Chinese Exploration of North America

I think China's warring states will probably continue world exploration at the same pace. They have to fight wars amongst themselves, but the Song also had to fight rebellions, so thr change might very well be small. I think it will be about 50 years or so before a new dynasty is established given that it will be much harder to reunify kingdoms with advanced tech.

Sugar, as in OTL, would probably be the Americas' primary export, for a while at least. The East Coast might see some permanent European colonies, but the scenario you outlined above looks very well thought out. Chinese and European colonists will be dominant in some places, but it isn't hard to imagine a lot of native states becoming well established. I think that there will be colonist states, though, since the sharp drop in population during the "disease era" will be too good to ignore.
 
@Admiral A. Kolchak, thanks for the help. So we have the Native American nations producing goods for the world market. How many allies might we see coming to the assistance of the Americans when the Europeans arrive? Seeing how much sugar wealth came form the OTL Americas, the European's attack may very well threaten the economies of many nations around the world.
 
Sounds like these American Indians are going to have weapons comparable to the Europeans due to that trade network and wealth. On the other hand they are probably going to lose 90% of their population post plague. Hard to say how far the Europeans are going to get.

Pre-plague OTL the Europeans didn't get too much further than the coast and yet those American Indians didn't have cannons. Add that to wealth from trade (whatever is left after that plague) and you have a seriously tough job. On the other hand having 10 times the numbers never hurts either.

I'd say if you have a big enough time delay between plague and invasion they could hold their own. 20 million gun toting American Indians already makes killing them like OTL less likely, which might mean they can keep the land long term, possibly after a period of occupation.

I'm curious what the community thinks. Would they be totally vulnerable and suffer a run on their territory or would they hold the invaders at bay?
 
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Sounds like these American Indians are going to have weapons comparable to the Europeans due to that trade network and wealth. On the other hand they are probably going to lose 90% of their population post plague. Hard to say how far the Europeans are going to get.

Pre-plague OTL the Europeans didn't get too much further than the coast and yet those American Indians didn't have cannons. Add that to wealth from trade (whatever is left after that plague) and you have a seriously tough job. On the other hand having 10 times the numbers never hurts either.

I'd say if you have a big enough time delay between plague and invasion they could hold their own. 20 million gun toting American Indians already makes killing them like OTL less likely, which might mean they can keep the land long term, possibly after a period of occupation.

If you don't have the active destruction of American Indians which the Europeans brought with their wars of attrition and their enslavement and mass murder, then a 90% death toll is an exaggeration. On the other hand, even the 60-70% losses we might reasonbly expect will collapse most societies and leave them open to exploitation by Europeans, and we can't forget examples like the Lakota or Comanche where they grabbed a bit of advantage from Europeans and built themselves an empire which crushed numerous other American Indian groups. But the American Indians often used guns, and unless they can build themselves a solid civilisation to deploy their military, they'll inevitably lose by sheer attrition. If Europeans "only" have the 13 Colonies region, then that's a very sufficient base. There's plenty of opportunities to build a solid Amerindian state, and I'd look at the heartland of the Mississippians in the immediate trans-Appalachian region as where they'd best resist (rather than the Sioux or Comanche). Outside of some ports on the Gulf (like *New Orleans), Europeans won't have much of a need to push inland. And inland is where you can have a cluster of "neo-Mississippian" Amerindian states--my favourite is somewhere along the Tennessee or Cumberland Rivers, due to having good river networks and being relatively sheltered compared to other Mississippian centers (like the Cahokia area Mississippians). They might get conquered in the end, but if decolonisation occurs, they'll emerge like Africa did and won't be particularly European.
 
@metalinvader665, can the coastal areas outside those solid Amerindian states at the initial European landing sites stay majority Amerindian (although occupied). What's the minimum amount needed to defend the Americas to achieve this (disease immune, gun toting Indians)?

The North American Indians had a well developed society which collapsed from warfare. This timeline's non-European first contact occurs in the late Middle Mississippian period (1570-80) when the fighting was in its early stages. Does outside contact, trade then diseases alleviate or worsen this?
 
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If the survival rate is 30% and some estimates have 100 million Amerindians then you have 30 million survivors to defend North and South America. That's probably just enough to hold most of North and South America during the 1500s but the disease immune Amerindians with guns might be too spread out to prevent large swaths of coastline from being wiped out. Might see what everyone else thinks about this.

