DBWI: Europe does not abandon the Americas.

What if the Indians don't destroy all of Europe's colonization attempts and they manage to start colonizing and stopping the North American Indian Confederation before they even formed.
 
How do the Europeans suceed - Logistics its all Logistics the Europeans have to ship colonists faster than they die.

A typical ship of teh time was the Dutch fluyt (the Dutch had IIRC the biggest merchant marine in the 17th century) - with 25-30 men crew they could transport arond 100 passengers.

Assume that within 3-6 months around half of the first colonist die.

Assume a family size of 5 (maybe you will have to double for child mortality, but thats included in the 50% casualites ;))

so one ships yields 10 men that can carry weapons.

Asume a colony needs at least 100 me to be able to defend itself you need 10 ships per settlement. Or rougly 100 ships to bring the settlement to 5000 inhabitants within 5 years (from then on a colony should sustain itself)

Overall I assume you need at least 10 such settlements to effectively control the Northen American East Coast - that is 1000 ships (200 per year) to take hold.

That would need the effort of several European nations working together - (almost an ASB thought) but maybe doable. After a 5 year intensive settlement programm you probably need less people going there and you can bring in more supplies with the same number of shipps wjhich wwill allow for faster growth of the colonies.

That assumes hostile indians, if you can "befriend" some tribes you might need less investment. But the South And Mesoamerican Civilisations will need MORE effort, so I assume you will be able to get a foothold in the north, and if lucky can expand after 100-200 years southward - but those organized states in the south will make it extremely difficult to dominate them...

And if you invest in the Americas during the 17 century you might lose Eastern Europe to the Ottomans...
 
And if you invest in the Americas during the 17 century you might lose Eastern Europe to the Ottomans...
The British, French and Spanish can't lose Eastern Europe because they are not holding any of it in the first place. The Austrians, Serbs and Polish, yes they could. Then again, they don't invest in America.

Control of Eastern Europe and America are not linked.
 
Maybe if, just before the Europeans got there, there was coincidentally a giant plague that wiped out 95% of the native American population?

Nah. That'd be way way too ASB.
 
Maybe the Europeans could bring over Smallpox or the bubonic plague, diseases that the Native Americans weren't used to then.
 
Kill off Philippe LeBlanc. I know he is somewhat mythical and there is alot of controversy and debate among historians about both his existence and identity, but the point is. The native didn't kill off all the original settlers. It was just that those who lived had to be adopted into the tribes and give up their old ways and European religion. DNA evidence has proven the mixing.

There are multiple myths about LeBlanc aka the 'white Gunsmith' being adopted in to save his own skin and teaching the tribes how to mine and work iron and make gunpowder. This of course happening so early is what helped those early confederation states get much larger after conquering their rivals. If not eliminate him, at least delay the equivalent event by several decades to the latter half of the 1600's.
 
Well, the smallpox and bubonic plague did hit pretty badly. But definitely not enough to wipe out 95% (!!!) of the population.

Here's a proposed PoD for you (yes, I know it's a very very old one): We now know from genetic variation evidence. that the Americas were initially colonized, tens of thousands of years ago, by a group of effectively around 1000 people. What if we by random chance reduced that number considerably, say, to 10-100 or so? Then the lack of genetic diversity would have the potential to make the population far more vulnerable to diseases, especially if these people all share vulnerabilities to a specific disease.


OoC: My rationale is that the main reason that the Americas (and Australia) were successfully settled and colonized, whereas Africa/Asia were not was the lack of large numbers of competing Native American population. Which was due to the plagues that killed 90-95%+ of their population. This was such a large population shift that it's now believed by scientists to have greatly contributed to the Little Ice Age. (Links here and here.) Otherwise, no matter how advanced you manage to get the Native population, sheer numbers will guarantee their defeat, or at least inability to kick the Europeans out.

The proposed PoD is thus as such: IoTL, genetic evidence implies that the Americas were settled by an effective population of around 80 founders, with the genetic bottlenecks and lack of diversity that implies. If we add a few butterflies and get that initial population to about 1000, you may be able to mitigate the worst effects of the plagues.
 
The risk then would be that you need to have the Yellowstone eruption be *small* enough that it doesn't just wipe out civilization (and most of the population) completely.
 
The British, French and Spanish can't lose Eastern Europe because they are not holding any of it in the first place. The Austrians, Serbs and Polish, yes they could. Then again, they don't invest in America.

Control of Eastern Europe and America are not linked.

Its more complicated.

It started early in the 16th century that Spain and France not only fought for dominance in Italy but the war soon spread into the Balkans and the Hungarian plains. Well if Charles had split the Spanish empire as he originally planned to he would not have supported Ferdinands claim to Hungary - and it took almost two decades until Hungary was again ottoman Free. Spains commitment also provoked France to support a Greek rising. While ultimately leading to the establishment of the Greco-Bulgarian Empire in the Balkans it tied French resorces well until the 1650s - more than a hundred years. And teh French spanish rivalry extented not only into the east. The "bloody seas" from Cadiz to Copenhagen when the Anglo-Spanish fought the Franco-Scottish Alliance - and the Dutch supportung both sides when convenient. All this naval energy spent unproductive.

Do you know Juan Tortolas Alternate history where spanish - how did he call them? - conquistadores - overran the Aztec Empire (pretty ASB a handful of white rouges against an organized empire) and the Brits and Spanish became enemies because the former raided the spanish ships. I admit his non catholic England (almost happened) with religious minorities seeking fortune in the Americas is a possibility that COULD spawn enduring colonies, but OTL they sent Convicts who would rather run and capture ships to sail back to Europe was maybe the deciding factor in the failed colonisation attempt.
 
It would take the European powers blowing people up with nuclear weapons or something, over and over again, to hinder decolonization. It was an idea whose time had come - and the AKA 47 bridged the technological gap that had existed before.
 
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