AHC/WI: Variola Minor brought to the New World instead of Smallpox?

[The Admiral Hook]

The biggest hurdle is that the timing would have to be just right. Amerindian societies would need to come in contact with a carrier of Variola minor, and then not come into contact with any carriers of Variola major for several decades, so that the first disease has time to sweep into the interior and through most populations before the second gets there.

Early failed European expedition to the New World, perhaps, with the expedition's failure causing several decades to pass before another is attempted?

Alright, then...

Let's say a Marinid ship arrives in the New World in the 1450's, not entirely on accident. It is manned by dissenters and ships from the Maghreb are ordered to pursue it "to China and back if need be." Having been commandeered by the dissenters quickly it is laden with trading supplies, food and seed, some animals with feed but not many and a handful of penal slaves...*

It also contains a passenger or two with Variola Minor.

Having no friendly port nearby, being mercilessly pursued, and following a "vision" from Allah to their leader, the ship travels bravely north confident that they will be under the protection of God and a safe haven will be found.

Having gone northwest for a time, the trade winds and currents brig them into the Caribbean and they make a few landings to find friendly settlement. After some ugly run ins with the Carib and Taino they finally make friendly although cold contact with the Maya, before moving inland to Tenochtitlan.

Butterflies in the old world are stifled and discovery and contact go as OTL, except the peoples of the Caribbean, Cuba, the Yucatan, and as far south as the Inca have been infected with Variola Minor.

What happens next?

*Yes, this is a TL idea I'm working out, by the way.

 

[Richard V]

If it doesn't become endemic then the Amerindians will have only one generation of immunity. By the time Cortez arrives 60+ years later few natives alive would have any resistance against variola major, so nothing would change from the current timeline.

OTOH if it does become endemic then this is a major POD. The natives would have immunity to smallpox probably better than the Europeans. The initial outbreak that devastated the Aztecs and Incas would have little effect. There would be no Spanish conquest of the New World in the early 16th century. But as more and more of them arrive to settle and trade they would bring dozens of other communicable diseases. Big ones like measles and typhus, influenza and zoological diseases will eventually cause a similar mass die off. But chances are there would be significantly more Amerindians alive at the end of it. Even if we're talking about losing 80% of the population instead of 95%. That's still several times more natives around.

The relatively slower pace of Spanish conquests could also mean a different political outcome in Spanish America.

 

[twovultures]

What happens next?

The Caribbean is still conquered IMO. Without the initial shock of smallpox, the islands with variola minor may have a larger native population, but this population was still pretty small, divided, and had no precedent (aside perhaps from your Marinid mariners) in dealing with Conquistadors. However, there may be more Native influence that works its way into these island's Afro-European cultures.

The Mayans and Aztecs, however, are a very different kettle of fish. Without smallpox to give him an edge, *Cortes likely fails even with his *Tlaxcalan allies. With the conquista of Mexico butterflied, Pizarro likely would never make a go at the Inca empire.

Malaria and measles will still weaken the native states, and eventually they are likely to be conquered by European powers(though the Inca could very well survive by ceding the low ground and defending the Andes). With this, the Spanish treasure fleet is butterflied away (or at least greatly delayed), giving the Hapsburgs even more massive debt headaches and possibly saving both Spain and Ming China from inflation.

By the time Europeans get around to conquering Mesoamerica, the international balance of power may have shifted and entirely different Atlantic powers from Spain would be doing the conquest. We may get a situation like the former colonies in southeast Asia, with the colonies giving way to majority native states still practicing native religions despite the era of colonial domination.

 

[The Admiral Hook]

The Caribbean is still conquered IMO. Without the initial shock of smallpox, the islands with variola minor may have a larger native population, but this population was still pretty small, divided, and had no precedent (aside perhaps from your Marinid mariners) in dealing with Conquistadors. However, there may be more Native influence that works its way into these island's Afro-European cultures.

The Mayans and Aztecs, however, are a very different kettle of fish. Without smallpox to give him an edge, *Cortes likely fails even with his *Tlaxcalan allies. With the conquista of Mexico butterflied, Pizarro likely would never make a go at the Inca empire.