The Amerindians probably have more than a century to prepare though. The plague happens around 1400. The timeline mentions accelerated tech but tech wasn't the only problem Europe had. Many political problems prevented them from branching out so even if you accelerate the tech to 1700s levels they'll still probably going to be using them to clean up problems in Europe until the 1500s no matter how tempting the Americas is.

By that time you've got 60 million Amerindians, 30 million per continent and with a century to rebuild fortify and probably be close to industrializing (the timeline mentions an Industrial Revolution in the early 1400s). The Amerindians have valuable resources that need to be extracted and a shortage of people, creating high labor coasts. In Europe the Black Death led to a reform of society. Something similar will probably happen there. With that as the invasion time Europe will take a modest slice of the Americas but it will really cost them and they will be a minority everywhere.
 
@metalinvader665, can the coastal areas outside those solid Amerindian states at the initial European landing sites stay majority Amerindian (although occupied). What's the minimum amount needed to defend the Americas to achieve this (disease immune, gun toting Indians)?

The North American Indians had a well developed society which collapsed from warfare. This timeline's non-European first contact occurs in the late Middle Mississippian period (1570-80) when the fighting was in its early stages. Does outside contact, trade then diseases alleviate or worsen this?

Warfare? The Late Mississippians collapsed from a lengthy drought with epidemics imported from the Caribbean finishing them off.

It depends which coastal area. The best coastal land would be occupied by Europeans (and their African slaves). Other coastal land wouldn't have had as high of a native population and thus would be easier to take over.

If the survival rate is 30% and some estimates have 100 million Amerindians then you have 30 million survivors to defend North and South America. That's probably just enough to hold most of North and South America during the 1500s but the disease immune Amerindians with guns might be too spread out to prevent large swaths of coastline from being wiped out. Might see what everyone else thinks about this.

The Amerindians probably have more than a century to prepare though. The plague happens around 1400. The timeline mentions accelerated tech but tech wasn't the only problem Europe had. Many political problems prevented them from branching out so even if you accelerate the tech to 1700s levels they'll still probably going to be using them to clean up problems in Europe until the 1500s no matter how tempting the Americas is.

By that time you've got 60 million Amerindians, 30 million per continent and with a century to rebuild fortify and probably be close to industrializing (the timeline mentions an Industrial Revolution in the early 1400s). The Amerindians have valuable resources that need to be extracted and a shortage of people, creating high labor coasts. In Europe the Black Death led to a reform of society. Something similar will probably happen there. With that as the invasion time Europe will take a modest slice of the Americas but it will really cost them and they will be a minority everywhere.

Numbers that big are almost certainly unrealistic, especially since the majority of Amerindians were concentrated in certain places (Mesoamerica, Andes). North of Mesoamerica there were probably no more than a few million.

And how do you get this immune population? Even if you found a way to culturally introduce innoculation (which would be too late since many would already be dead), you still have all the other deadly diseases from measles to malaria to worry about.
 
@metalinvader665, actually you've got a point there. Drought and epidemics did finish them off although you do see Cahokia being abandoned and mound building drastically reduced at a time that unusual amounts of fortifications appear across the region. Seems like there was some fighting which broke up the Middle Mississippian states. That would make them much weaker when the drought and diseases come along.

I was thinking of the Europeans being restricted to such a small amount of land that the states originally controlling the area aren't completely gone, they've just lost some land and can continue on. Perhaps small enough that when decolonization happens the area can be flooded by Amerindians who will become the majority again.

The immune population refers to the fact that first contact is non European and occurs in the late 1300's to 1400. Variolation is invented in the alternate 1450's. OTL it was invented in the 1500s but in this timeline there's more people with a higher standard of living and education. The fact that the industrial revolution happened in the 1410's speeds up tech development too. The diseases begin to cause mass death some time in the 1410s to the 1420's during which they are not invaded by their current trading partners.

How long Europe would take to capitalize on this opportunity makes a huge difference to this scenario. In my current draft Europe took 60 years to respond properly (they arrive in 1480). They are however preceded by a wave of piracy which foreshadowed their arrival similar to how the Portugese conducted piracy before large scale seizing of land in Asia or Africa. These fleets were private and small. They were destroyed by aggravated traders still trying to get sugar and other resources from North America or the Native American states when they landed. If you think that a different lag for Europe world be better I would consider updating the figure.

