AHC: Prevent European discovery of America

A challange to AH.Com. Find a way to prevent untill...well lets just say until 1900, European discovery of the America's.

You will note that I say European, and do not preclude the idea of the Islamic world somehow finding it, or an Asian nation from doing so.
 
Do the Ottomans count as European? the icelandics and Greenlanders? A cross straights Iberian-Magreb state?

Also, you'd need to utterly destroy innovation in shipbuilding.
 
The Ottomans don't count. While they were a major part of European politics and the dynamics of Europe in their time, I don't consider them to be European.

Icelanders and Greenlandics count.

So basically a Muslim ruled Spain (or a muslin state controlling parts of Iberia)...sure, that doesn't count.
 
Sorry, I really don''t see how it's possible to prevent some Breton or Irish or Norse fishermen from finding the new world until 1900.

Also, how is a Muslim Spain or The Ottoman Empire at it's height (a largely Balkan based state) less European then Spain or the ERE?
 
Sorry, I really don''t see how it's possible to prevent some Breton or Irish or Norse fishermen from finding the new world until 1900.

Also, how is a Muslim Spain or The Ottoman Empire at it's height (a largely Balkan based state) less European then Spain or the ERE?

Arbitrary distinction between Europeans and peoples who just happen to live on the same (sub)continent.
 
err...alien space bat plague that turns all Europeans into drooling idiots? Nothing less will do. Shipbuilding, nutrition and navigation had reached the point by the 1610s where, even if no land is assumed and it's all open water, a straight shot from Europe to China becomes profitable. So it will be attempted. Knocking pretty much all science back 300 years would require a pretty impressive apocalypse.
 

PhilippeO

Banned
Can shipbuilding and navigation tech be delayed ?

it seems unrelated to general tech development. Vikings and Polynesian had advanced navigation tech on relative primitive state. Roman and China had more developed on other ways, but their navigation and shipbuilding is not as advanced. So can European go Renaissance, Enlightenment, and Industrial Rev without advanced navigation and shipbuilding ?
 
Sorry, I really don''t see how it's possible to prevent some Breton or Irish or Norse fishermen from finding the new world until 1900.
Something did prevent them from finding the new world all the millennia till 1400.

The question is, what do you mean with "1900". General level of technology? Chronological time from which PoD?

For example, with a PoD past 476, in OTL if we for example count middle ages to 1492 then it took 1016 years to discover America. Could we either speed up the recovery from 5th century crisis, so that America is discovered in 992, or else stretch out the middle ages so that America is discovered in 1992?

I believe that there was a book with the premise that in 1942, a portal to alternative universe was found - where America was undiscovered as a consequence of Alexander having survived in 323 BC. Quite plausible.

But precisely what would Europe be like shortly before they do discover America?
 
The Europeans where looking for an easy to access China and thought that sailing west would bring them to the Far East, so the easiest way is to make the land route easier for merchants.

A strong kingdom from Persia to China would allow this (provided they where freiendly or neutral to Europeans) as it would cut down the banit attacks etc.
 
The Europeans where looking for an easy to access China and thought that sailing west would bring them to the Far East, so the easiest way is to make the land route easier for merchants.

A strong kingdom from Persia to China would allow this (provided they where freiendly or neutral to Europeans) as it would cut down the banit attacks etc.

And Europeans would still seek to cut out the middlemen and/or find a faster way, or discover America in pursuit of something else.

Europe is too interested in exploiting the resources of the world to not sail west in search of opportunities at some point before 1900, and developing shipbuilding and ship sailing is too useful.
 
And Europeans would still seek to cut out the middlemen and/or find a faster way, or discover America in pursuit of something else.

Europe is too interested in exploiting the resources of the world to not sail west in search of opportunities at some point before 1900, and developing shipbuilding and ship sailing is too useful.
Yet the Romans did not repeat the Phoenician circumnavigation of Africa, nor Hanno´s voyage to Western Africa, nor colonize Canaries, nor discover Madeira.

Whatever ship technologies were available by 15th century appeared because of... what?
 
Yet the Romans did not repeat the Phoenician circumnavigation of Africa, nor Hanno´s voyage to Western Africa, nor colonize Canaries, nor discover Madeira.

Whatever ship technologies were available by 15th century appeared because of... what?

The Romans don't have much reason to, being Mediterranean-centric.

And they appeared because of commerce.

And the "borrow a good idea when we see it" helped that along, but ultimately, it was the result of developing commerce and old designs not being sufficient.

It would be hard for those not to eventually develop in a situation where the Baltic, the North Sea, and the Atlantic are important waterways.
 
The Romans don't have much reason to, being Mediterranean-centric.

And they appeared because of commerce.

And the "borrow a good idea when we see it" helped that along, but ultimately, it was the result of developing commerce and old designs not being sufficient.

It would be hard for those not to eventually develop in a situation where the Baltic, the North Sea, and the Atlantic are important waterways.

The first inventors of galleons and volta do mar were Castile and Portugal. Atlantic mattered for them, but so did Mediterranean - while North Sea and Baltic were irrelevant for them.

Could Nero or Hadrian have commissioned School of Sagres?
 
The first inventors of galleons and volta do mar were Castile and Portugal. Atlantic mattered for them, but so did Mediterranean - while North Sea and Baltic were irrelevant for them.

Could Nero or Hadrian have commissioned School of Sagres?

But the development up to galleons is the result of European shipbuilding in general developing, not just Iberian shipbuilding.

Even if Spain and Portugal never amount to anything here, you have the other ocean-curious powers - Cabot sailed for England, for instance.

And school of what?
 
About the only way to prevent European discovery of America is to have something not considered European (e.g. some Muslim state(s)) to occupy the entire (or next to entire) Western European coastline.
Years of Rice and Salt, IIRC, did a good take on this, so here you have your challenge.
Coincidentally, if it is done without involving plagues, you can still have *America being (re-)discovered (by Europeans this time) just after 1900 - an alt-Russia expanding east just a little slower than IOTL reaches the *Pacific by the late 1800s, and the *Bering Strait in 1901 :D (And they can still have time to establish an alt-Alyeska before they meet the Muslims going there from the other side - should make a fun, if a little ASBish, TL, and coincidentally fulfill that funny idea (don't remember what particular member had it) of Muslims exploring Canadian Arctic regions... :):))
 
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