AHC: Make a Polynesian Empire in Australia

With any POD you wish, I aint picky, make Australia the center of a Polynesian Empire. If you want use a lil ASB to make Aussie more fertile, idc, but mostly stick to plausibility please :)
 
The first (three?) migration(s?) into Australia fail, and the land is completely settled by the Lapita culture for the first time in 1500 B.C. In the tropical north, their agriculture succeeds in creating large, settled communities which develop into kingdoms that eventually conquer each-other, forming a large empire in the northeast.
 
With any POD you wish, I aint picky, make Australia the center of a Polynesian Empire. If you want use a lil ASB to make Aussie more fertile, idc, but mostly stick to plausibility please :)

Polynesians had the means and the tech to go to Australia long before Europe had any open ocean sea faring capabilities.

The issue I am having is a Polynesian empire. The closest empire you got is Tongan Empire. A Polynesian empire aint impossible, but you need one man to fuse it all which requires creating a very ambitious, megalomaniac Polynesian.
 
Polynesians had the means and the tech to go to Australia long before Europe had any open ocean sea faring capabilities.

The issue I am having is a Polynesian empire. The closest empire you got is Tongan Empire. A Polynesian empire aint impossible, but you need one man to fuse it all which requires creating a very ambitious, megalomaniac Polynesian.

That and the Hawaiian Kingdom which likely would have been more expansionistic if there had been more islands in the vicinity and before European expansion began to curtail Hawaiian power.
 
The first (three?) migration(s?) into Australia fail, and the land is completely settled by the Lapita culture for the first time in 1500 B.C. In the tropical north, their agriculture succeeds in creating large, settled communities which develop into kingdoms that eventually conquer each-other, forming a large empire in the northeast.

Why would you need the first migrations to fail? Wont you want people there to (conquer) and have as manpower? Unless you mean no humans at all and thus possibly no man-made brush fires systematically desertifying the interior (if that theory is being subscribed to)
 
As a person that lives in the city with more Polynesians than any other in the world, I think I'm (unofficially) qualified to add in my two cents:

-Polynesian culture is EXTREMELY decentralising. You can't have an empire without a certain level of centralisation. Even the Tongan Empire wasn't an empire. It was a hegemony, that's it.

-One possible way to help would be to make the Easter Island script survive and spread throughout Polynesia, which would allow something similar to law to develop, without a chieftain to enforce it.

-Some form of religious zeal could also help. Think a maritime jihad, like the early Muslims, but in the Pacific Ocean. It would allow a higher loyalty to take precedent over local tribal/clan groupings.

-I do think that the Polynesians would be capable of militarily defeating at least coastal Australian Aborigines. I see the Aborigines as being potentially adept at guerrilla warfare, armed with throwing spears and good knowledge of terrain, but the Polynesians are bigger, stronger, and surprisingly imaginative with blunt and 'spiked' (shark-tooth etc) weaponry.
 
Why would you need the first migrations to fail? Wont you want people there to (conquer) and have as manpower? Unless you mean no humans at all and thus possibly no man-made brush fires systematically desertifying the interior (if that theory is being subscribed to)

The Polynesians very rarely went about conquering land which other people already lived on, preferring to settle virgin land. So, making Australia virgin land (not that likely, but not impossible) would lead to the Polynesians settling it-as opposed to OTL, where they seemed to have landed, dropped off their dogs, and skedaddled.

Hrvatskiwi said:
As a person that lives in the city with more Polynesians than any other in the world

Now I'm curious, which city is that?
 
A storm causes the Maori boats to land somehwere in NSW (instead of OTL New Zealand) from where they start build an empire spanning from Cairns to Melbourne and use the Aboriginals as slaves to build pyramids and all that civilization stuff?
 
A storm causes the Maori boats to land somehwere in NSW (instead of OTL New Zealand) from where they start build an empire spanning from Cairns to Melbourne and use the Aboriginals as slaves to build pyramids and all that civilization stuff?

It's an interesting idea, but while the Maori had farming they did not have germs to give them a biowarfare advantage over the aborigines, and with an initial colonization group would not have a population advantage over them.

That said, coming from a tradition with chiefs they could potentially organize themselves better for warfare than their Aborigine neighbors, which in turn could give them an edge in establishing themselves in the new land from which they could conquer.
 
I thought it was accepted that the Maori were likely to have made it to Australia, but failed to make any impact or settle. Maori settlement in New Zealand also apparently took some centuries to take hold after exploration. In New Zealand, it is now thought that Maori gradually colonised, not in one big fleet, but in many different voyages, from a collection of islands.

Maori, whilst aggressive by the time Britain came on the scene, do not necessarily have numbers or technology sufficient to make up for lack of numbers if they wish to force a settlement. In New Zealand, they were not opposed.

If they approach eastern Australia in the same way, then we will likely have several canoes arrive with men. Will this be enough to defeat local Aborigines and carve off land? Maybe. But surely it will be pretty similar to the Vikings in North America. Any competition, even if lower tech, will likely be effective because there are more of them and they are acclimatised.

Maori are likely to need ongoing contact for some time to ferry sufficient men and women to establish a large enough settlement, even if they capture slaves.
 
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