During that time the European states were busy fighting each other. They lagged behind the most advanced nations. Tech wise they're roughly in the OTL 1600's during most of the alternate 1400's and due to imported knowledge suddenly start going through the industrial revolution (Byzantium first) in the year 1490. By that time North America is immune (the large pandemics stopped being so frequent OTL after about 60 years implying that immunity had kicked in), they've got the ability to manufacture guns from Africa (who got them from Asia), organisation on a large scale is happening and coastal forts and patrols guarding valuable coastal zones have appeared. These defenses were intended to stop pirates (who tend to try and grab or raid valuable land).

West African States are much more powerful (they're successors of a fallen Malian Empire) and project their power into the surrounding area. The West and East African states are already aligned with Asia through trade so if they feel under pressure from Europe, they'll likely turn to various Asian nations for backup. On the other hand, immune Amerindians are now usable as a slave population which don't have to be shipped in.

Measles and Malaria does seem to be a problem though. How does the scenario sound so far? Any suggestions for revisions?
 
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On the other hand, immune Amerindians are now usable as a slave population which don't have to be shipped in

I think therein lies the answer to this scenario. Importing blacks, even if you have dominance over Africa is an expensive task and many will die on the trip over. Probably cheaper to use the preexisting population of the Americas as slave labor. The Europeans would have to fight the Amerindians anyway so they might as well collect some slaves while they are doing it. This was tried OTL but failed due to a lack of resistance to disease, something the alternate Amerindians lack. Of course the Europeans could just opt to wipe out their viable slave population in America because they're heathens or are threatened by them. People are inscrutable like that sometimes.

60 years seems very fast. Probably going to take way longer for the first European colonists to arrive but I'd defer to the forum's opinion.
 
@metalinvader665, actually you've got a point there. Drought and epidemics did finish them off although you do see Cahokia being abandoned and mound building drastically reduced at a time that unusual amounts of fortifications appear across the region. Seems like there was some fighting which broke up the Middle Mississippian states. That would make them much weaker when the drought and diseases come along.

I was thinking of the Europeans being restricted to such a small amount of land that the states originally controlling the area aren't completely gone, they've just lost some land and can continue on. Perhaps small enough that when decolonization happens the area can be flooded by Amerindians who will become the majority again.

The immune population refers to the fact that first contact is non European and occurs in the late 1300's to 1400. Variolation is invented in the alternate 1450's. OTL it was invented in the 1500s but in this timeline there's more people with a higher standard of living and education. The fact that the industrial revolution happened in the 1410's speeds up tech development too. The diseases begin to cause mass death some time in the 1410s to the 1420's during which they are not invaded by their current trading partners.

There were still fluorishing communities after Cahokia (a bit smaller and less monumental), including in nearby places (East St. Louis/modern St. Louis, demolished many decades ago), but around the time of the de Soto expedition, you see widespread depopulation and chaos, and after de Soto, it gets even worse. So probably a lot of migrations and abandoning of settlements, made worse with the start of the European fur trade which caused huge amounts of conflicts between Indian groups and provoked even more migration.

So this is clearly something which will take an early medieval POD to prevent this depopulation and mass migrations. Some of it is geological, since lengthy droughts were once common in North America, as for some reason (based on climate data), no major drought (even the Dust Bowl) has been as bad and long-lasting as those of the 17th century and earlier, even in the Southwest. But I notice you clearly have an early POD for early industrial revolution. This isn't good for anyone north of Mesoamerica, even surviving/more successful Mississippian cultures, since they'll be easy bait for European conquerers armed with far greater tech than what they have. European medicine will also have advanced, along with agriculture, creating a population surplus meaning there will be a widespread desire for land which neither Eastern Europe nor Africa can provide.

I wonder how variolation would work in Amerindian populations? Historically, some people died from variolation, either from contact with the virus or from improper variolation. And the Amerindian immune system is more susceptible to such diseases, so the death rate would be slightly higher than in Old World populations. It would have to be an independent development, or maybe one spurred by contact with Asians or Africans and then widely spread throughout the Americas within a few centuries.

