Columbus in the Employ of the Portuguese

The Portuguese beat the Spanish to the Caribbean, though honestly the Spanish won't be far behind anyway once word gets out about the discovery.

A different treaty of Tordesillas will exist to divide the world between these two kingdoms, though all the other European powers will ignore it (as well Spain and Portugal, when convenient).

I don't know if any of the Portuguese would be able to pull off the same conquests of the large empires that the Spanish did. It's not impossible, but the Spanish had a lot of luck (not to mention Native allies) when they took on the Mexica and Inca. Portuguese adventurers with equal skill and intelligence to Pizarro and Cortes could easily fail attempts at the same conquests for no better reason than one ill-timed charge or one too slow retreat.
 
Portugal would certainly conquer the Caribbean like the Spanish did. One butterfly is that if they decided to attack the Aztecs and fail, we could see a surviving Aztec Empire.
 
For how long? Disease will still do its thing.

True, but if the Portuguese go in and utterly fail an expedition by a European power would probably not be launched for at least a decade. By then the Aztec population will have recovered somewhat, they will have guns and horses, and they will still have numerical superiority considering the logistics of getting an army from Europe to Mexico in the age of sail.
 
True, but if the Portuguese go in and utterly fail an expedition by a European power would probably not be launched for at least a decade. By then the Aztec population will have recovered somewhat, they will have guns and horses, and they will still have numerical superiority considering the logistics of getting an army from Europe to Mexico in the age of sail.
Mesoamerican population fully recovered from Old World diseases in 20th century, 400 years after contact with Europeans.
 
Portugal was already a great power by the standards of the time, and only began their decline when Phillip II took over the throne. So a cristobal colon in the employ of the Portuguese would only enhance their standing and eventual empire.
 
And even then, that was after millions of European immigrants colonized the land.

Not quite, the number of European immigrants in the Americas did not reach the 1 million point until the 18th century. Diseases such as small pox ravaged the Americas, spreading into regions of the continent long before Europeans arrived in those regions. It only took one infected European to have the disease spread like wildfire. Between 1617-1619 an estimated 90% of the Indians in the Massachusetts Bay area were killed by an epidemic that appears to have been introduced by a single French sailor.
 
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