Disregard Foreigners, Acquire Assets: An Exploration of Exploration

Trying my hand once again at a colonization project (the Dark Ages and the more conventional alt-Lusocolonial TL are buried in glacial ice).

Unlike my other abortive attempts, I'm not going to try and establish a chronology or dither on supplementary materials. It will have an unestablished POD, and I will only reveal outside details when absolutely necessary. It will also jump around between time periods, in part because many of these updates are intensely local.

The title refers to the European "creation" of the world -- their unification of the peoples of Earth, their goods and their markets, under one proto-capitalist aegis. The Columbian Exchange and the discovery of Asia laid the foundation stones for the economic order of today, and the wealth sent back to Europe helped form the Western political norms that, for now, continue to mold and shape much of the world as well.

The twist here is that I want to reverse, deconstruct and otherwise examine the ways each nation attempted colonization during the Age of Discovery, and also subvert the way locals interacted with Europe and each other during the time period. In fact, I plan on ending the project right before the Industrial Revolution ITTL, both to give me structure and to bookend this examination of the Age of Discovery.

Colonization plays and played a great deal in how European nations are perceived, even today. The Netherlands and France don't seem to be defined very much by their 18th century (colonial) exploits, at least in the Anglosphere -- a sphere which exists in part because of England's proclivity towards cold or temperate settler colonies.

The big two, in terms of long-term perceptions being defined by this time period, are Spain and Portugal. I want to examine the leyenda negra, and avoid or otherwise muck with it. Even as Britain pulls a permanent Karma Houdini for the British Empire, Spain continues to be tarred with the destruction of Mesoamerica.

That everyone forgets the godawful horror of the Caribbean (sugar plantations: an abattoir in paradise) is left unsaid.

Portugal, on the other hand, mainly defines itself as Lusotropical, in part because the work of Brasilian writer Gilberto Freyre. Freyre's magnum opus, Casa-Grande e Senzala (Masters and Slaves) wove a narrative of Portuguese miscegenation, first with Brasilian natives and then with African slaves via the prism of the large, essentially polygamous families of the sugar plantations. This miscegenation narrative was originally and still is a work of Brasilian national identity -- but it was also used by Antonio de Oliveira Salazar as a way to shore up Portuguese domination of Africa.

I would also be remiss to forget their general national pride in exploration -- from the Lusiads on down, Portugal's international identity, atrophied as it is in the Anglophone imagination, has been very much based in their oceanic exploits.

This TL will have vignettes, straight alt-history dumps, and alternate academic writing. There will also be OOC/meta posts -- about the OTL inspiration for whatever events are taking place, or the way that I am tweaking OTL, or the ways in which OTL and TTL are the same, or the reasons (I) think certain countries acted certain ways abroad.

Thank you for your patience, and enjoy!
 
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No Lines to Cross: The Failure of Papal Diplomacy in Early Exploration

The Kingdom of Portugal was, of Europe's realms, well-suited to its historical task of discovering new lands. Sitting on the Atlantic seaboard, it was isolated from Mediterranean problems and European land wars, and had started its first probing of the ocean with the colonization of the Ilhas Azuis [1] in the mid-14th century [2].

The royalty was also fairly involved in sponsoring early exploratory missions abroad, giving enterprising sailors more funds to go chart the blue void of the Atlantic Ocean.

Castille (Spain, after 1453) did not immediately take advantage of the possibilities of exploration. Spanish sailors had seized the Canarias, and had made tentative pushes down towards Sierra Leone, but the crown's attention was focused on the French, who owned both the County of Barcelona and the Balearics.

The Spanish expeditions did not go without notice in the Portuguese court -- more factories were built in coastal locations so as to secure the nascent monopoly Portugal had on Indian trade -- the New World was kept entirely secret.

Despite significant royal preference, as it were, for shoring up the Afro-Indian trade, the New World expeditions were more successful. Forts were built on Borigua (named Queimada) in order to further explore trade with the mainland, and an abortive attempt was made on Quisqueia [3].