The other easy solution which is almost cheating is to have Variola minor (or a strain with similar characteristics) emerge and become widespread far earlier than OTL. It was more recent to evolve, and became widespread since it doesn't cripple the victim nearly as much (allowing easier transmission) and has a fatality rate of no more than 1%. And once you survive smallpox, it's basically impossible to ever get smallpox again. Variola minor helped burn the disease out since even though it was highly infectious, it innoculated many populations from the more deadly variola major without the need of variolation or vaccination. Now, would it kill slightly more Amerindians than it killed Africans, Europeans, etc.? Probably, but it wouldn't be a particularly bad epidemic, and probably one that would mainly kill children. In a place with high population density, it could help immunity develop in the population so when an epidemic of Variola major does hit, the majority of people survive, especially adults and elders who are essential for transmitting cultural practices and civilisation to the next generation. You do need a high population density for Variola minor to become endemic, though.

How long Europe would take to capitalize on this opportunity makes a huge difference to this scenario. In my current draft Europe took 60 years to respond properly (they arrive in 1480). They are however preceded by a wave of piracy which foreshadowed their arrival similar to how the Portugese conducted piracy before large scale seizing of land in Asia or Africa. These fleets were private and small. They were destroyed by aggravated traders still trying to get sugar and other resources from North America or the Native American states when they landed. If you think that a different lag for Europe world be better I would consider updating the figure.

During that time the European states were busy fighting each other. They lagged behind the most advanced nations. Tech wise they're roughly in the OTL 1600's during most of the alternate 1400's and due to imported knowledge suddenly start going through the industrial revolution (Byzantium first) in the year 1490. By that time North America is immune (the large pandemics stopped being so frequent OTL after about 60 years implying that immunity had kicked in), they've got the ability to manufacture guns from Africa (who got them from Asia), organisation on a large scale is happening and coastal forts and patrols guarding valuable coastal zones have appeared. These defenses were intended to stop pirates (who tend to try and grab or raid valuable land).

West African States are much more powerful (they're successors of a fallen Malian Empire) and project their power into the surrounding area. The West and East African states are already aligned with Asia through trade so if they feel under pressure from Europe, they'll likely turn to various Asian nations for backup. On the other hand, immune Amerindians are now usable as a slave population which don't have to be shipped in.

Measles and Malaria does seem to be a problem though. How does the scenario sound so far? Any suggestions for revisions?

Who introduced sugar to the New World though? Sugar is also not a crop you'd grow except on the fringes of the Gulf Coast since it's very difficult to grow elsewhere in the South. Of course, Mesoamerica and much of tropical Central/South America and the Caribbean are prime land for it. The Taino in particular, with their seafaring tradition, would be able to become fantastic traders, and could basically be like the Malays of the New World.

I don't see how East Asia and West Africa could have much direct contact (it's a huge distance, and East Africa has much gold, ivory, etc.) since the majority of West Africa's trade was with North Africa since Antiquity, and later Europe more directly traded with them. More just here West Africa has more incentive to develop trade with the New World in addition to trade with North Africa and Europe. Cassava is a fantastic crop which will no doubt be imported sooner or later. Even East Africa is more likely to have links with a strong Indian empire (or just whoever's ruling places like Gujarat) than China or Japan. Speaking of which, the Chinese would probably be settling in large numbers in Mesoamerica and the Andes, as merchants or as miners and other labour. If the West Coast has any decent civilisations, they might settle there too. More traditional settler colonisation would be difficult to do, though. If Japan is stable and united, once they're done with Karafuto and Kamchatka they might want to expand down the West Coast, but a lot of Asian activity there would likely be pretty small scale and not settler colonialism.

Also, in any wanked Mississippian TL, I'd expect yaupon to emerge as a much more valuable crop than OTL, and be selectively bred/semi-domesticated (full domestication of Ilex species appears tricky, as yerba mate was not effectively domesticated until the late 19th/early 20th century) to increase caffeine levels to be more akin to tea or coffee. So that's another important export you could have which Europeans would no doubt like to seize. It grows in subtropical lowlands near the Gulf Coast, so you could probably naturalise it in parts of Africa, as well as Mesoamerica (a subspecies grows in Chiapas) since the Taino would be selling it to the Maya and other Mesoamericans.

