DBWI: Chine discovers the New World?

[Prime Minister]

What if China had reached the new world before the Muslims?

 

[EmpressMaude]

What if China had reached the new world before the Muslims?

Well, for starters, Al-Mexic wouldn't be the Islamist superpower that it is today.

 

[LNSS]

Things happened for a reason. The muslims in Iberia, Italia, and Africa were in prime position to cross the atlantic and begin colonizing. And with Rome's brief reemergence which cut the western muslims from the east, they had the drive to different routes.

 

[Beedok]

Weren't the early Chinese navigators often Muslim anyway? That could produce intersting tension.

 

[Herzen's love-child]

I thought that al-Aztlán was the more common Arabo-Mexican name used by locals.

 

[Georgepatton]

They'd have done what they did when they sent ships all over, exploring Africa, India, and the rest of Asia: nothing. Chine expands on land, against neighboring powers. Long-distance colonizers they are not.

 

[Chairwoman Roxelana]

Things happened for a reason. The muslims in Iberia, Italia, and Africa were in prime position to cross the atlantic and begin colonizing. And with Rome's brief reemergence which cut the western muslims from the east, they had the drive to different routes.

Maybe if the Kerait Empire never emerged Rome would of never had the opportunity to have it`s short recovery.

 

[EmpressMaude]

I thought that al-Aztlán was the more common Arabo-Mexican name used by locals.

Well, admittedly, my grasp on the earliest history of the the al-Azatlan Caliphate is hazy, but doesn't al-Mexic refer to the central province that came to dominate the lower part of the whole continent? Or am I confusing things again. I know that there was several wars between the al-Mexic and the Chinese city states they founded along the Pacific Coast*.


(what would the Chinese refer to the pacific as in this idyll?)

 

[Admiral Brown]

(what would the Chinese refer to the pacific as in this idyll?)

OOC: I think they might call it "eastern ocean" or something like that. However, it would probably have an Arabic name, since Arabs seem to be the great sailors in TTL.

 

[The Uchronian]

Well, for starters, Al-Mexic wouldn't be the Islamist superpower that it is today.

Possibly. Would Mexico(al-Aztlan/Mexic to Muslim natives, or Mejico to Catholic ones, now about 56% of the population) perhaps be the developed and rising power it is today, along with Tejas, California, New Harmony[1], the Commonwealth of North Cabotia[2], and my home country of Kanata[3], had China or even one of the European nations gotten there first? Hard to say, really.

In any case, funny thing is, is that Al-Assani, the adventurer, actually landed in Haiti first back in 1474 and Christopher Columbus, sponsored by the Royals in Spain, in what is now the Republic of Florida in the spring of 1492, shortly after the Sicilian Muslims landed in today's California, near Santa Anna[4].

I always wondered, what if Columbus had been the adventurer and landed in Haiti?..and vice versa, if Al-Assani had landed in Florida or the Yucatan?

OOC:

[1] Think of a massive Deseret-type country settled by utopian Englishmen, Russians, Italians, Jews, and Christian Arabs.

[2]Ever read For Want of a Nail?

[3]Basically, FWoAN's Manitoba.

[4]OTL's Los Angeles with a Muslim/Spanish/Italian flair, with a significant Chinese/Japanese presence. Here, though, the Chinese were largely forced northward after losing a series of wars against the Japanese Empire, allied with Spain in the late 18th/early 19th centuries and so few Chinese structural artifacts remain compared to Japanese ones.