AHC: Have the Far East rise to power and colonize Europe, Africa, and the Americas

Ellis MacVey

Donor
Okay, so your challenge is basically to have the Far East (as in Eastern Asia) replace Western Europe as the land of great imperialist powers and the metaphorical center of technological and cultural progress (before hopefully eventually realizing imperialism sucks, decolonizing everything, and letting the rest of the world catch up).

Bonus points for creativity while still having an imperialistic Far East.
 

CountDVB

Scorpio Retindar said:
Okay, so your challenge is basically to have the Far East (as in Eastern Asia) replace Western Europe as the land of great imperialist powers and the metaphorical center of technological and cultural progress (before hopefully eventually realizing imperialism sucks, decolonizing everything, and letting the rest of the world catch up).

Bonus points for creativity while still having an imperialistic Far East.
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China would definitely to need to have a change in management to colonize the Americas and even then, it'd be difficult given how the Rockies and the Andes present problems though reaching Mexico would help out spread a bit better. Not sure on the rest of the nations.

Africa is a very low chance because of proximity and closeness though it could be possible for some Southeast Asia thalassocracy to maybe go reach South Africa.
 

stevej713

Scorpio Retindar said:
Okay, so your challenge is basically to have the Far East (as in Eastern Asia) replace Western Europe as the land of great imperialist powers and the metaphorical center of technological and cultural progress (before hopefully eventually realizing imperialism sucks, decolonizing everything, and letting the rest of the world catch up).

Bonus points for creativity while still having an imperialistic Far East.
Click to expand...
This seems to be a popular alternate history scenario. I once thought of a timeline where Japan successfully conquers Korea and subsequently expands into the East Indies and Manchuria, with possible outposts in Australia, Alaska and California. However, an Asian country colonizing Europe is probably ASB. European traders came to Asia because they were poor and Asian countries had extremely desirable goods. I can't think of anything that would entice an Asian country to come to Europe.

As for other countries like China - it's a huge stretch to fathom a Chinese dynasty conquering pieces of territory thousands of miles away when there's plenty of space to conquer next door. For a while, Qing China could definitely be considered a center of technology, culture, and imperialism, only their influence was spread by land, not by sea.
 

Deleted member 90949

stevej713 said:
Asian country colonizing Europe is probably ASB.
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In OTL the Mongols conquered large parts of eastern Europe.

stevej713 said:
I can't think of anything that would entice an Asian country to come to Europe.
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Any time the issue of colonizing Europe comes up on this site the question of what foreign powers would want usually comes to the following: Timber, coal, tin, slaves, arable land, and tributaries states.
 

Ivan Lupo

If the Tibetan empire was able to conquer the regions north of them and sit on the lucrative trade routes, especially the Silk Road, that could provide some impetus for China to look beyond in a different direction. However, there are a lot of resource-rich lands not that far over the seas, especially in the Indonesian and Philippine islands.
 

Petros >Peter Fergus<

Atterdag said:
Polynesians are our best bet.
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They could develop a trading network that stretches across the Pacific, and this draws the Far Eastern powers into contact with the Americas.

Hawaii might do well here as the metropole of an empire, if they stay independent enough following the initial contact with the Far Eastern powers, they could go on to have trading posts everywhere with an unassailable home base.
 

Legofan4

Metropolis45 said:
In OTL the Mongols conquered large parts of eastern Europe.



Any time the issue of colonizing Europe comes up on this site the question of what foreign powers would want usually comes to the following: Timber, coal, tin, slaves, arable land, and tributaries states.
Click to expand...

Which could all be gotten so much closer to home as to ask again why?
 

Arkenfolm

Create a civilization on the West Coast that discovers the Old World, but one not powerful enough to resist solid batches of gold-hungry conquistadors. Although it would be connected to the Asian civilizations since the start since they'd be in contact with Old World peoples as far south as the Ainu for a while before any actual conquering takes place. Assuming the "conquering" isn't something more akin to the Chinese in Southeast Asia. Maybe it would instead be more like Japan's plans to invade Taiwan and the Philippines but aimed at native civilizations they know of instead.
 

pompejus

The problem with any such scenario is that European colonisation happened because of very specific combination of geographic, economic, diplomatic, technologic, sociologic and even relegious reasons. Those are very hard to replicate in other parts of the world. I am not saying that Europe is destined to rule the world. Quite the opposite. Europe was very lucky. it got what it It had just the right circumstances at the right time. Personaly I doubt that if for examplethe Roman Empire had survived Europe would have been so succesful colinising the world. If North Africa hadn't become Islamic, Europe wouldn't have been as succesful, etc.

In the end colonisation happened more or less by accident. Basicly what the Europeans wanted was to trade directly with Asia and that is why they managed to colonise the world. In asia money was to be made and the Europeans invested a lot to get that money, including funding Columbus' terrible idea. Colonisation of the Americas was so succesful, because the natives died so quickly because of the diseases, leaving easy open land for the Europeans. Africa was more or less ignored for centuries, because there was nothing to get in Africa. Even African slaves were the third choice for Europeans (using native Americans and Europeans failed, thus the third choice was to get the Africans).

All this is very hard to replicate for the Asians. There is no incentive for them to go to Europe or Africa (too little to gain). The Americas would be an option, if geography isn't against them. Crossing the Pacific from Asia is a lot harder than crossing the Atlantic from Europe.

So in the end, no I don't think it will happen. Asia can still dominate the world, of course. Technologically and socialy they were on par with Europe. So they could have, just like the Europeans did. They just would do it very differently than the Europeans did.
 
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