Gun manufacture I'm not so sure about. Amerindians have a lot of reasons to just buy their guns from traders instead. They can pay in slaves, sugar, yaupon, peppers, or just straight up gold and silver (which will leak the precious metals into the world economy). The Mississippians might be a bit different, though, since the core of the region around the inland Mississippi, Ohio, and Tennessee valleys doesn't have much to offer since yaupon and sugar can't grow there. They'll need the cotton gin to be invented to get cotton established, and also they'll need tobacco varieties suited for export. Even then, not all the land is suitable for cotton cultivation (especially the Highland Rim and Cumberland Plateau), and tobacco cultivation has similar constraints--it's also vulnerable to changes in taste in tobacco (like early proliferation of cigarettes via an early Bonsack machine, by far the most successful aspect of the tobacco industry and a key product of the industrial revolution), since Tennessee/Kentucky tobacco is generally not used for cigarettes for various reasons. They might have a lot of reason to make their own industry, especially since the Tennessee/Cumberland valleys have a lot of caves which are rich in saltpeter. Of course, you'd need to find a way to get the prerequisite industries for gunsmithing established, and the disease-ravaged Mississippians of this region are far less capable in that regards than Japan and their tanegashima rifles or Europe and their handcannons. So once again, you need to get metalsmithing established (copper was smelted widely in the pre-Columbian Great Lakes at once point) and get an "iron age" established. IIRC, that region, especially Missouri (and even moreso the Great Lakes), has readily available iron reserves, although I believe in Tennessee at least they aren't as high quality as in the Great Lakes region, but they'd be good enough for an Iron Age culture to develop. Even though it would be unprecedentedly rapid development compared to other civilisations.

Amerindians would be a much more effective slave population TTL since they'd have much lower mortality rates, although they'd be best on islands where they can't easily escape back to fellow Amerindians. And someone will be needed to farm all that sugar, cotton, yaupon, etc. So probably less of an African slave trade which changes things big time.

Non-smallpox diseases are the real problem, since Amerindians suffered disproportionate casualties from them and they don't have an "easy" solution like variolation outside of modern medicine. This would depopulate many areas, to the point where they'd need to bring in African slaves more resistant to those diseases.
 
@metalinvader665, appreciate the feedback. The death rate of 90% (60-70% suggested) looks like it's the total disease death rate for Amerindians including the non small pox diseases, at least up to the end of the 17th century.

If the industrial revolution occurs in 1400s as stated earlier in this thread and technology advances at the same rate afterward (taking the industrial revolution as the equivalent of the 1760s) the equivalent of the 17th century (2 centuries after contact when they start to hit that 60-70% survival mark mentioned earlier) would be alternate 1600's, roughly equivalent to the OTL 1960's. In regards to further death the Amerindians have seemed to "run out the clock" as modern medicine will become available.

I suppose it could be a bit tricky to work out exactly how successful the Europeans would be, but using a known point of reference could help. In the first wave of arrivals, the Europeans failed to establish any significant holdings in North America despite trying (around the time of the Roanoke colony. This might have been a pre-disease North America. No matter the actual numbers and how they were distributed this is a good point of reference by comparing a group against itself.

If the survival rate of diseases is 30% then that means in order to have the same degree of success post disease their new weapons need to make the Amerindians roughly 3 and a 1/3 times more effective at resisting invasion compared to using bows and spears. Including the fact that less people, even more well armed people find it harder to patrol a given region and the disorganization from the disease this doesn't sound too implausible. This doesn't take into account any population growth that occurs in the delay between the die off and European arrival and between individual disease outbursts. So a good question is how much of an effectiveness boost would guns, cannons, fortifications and imported tactics be?

If an area is depopulated and the overall population isn't going to get much lower than 30% overall it might be logical to fight with and grab slaves from a neighboring region rather than shipping people from across the ocean.

The thread seems to mention extensive trade. Perhaps the Amerindians could have just traded for the knowledge rather than had to invent it? Getting somebody to show you how to make iron and guns, outright buying all the required equipment or copying one of those outsiders pre European contact would be much easier.
 
