ASB with the POD being 1400. There's no way to realistically screw Europe that hard. Even if you keep the Portuguese, Dutch, and Spanish out in the early years and boost up places like China and India, there's no real way of preventing Europeans from sailing down to Asia and picking off minor powers there. You can minimize it, but not stop it entirely.
AHC: Stop All European Colonization in Asia
- Thread starter AtreusHashim
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Lusitania
Donor
But places like India and south east Asia had extensive trade networks between different parts of Asia and to Europe/Middle East. The Western Europeans at first simply took over those routes, the colonization came later.
Which is why I think the best bet is for the Europeans to maintain their position as the middlemen par excellance, and let the Asian countries do the colonizing.
Picture some treaty where, say, the Portuguese get special privileges in the Mughal Empire (or just in specific ports). Then, some Mughal Emperor decides he wants to conquer Indonesia, so he hires the Portuguese to provide naval support, with the understanding that their privileges would be extended into the new territory. Of course, they could still be major players in the internal politics of the Empire.
Could be more lucrative than “proper” colonialism, which was usually the least profitable aspect of the colonial trade empires. Didn’t the EIC lose money hand over fist the more they tried to govern India?
To be completely honest I hadn't thought about it that much. I figure when Macau was technically administered by the Portuguese on behalf of the Chinese Emperor (paying rent to China and such) it's not colonization, just a leased trade post. After 1887 it is a colony however as it is ruled by Portugal independently. Reading through replies it looks like that was not the assumption most people made.
Man it's been one day, I'm a grad student and have other stuff to do as well.
To my thinking Macau was just a trading post leased from the Chinese until the treaty in the 1880s that put it under Portuguese sovereignty. But Goa was a colony from the start as it was forcibly seized after a defeat of the local ruler. Logistically the difference might be quite small but I think the semantics of the thing are important in defining it's status.
Depends on how you measure it. By some metrics it wasn't until the 1700s that the Europeans had clearly gained the upper hand.
No worries
And this is the problem. The Europeans can be kept out of China and Japan and the Mughal Empire but it's hard to keep them out of every little bit of the Kleinstaaterei in the Indonesian archipelago, Philippines, etc. is very difficult.
Personally I don't think so, most of their land (in OTL) was in Asia and the culture was Persianate. Definitely debatable though. For the purposes of the challenge let's assume no because I don't know how you do this without them.
Is there a way to have Asian nations dominate in their own sphere to the exclusion of the Europeans? Like Europeans still trade in the East but don't establish colonies because there's either no room or the profitable locations have already been taken under the control of Chinese, Indians, Japanese, Oman etc?
Deleted member 160141
Nope. Not without major changes to Confucian doctrine and impossible changes to Indian politics. More on that in a later post.
The kleinstaaterei are weak, resource-rich, and they don't have the real protection of big overlords like China and Mughal India; they're just too far away and neither big power is naval-focused (India because geography means their only major enemies are always in India, and China because Confucian bureaucracy is opposed to naval expansion and antithetical to the major motivation for naval expansion: mercantile trade).
Ideally, the local big powers reform to match the European model and only lag behind by 200-300 years. However, at the time they would just see no need for it; as far as they're concerned, foreign islands are changing hands but the spice still flows. They won't realize the military potential of these islands, they won't know about European future plans, and they won't find expansion along the European model economical at that time.
At best, the kleinstaaterei alone go to European hands directly, with the Europeans getting heavily involved with the politics of local continental powers like Burma or Vietnam.
Still, it would be nice to see Burma, Siam, Korea and China industrializing along the lines of Japan, hopefully with minimal ideological contamination from Western religions (Christianity, republicanism-democratism, Marxism, etc).
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Lusitania
Donor
But I not talking about Ottoman Empire from iotl that had its expansion and trade stopped by the Portuguese. I talking about if the Western Europeans not show up they be colonizers. They considered themselves European do fo you consider them also European? Therefore requiring they not continue expanding and colonizing
Deleted member 160141
And you don't think the Europeans would take exception to that? After all, they still have the better navies no matter what you do by 1400, so they'll go after the islands no matter what. And for that, I'm not sure even the Ming could -- or would be bothered to -- do anything.
Europeans first traveled to Asia for the various spices but stayed for the cotton, silk,tea & porcelain.
The overland spice/silk trade route went via the middle east and could be easily block during disagreements between the European Christians & the Muslim Ottoman empire.
If the spice route could come safely via the southern Caucasus region into Europe there would no need to going around Africa to trade or if India had remained united empire it would have been less likely to have been conquered piece by piece and been a barrier to european expansion into other parts of Asia or made a direct trade corridor with Europe.
The overland spice/silk trade route went via the middle east and could be easily block during disagreements between the European Christians & the Muslim Ottoman empire.
If the spice route could come safely via the southern Caucasus region into Europe there would no need to going around Africa to trade or if India had remained united empire it would have been less likely to have been conquered piece by piece and been a barrier to european expansion into other parts of Asia or made a direct trade corridor with Europe.
Gotta disagree on the land route being able to replace the sea route - the costs of trading by sea are so much lower than by land, eventually someone is going to do it.
Philippines is doable, have the Bruneians successfully subjugate the Visayan states prior to the Spanish.