Malaria and measles will still weaken the native states, and eventually they are likely to be conquered by European powers(though the Inca could very well survive by ceding the low ground and defending the Andes). With this, the Spanish treasure fleet is butterflied away (or at least greatly delayed), giving the Hapsburgs even more massive debt headaches and possibly saving both Spain and Ming China from inflation.

By the time Europeans get around to conquering Mesoamerica, the international balance of power may have shifted and entirely different Atlantic powers from Spain would be doing the conquest. We may get a situation like the former colonies in southeast Asia, with the colonies giving way to majority native states still practicing native religions despite the era of colonial domination.

Super helpful, friend. Thank you very, very much.

 

[telynk]

Alright, then...

Let's say a Marinid ship arrives in the New World in the 1450's, not entirely on accident. It is manned by dissenters and ships from the Maghreb are ordered to pursue it "to China and back if need be." Having been commandeered by the dissenters quickly it is laden with trading supplies, food and seed, some animals with feed but not many and a handful of penal slaves...*

It also contains a passenger or two with Variola Minor.

Having no friendly port nearby, being mercilessly pursued, and following a "vision" from Allah to their leader, the ship travels bravely north confident that they will be under the protection of God and a safe haven will be found.

Having gone northwest for a time, the trade winds and currents brig them into the Caribbean and they make a few landings to find friendly settlement. After some ugly run ins with the Carib and Taino they finally make friendly although cold contact with the Maya, before moving inland to Tenochtitlan.

Butterflies in the old world are stifled and discovery and contact go as OTL, except the peoples of the Caribbean, Cuba, the Yucatan, and as far south as the Inca have been infected with Variola Minor.

What happens next?

*Yes, this is a TL idea I'm working out, by the way.

I'm really interested in this TL idea! It's actually a better version of something I was working out on another thread PM me if you need someone to bounce ideas off of, or if you want any advice about effects in Northeastern or Northwestern North America (I'm a bicoastal Canadian and have a much greater knowledge of the history or areas in which I've lived).

 

[telynk]

Reading this discussion, I'm starting to think that maybe some of the basic facts about Variola Minor that are being thrown around are either incorrect or have been misinterpreted. The reason is that, reading the information above it seems that it should have been much more likely for V. minor to have been the first strain of smallpox to cross the Atlantic rather than V. major. In that scenario, the fact that V. major was the strain to cross (was it??) seems like a freak accident of history that could easily have been avoided. These are the reasons why V. minor would have been the more probable candidate to cross the Atlantic.

(1) If it does spread faster than V. major, it should have been more common in the first place.
(2) The chance of a patient infected with V. major would survive a months-long sea voyage is likely fairly low as conditions at sea in the 15th/16th centuries were pretty dismal. Most adults would have already hadd smallpox as children, so the change of there being other people on the ship to pass the disease on to would have been fiarly low. On the other hand, V. minor, with its low death rate, could much more easily have kept its host alive accross the Atlantic.
(3) If the first carrier of smallpox to the New World was an African slave, and if V. minor is the version of the disease that was present in Africa (as one poster suggested) prior to eradication, it would seem even more likely that the first case introduced to the New World would have been V. minor.

Given that we know (do we??) that the version of the virus which more-than-decimated the Mesoamerican population was V. major, we are faced with either the situation that (a) this was a freak random event or (b) some of the information we are assuming about V. minor might be wrong. Here are some ways that (b) could occur:

(1) Maybe V. minor does not spread faster than V. major after all, or only spreads faster in populations with access to modern medicine. Maybe the lessening of symptoms also leads to a lessening of contagion, so that V. major would actually have spread faster in the 15th/16th centuries. Maybe since that time medical knowledge of disease vectors has increased so that in the 19th/20th centuries V. major cases would be easily idenitfied and isolated so that V. minor would actually spread faster.
(2) Maybe V. minor is actually a recent mutation that occurred after the 15th/16th centuries but before we gained the ability to distinguish between the two strains. This would explain why the strain that spreads faster (V. minor) didn't completely outcompete the slower spreading strain that kills its host (V. major). It was in the process of outcompeting V. major, but hadn't yet completed that process.
(3) Maybe the strain of smallpox that spread to Mesoamerica WAS V. minor and that, had it been V. major, it would have killed 99% of the population. This would mean that the "virgin soil" effect would be much greater than seems possible. I sincerely doubt this explanation but want to throw it out there.