To the far, far north, Portugal's first discovery in the New World, the island of Assunção [4], had already been settled, and the mainland was being explored by the second expedition of Pedro Sodre.

In India, the Portuguese had been violently expelled from Cochin, but had already established feitorias in Goa, eastern Java, and the Malay Peninsula -- a huge headstart for them. They had also made some headway in East Africa, with a feitoria in Quiloa.

Spain eventually caught on -- Portuguese gold from Africa, and gold gained by trading with the Aruaques [5] were enough to get them to sponsor their own expeditions, helmed mainly at first by Italians. These expeditions were not always correct -- one landed instead in the New World, and the other ended in disaster near Angra Pequena.

And so, by 1476, Spain had made its own landings in the New World, including the new town of San Pedro in Quisqueia. They had also made entryway into Africa, where they were successful in Senegambia and less so farther east and south.

Portugal was furious -- and sought Papal arbitration. The attempts of the Pope to reconcile Spanish and Portuguese aims were fruitless, marked by bribery from both sides and tinged with lingering resentments from past -- and current -- dynastic wars.

With peace left unsecured, the stage was set for colonial conflict. Although Portugal had better sailors and more ships, Spain had more men to send -- and more men to use in battle in case they wanted to press their claims on colonies or, say, Galicia.

The stage was set for a colonial land race -- Portugal had managed to balance its finances from Guinean gold alone, and its spice monopoly was also incredibly valuable. Spain began focusing on African and Indian route... [6]

[1] Azores
[2] Early monastic settlement, got there by galley and thrived.
[3] Hispaniola/Santo Domingo. Queimada is Puerto Rico, and is named for the burning of a junked galleon upon arrival.
[4] Discovered on the feast day of Aug. 15th, known OTL as Newfoundland
[5] Arawaks/Taino. Here you can see the difference made by the lack of Columbus -- early contact is trade-based rather than vicious and cruel.
[6] The biggest change -- more fluid colonial missions, no defined lines, and a Spanish conquistador presence in Africa and Asia.
 
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Aha! So the Portuguese got there first. Seems almost more logical then OTL. I really like the writing style as well. Interesting times ahead it seems.
 
Without Colombus.

This is a scenario that always interested to me ... without Colombus as the commercial and political expansion of the Iberian kingdoms would develop ...

I had imagined as produced by an alternative dynastic union and not a colonial competitive product for failure achieved a compromise solution designed and supported by the Papacy...

This TL. is very interesting. I'll be attentive to the development of these events.
 
Aha! So the Portuguese got there first. Seems almost more logical then OTL. I really like the writing style as well. Interesting times ahead it seems.

I'm kinda convinced the Corte-Real brothers reached Newfoundland sometime in the 1470s. In any case, IOTL and ITTL, Portugal could afford to focus more on exploration, because Spain was still having a Reconquista.

Interested to see what North and South America get called ITTL.

That will be coming soon, although I'm leading towards something classically inspired.

So no massive extermination of Native Americans in this TL? Interesting.

No, there will still be mass death.

Part of this is, plain and simple, disease. Most North American settlers arrived on a continent where 90% of natives had died in some places, giving them the impression that it had always been some untouched forest. In actuality, they built off of things natives had left behind. Even in the Amazon, the remains of more advanced human habitation remain, with organized fruit groves and the existence of terra preta.

While the immediate outlook is better -- no Columbus, less pointless cruelty early on -- eventually the need for gold and sugar will kill the Taino. In the Andes and Mesoamerica, any conquests wil be geared towards mineral production, thereby producing the lethal labor conditions that caused so many native deaths.

I do think there is room for change from IOTL -- Spain was unique in that it had a still-active conquistador model to build off of, with encomiendas being blatantly ripped from the adelantado system of Southern Spain. But overall, any discovery and any creation of a need for New World minerals was going to be pretty bad for natives.
 
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