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Thanks for the interest everybody :)

@metalinvader665, I was thinking that a connection to other nations with a food surplus would help alleviate the climate change effects in North America. If food runs low they can sell valuable products (sugarcane, oil, salt, gold) in exchange for food. Those who can't sell as much have crops introduced from around the world including the crops you mentioned. Potatoes from South America is going to be a big one though, it gets you the most calories for a given growing capacity and should tide them through. Those with valuable resources bring in food from overseas. Those without can benefit from having trade routes run across their land or selling food to those with valuable resources as well (buying local is probably cheaper than buying from overseas, there's probably a mix of both). Different Amerindian states become interdependent in the face of environmental change so that when one is attacked, many are affected and you can expect a more unified response from a larger proportion of the continent.

Hopefully this is enough to at least partially mitigate the loss of Amerindian life that likely occurred their civilization collapsed pre OTL European contact, driving up the population at least a small amount.

Since the timeline starts with China exploring the world and a trade network springing up out of these efforts, the sugar was introduced to the Americas from India and Melanesia, where it is native. This was done after the explorers realized how suitable the land there was for growing sugarcane and how profitable it could be.

The trend in Song China was for average wages to rise and more people to afford luxury good they couldn't before. This trend continues in future dynasties. Demand rises, causing a flow of money to producers of such goods, causing increased wealth in those areas, whose populations can now also afford more luxury goods (or most goods for that matter). This cycle continues and spreads out from China. By the time the Americas are discovered by Chinese explorers the demand in Asia and East Africa for a variety of goods (both from increasing wealth and population) is beginning to drive up prices quite noticeably. West Africa can still trade with North Africa and Europe, but higher prices are an incentive to also trade directly with Asia and East Africa. The West Africans end up following in the path of the other Industrialized nations to keep up with demand and find quite a lot of their goods going east simply because that's where there's much more demand.

Demand continues to expand and the Amerindians are allowed to buy metal working tools and knowledge to increase output. Once you've been taught how to mine steel, a foreigner has been hired to help set up metalworking infrastructure. it's a smaller step to buy the knowledge of gun production and apply your metalworking knowledge to the task.

You are right, the Europeans certainly have greater technology, but so do the Amerindians who are simply bootstrapped to the tech level of whoever is teaching them how to make guns and tools or selling these to them. Would we be likely to see some of the premier world nations involved in this or just the closest? Since they're being taught by or buying from nations involved in the world's accelerated tech development the Amerindians are going to scale in power with the Europeans. In fact since the Europeans are lagging in tech development in this timeline the Amerindians might come out with a reduced weapons gap relative to the Europeans (they're not buying from European nations).

Contact with the Americas by Europe occurs not too far off from OTL, roughly around the 1500's. They're 100 years ahead of OTL technology wise but perhaps the difference between 1500 and 1600 in regards to population growth or maximum population capacity is not that great? In the past great swathes of time yielded little difference. As for post industrial revolution, that happens outside the alternate Byzantium and the Italian Peninsula some time in the 1510's. I was thinking that by that time (roughly 130 years post first contact with non Europeans) the Amerindians could have industrialized in the same way the Alternate Europeans industrialized. They simply bought the technology and hired some foreign nationals to set up the system. What motives their industrialization? Relatively small population trying to meet huge global demands. No matter how much gold, sugar or oil etc. they export they hardly dent global demand and Amerindian states begin chasing ever greater amounts of production.

If you think the Amerindian states aren't likely to industrialize then we could have them use that 130 years pre European Industrial revolution (when the European advantage would really take off) to "close ranks" and fill in any regions that have been depopulated with what will become the remaining 30% (how low it gets after 2 centuries after first contact), spreading out the survivors into any depopulated regions. Perhaps surviving Amerindian states start colonizing the land of their fallen neighbors long before the first European contact (a century after the first non European contact) so that wherever in North America you turn there's those folks who will become the 30%, making slavery preferable to extermination?

I was thinking of variolation being sold to the Amerindians by outside entities with the technology. Doctors would train those in communities on its proper use and to train others in turn. They would form a core of qualified practitioners who dispense the treatments, thus keeping the supply from the region open. It might help that selling variolation treatment could be a profitable enterprise. Will some die? Probably, but it beats nothing. I suppose Variola Minor probably won't appear though.
 
