sandalwood to harvest in northern Australia.

That said, sandalwood is slow to grow, so this colony would probably fall apart after if there are no more resources to exploit.

WA%20sandalwood%20map.png


Soon after the OTL sandalwood boom all sandalwood trees within 100 miles of Perth were harvested, so despite what this map says there were sandalwood trees in economic quantities around Perth.
 
WA%20sandalwood%20map.png


Soon after the OTL sandalwood boom all sandalwood trees within 100 miles of Perth were harvested, so despite what this map says there were sandalwood trees in economic quantities around Perth.

This source says there is sandalwood all over Western Australia, but I suspect that in any large amount it is probably rather rare north of the area you posted. But it must be present to a degree where Europeans could find it. So maybe with that, some hope they'd find the gold and diamonds further inland while hunting for sandalwood/trading with Aboriginals.

At that point, I don't know what they'd do. Probably a mixture of conscripting the Aboriginals to mine for them along with bringing in Indonesians/whoever they could find.
 
This is an easy one; just make the early colonization proposals be implemented.
In 1717, Jean Pierre Purry, who was in service of VOC, suggested that Nuytsland be colonized. His arguments were convincing and so his proposal was accepted.
In 1721, an expedition under his command sailed from Batavia and it landed on the site of OTL Eucla, establishing settlement of Purryburg. Another settlement was named Zwaardecroon in commemoration of the current governor of Dutch East Indies.
 
This is an easy one; just make the early colonization proposals be implemented.
In 1717, Jean Pierre Purry, who was in service of VOC, suggested that Nuytsland be colonized. His arguments were convincing and so his proposal was accepted.
In 1721, an expedition under his command sailed from Batavia and it landed on the site of OTL Eucla, establishing settlement of Purryburg. Another settlement was named Zwaardecroon in commemoration of the current governor of Dutch East Indies.

I can't imagine that would do well. Eucla seems like Darien scheme-esque "We have no clue where we are, so let's put something down and hope it succeeds". Whereas a better Dutch plan would colonise anything from Cape Leeuwin (although I believe Albany has the best port in Western Australia before human improvements to nowadays Perth/Fremantle) to the Pilbara, since the point of a Dutch Australia colony is to aid the VOC in Indonesia in anyway possible.
 
Easiest way is to delay British colonisation. Say no 7 years war, or otherwise a situation post war which leaves Britain with little risk of an American revolution until at least the 1800's. No ARW, Britain can continue sending convicts to parts of North America. Combine this with a later but functionally similar French Revolution/major European war that distracts Britain for a while, and which perhaps ends with France and maybe some other powers more capable of contending with British power. Fast forward to say the 1820's/30's and Britain will be going colonising but it's not hard to see the French or even the Dutch taking a piece for strategic position/colonial prestige. Not too hard to see an early Germany or even Italy get a chunk of the dry bits with the right TL. Britain probably will still get the best bits, but there are lots of places to build settler colonies in Australia most of which will become pretty wealthy thanks to gold later in the 19th C.

This is all well too late. By this point both the Spanish and the Dutch are on a decline. It's only really the French that can be an alternative to the British, and they have a revolution coming. Prisoners or no prisoners, the British were interested in the area, and even if they delay colonisation, they will speed it up rapidly if anyone starts moving in the area. And they are far more able to project naval power on the other side of the world than pretty much every European power.
 

Zachariah

Banned
The easiest way to go about this would be by having as early a POD as possible, and by having the Europeans establish their own spheres of influence in Australia by proxy. The Makassan trepangers had been visiting N.W. Australia. for centuries before the European colonialists arrived; 'Marege' was the Makassan name for Arnhem Land (meaning literally "Wild Country"), from the Cobourg Peninsula to Groote Eylandt in the Gulf of Carpentaria, while 'Kayu Jawa' was their name for the Kimberley region of Western Australia. The Makassan crews established themselves at various semi-permanent locations on the coast, to boil and dry the trepang, before making the return voyages home, four months later, to sell their cargoes to Chinese merchants; negotiating with the Aborigines for the right to fish certain waters. The exchange also involved the trade of cloth, tobacco, metal axes and knives, rice and gin. The Yolgnu of Arnhem Land also traded turtle-shell, pearls and cypress pine, and some were employed as trepangers- rock art and bark paintings confirm that some Aboriginal workers willingly accompanied the Makassar back to their homeland of South Sulawesi, across the Arafura Sea. So, for the POD, how about having a few of those Makassan merchant pioneers establish permanent settlements at their colonial bases in the Marege and Kayu Jawa regions of Australia back in the early 1500s; starting to establish a varied collection of competing sultanates, principalities and kingdoms of their own, as well as significant inter-island and inter-continental trade, either just when or just before the first European traders begin to arrive?

If the situation in Australia (Northern and Western Australia, at the very least) is an extension of the situation in the East Indies, then the Europeans' colonial efforts on Australia could follow a similar path; with the East India Trading Companies competing to establish exclusive relationships with the most powerful sultanates, primarily through the use of soft power, possibly engaging in proxy wars backing their respective partners, and establishing their own defined spheres of influence that way? In such a TL, where the Makassans had established permanent trading settlements rather than transitory trade posts on the Australian mainland, both the Portuguese and the Dutch would've almost certainly got in on the act from the off, with the contest to colonize Australia effectively becoming the Southern theatre of their quests to dominate the source of the lucrative spice trade in the early 16th century, and to extend the missionary efforts of the Catholic and Protestant churches respectively. And of course, once either the Makassans or the Europeans start pushing inland from these northern outposts, discovering the world's highest concentration of diamonds in the Kimberley/Kayu Jawa, and some of the most productive goldfields yet uncovered (at that stage) in Arnhem Land/Marege, there's no way that you wouldn't have gotten a colonial rush to secure trade monopolies over these valuable new lands. Enter the Dutch, Portuguese, Spanish, British and French; and given how vast and relatively under-populated Australia is, it wouldn't be out of the question for all of the colonial players who decided to get involved in Australian colonies to maintain their grasps on Australian colonial territory to the very end, in a manner akin to the Portuguese clinging onto East Timor IOTL.
 
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