Personally, I'm going with explanation (2) as there is a known tendency for diseases to evolve to have lower mortality rates over the centuries. This would mean that V. minor may not have been around at all at the time of the Conquistadors, and that the strain that infected Mesoamerica may have been an even more severe strain than V. major (which would explain the super-high mortality rates). But given the lack of any way of knowing which strains were around when, I'm totally willing to go with a TL that introduces V. minor to the New World before the Conquistadors.

 

[Dathi THorfinnsson]

Clearly, V minor is, well, minor, as it wasnt even IDENTIFIED until the 20th c.

The probability, then, that it makes it across the Atlantic first seems small. And regular smallpox WILL make it across eventually.

V minor arriving first may help the Aztecs and Inca with large dense populations, which would certainly change Mexican and Peruvian history. But smallpox needs a population of something like one or a few million people to become endemic and have constant immunity. The lower density native populations will still have waves of smallpox burn through them every generation or so, and those waves that are regular smallpox will be just as deadly as otl.

 

['Ezana]

Reading this discussion, I'm starting to think that maybe some of the basic facts about Variola Minor that are being thrown around are either incorrect or have been misinterpreted. The reason is that, reading the information above it seems that it should have been much more likely for V. minor to have been the first strain of smallpox to cross the Atlantic rather than V. major. In that scenario, the fact that V. major was the strain to cross (was it??) seems like a freak accident of history that could easily have been avoided. These are the reasons why V. minor would have been the more probable candidate to cross the Atlantic.

(1) If it does spread faster than V. major, it should have been more common in the first place.
(2) The chance of a patient infected with V. major would survive a months-long sea voyage is likely fairly low as conditions at sea in the 15th/16th centuries were pretty dismal. Most adults would have already hadd smallpox as children, so the change of there being other people on the ship to pass the disease on to would have been fiarly low. On the other hand, V. minor, with its low death rate, could much more easily have kept its host alive accross the Atlantic.
(3) If the first carrier of smallpox to the New World was an African slave, and if V. minor is the version of the disease that was present in Africa (as one poster suggested) prior to eradication, it would seem even more likely that the first case introduced to the New World would have been V. minor.

Given that we know (do we??) that the version of the virus which more-than-decimated the Mesoamerican population was V. major, we are faced with either the situation that (a) this was a freak random event or (b) some of the information we are assuming about V. minor might be wrong. Here are some ways that (b) could occur:

(1) Maybe V. minor does not spread faster than V. major after all, or only spreads faster in populations with access to modern medicine. Maybe the lessening of symptoms also leads to a lessening of contagion, so that V. major would actually have spread faster in the 15th/16th centuries. Maybe since that time medical knowledge of disease vectors has increased so that in the 19th/20th centuries V. major cases would be easily idenitfied and isolated so that V. minor would actually spread faster.
(2) Maybe V. minor is actually a recent mutation that occurred after the 15th/16th centuries but before we gained the ability to distinguish between the two strains. This would explain why the strain that spreads faster (V. minor) didn't completely outcompete the slower spreading strain that kills its host (V. major). It was in the process of outcompeting V. major, but hadn't yet completed that process.
(3) Maybe the strain of smallpox that spread to Mesoamerica WAS V. minor and that, had it been V. major, it would have killed 99% of the population. This would mean that the "virgin soil" effect would be much greater than seems possible. I sincerely doubt this explanation but want to throw it out there.

Personally, I'm going with explanation (2) as there is a known tendency for diseases to evolve to have lower mortality rates over the centuries. This would mean that V. minor may not have been around at all at the time of the Conquistadors, and that the strain that infected Mesoamerica may have been an even more severe strain than V. major (which would explain the super-high mortality rates). But given the lack of any way of knowing which strains were around when, I'm totally willing to go with a TL that introduces V. minor to the New World before the Conquistadors.

Well I've looked at some books, and it would appear that V. minor most likely did not exist by 1492, because V. minor actually did become more common in the 20th century, suggesting that it mutated shortly before then (or V. minor simply didn't cross the Atlantic due to 6 centuries of low probability events). So a more plausible POD for this is to have V. major mutate into V. minor much earlier on; which isn't too hard because most viruses mutate rather frequently. Or you could potentially have a recombinational event occur between the cowpox virus and another virus that spreads among humans, like measles or V. major.