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Let's say that Song hires mercanaries to go east and west, because mercanaries will do just about anything for money.

The mercanaries would encounter some South Pacific islands and their inhabitants, and after overcoming the obvious language barrier, they are likely to become allies. As for the Americas, only the boldest of adventurers would go that far. They'd set up a few colonies on native land, a mistake European settlers made in our timeline.

This would lead to China establishing a powerful maritime empire and secure trade routes. Chinese culture spreads across the Pacific, North America, and part of South America. Chinese explorers would probably avoid the jungle, save for the boldest of them. The U.S doesn't exist as we know it today, or not at all, and European settlers would eventually clash with the Chinese colonies in America.

Gunpowder spreads faster in this timeline, and technology advances at a somewhat faster rate.
 
@catpop12343, why are mercenaries being sent out? Seems like a good start to a timeline.

Now this discussion raises an interesting question. How long after first contact would it take for the worst of the Amerindian disease outbreaks to have passed? The point at which with the exception of a couple of infrequent, more minor or localized outbreaks the Amerindians have effectively caught up immunity wise to the rest of the world? This chart of Mexican Amerindians seems to suggest most of the worst of its plagues passed after about 76 years with a single smaller epidemic later on that is mostly drowned out by population growth.

Without someone invading and destroying their culture at the time would we have seen extensive population growth between epidemics?
 
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Could we see non Government entities exploring without the help of an at times obstructionist government? Even though some Chinese governments were quite obstructive to exploration some Chinese were quite open to exploration. There were entire communities in coastal South China which were devoted to travelling the sea and were devastated by Ming cutting China off. Some of these even became pirates in order to continue their way of life. There's records of people during the Song investing heavily in sea trade during the Song and getting great returns.

Trade networks OTL got as far as the East African Coastline. The Voyages of Zheng He occurred only roughly 30 years after China freed itself from the Mongols and were stopped in large part because of the threat to the north. Perhaps if the northern situation stabilizes the sea travel ban never emerges. The government may at times think itself too important to invest heavily in exploring but could a private entity, perhaps from those coastal communities who already pushed the boundaries of China's knowledge so far do it instead?

There were several businessmen in China who became rich enough that they started getting into government positions (it caused quite a bit of friction with the traditional, conservative Confucainists). Some were southern Chinese (those previously mentioned communities were located on the south Chinese coast) and a few of these businessmen got rich off sea trade. Perhaps one or several of them could fund an expedition in the place of an unenthusiastic government? You don't need a treasure fleet, just an exploration ship to scope out new territory. A voyage could get quite far in 2 years. Once the Europeans got near to the South Africa, it was only roughly 2 years for Vasco da Gama to get as far up as India.

The whole China is the center of the world and we don't need to explore was a view that might have been held by the conservative elements of the government (who were against those businessmen getting into powerful government positions in the first place) so exploring would at the very least be a way for these businessmen to flip them the metaphorical finger. A businessman also doesn't think primarily in terms of country he might think more personal. "This large pile of gold, this pretty high born wife and this fancy imperial post was possible due to my dealings in sea trade, therefore it might be worth looking around for more opportunities for even more cash, no matter what my political enemies in the imperial court say".

So if this element is allowed to act freely and the POD is roughly at 1211 how fast could we likely see them making contact with the Malian Empire (or its successor states)? Would 1330 or 1340 be too early?

Note: I'm testing out an alternative to my current timeline's circumnavigation attempt. Curious about what you would recommend to improve this new alternative :p
 
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Would the prospect of trading horses be enough to draw trade directly from China? China, especially Song China had a severe shortage of good horses. They were so desperate they started a tea of horses program. At one point they had horse breeds from the Arabian peninsula but still they were able to buy nowhere near enough to satisfy their needs. Perhaps once an explorer sees the appropriate regions of North America, or even Australia they could get the idea to introduce horses to these regions to massively increase supply?

It may be more expensive to transport horses from America but there's three factors in cost. The demand and supply as well as transportation cost. The vast American Great Plains and Australian potential horse breeding regions would shunt supply so insanely far up that it might make the prices viable for the Chinese government. As an added bonus they become less reliant on buying horses from their hated enemies in Central Asia and instead deal with friendly nations in those two continents. How much and which other parts of these two regions might be suitable for horses?
 
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