What would be the effects of an earlier Columbian exchange? For the purposes of this thread, say Vinland is successfully settled. Would the introduction of maize into the medieval economy help or further exacerbate Europe's population problems? Would this further entrench serfdom? What about the possible effects of an early introduction of the horse?
Effects of an Earlier Columbian Exchange
- Thread starter rvbomally
- Start date
FDW
Banned
Early introduction of the Horse means earlier Native American Nomad cultures that use them. But the big thing probably would be that Native populations getting a chance getting a chance to recover from Eurasian diseases. While you still might see Europeans on Atlantic coast (Or East Asians on the Pacific Coast, depending on which you choose) displacing the Natives there, they probably won't puncture inland like OTL.
I think it would mean a Native American population that's 5-10 times larger than OTL, varying depending on how long populations have had to rebound, and one that will not decrease at the same time a settler population expands. Even twice the native population would be a huge difference, 5-10x will be massive. This will be the biggest change, and if European conquest occurs it will take the same route as in India or SE Asia, taking hundreds of years, involving vassal states, and with little to no permanent influence on the demographics. There won't be many colonists, anywhere, because there won't be room for them.
Unconsensual
Banned
Well along the same lines how about 2 Colombian exchanges then? The first one alot earlier say the Spanish before some disaster occurs in Spain, but eventually loses contact with the New World, then one much later and permanent this time.
I'm not sure how they would lose contact... Maybe someone knew about the Vinland settlements and went on a 'secret' expedition, and continued doing so, somehow keeping their crews' mouths shut? Then eventually they die, the secret dies, and the age of exploration leads to their discovery on time, or close?
I dunno. I think a lot of the goods brought from the Americas would spark a lot of interest in their sources. Peppers (which would have a completely different name), Maize, etm.
Unconsensual
Banned
Suppose that it was more of a self-imposed exile, some cult or nation desperate to get away from Europe.
Hard to imagine, but not outside the realm of possibility.
Maybe some kind of expedition to get rid of a plague, or to escape from something else?
Columbus´ 1st Expedition left 39 men at La Navidad, with a fortress built there. When he returned on 2nd Expedition in November 1493, he found La Navidad destroyed.
WI the opposite happens? La Navidad survives and thrives, but both Columbus´ ships sink on return voyage? As far as Europe is concerned, no one ever hears of Columbus´ ships and assume they all are destroyed. When would next European expedition to New World happen on La Navidad?
I kind of think if the 39 men are to survive they'd need to absorb into the natives.
Ah, that's certainly very interesting. Probably one of the better scenarios Native Americans can expect.
Along the lines of the Vinland scenario I mentioned in the OP, I was thinking of something like that. Icelandic pagans run off to establish a colony in the New World and bring some diseases with them. However, this wouldn't lead to it being cut off from Europe until the Little Ice Age.
Unconsensual
Banned
Well they can pull off something temporary, like 20 years until the next expedition or when they die. 20 years to spread their germs.
One problem is that a one time exposure won't generate much immunity. The Europeans had been suffering small pox outbreaks for at least a thousand years and their death rates were still 30%. If you have an outbreak, the children of survivors might be more likely to survive (how much?) but if there are no further outbreaks the next generation's resistance immediately diminishes as more unfit (in terms of small pox) people survive. You need disease reservoirs.
Problem two is transmission. One reason the diseases were so deadly was because the North American countryside was settled to a certain level of density and had significant trade networks to transfer disease. If you begin the exchange earlier when the populations are more sparse, then there is less opportunity for the disease to hit everyone which means that if there is a "return" of the Europeans and diseases for some populations it will still be a virgin soil epidemic.
I did a little checking a while back and it looks like a few centuries wouldn't be enough to mutate the disease so that it matters.
One should also look into how fast populations recovered among the natives in the west and midwest when the diseases had been present on the continent for 250-300 years.
Now. This is happening in my own TL The Raptor of Spain. Here's how I'm proceeding for those unfamiliar: In this case the colonizer is Ireland. A state that has some population issues and seeks both space and resources in the new world but isn't populous enough or have incentive enough to really settle the countryside like the English did. Other states just think Over-Seas (Outremer in-universe) are just a bunch of cold forested islands.
The natives are less numerous in 1100 than in 1500 so the diseases don't reach as far inland. They do however travel along the coast (since the Irish and natives run around in boats). Lower population density means disease doesn't spread quite as rapidly either. Finally, there is no taboo about intermarriage among the Irish if the natives are Christian. As well, like in OTL, some Irish find the native cultures more appealing and join them.
These events retard native polity development (less people, more resources and space means less need to ramp up development to expand), but they also create a mixed-race class analogous to the Mestizos in OTL and at a point where religion instead of race matter more to the Europeans. It also provides methods in which natives can adopt more agricultural techniques from the Europeans potentially improving their population recovery. This opens the door to a more South America like situation developing as in OTL, which I see as the best plausible option until you get far into the interior.
Problem two is transmission. One reason the diseases were so deadly was because the North American countryside was settled to a certain level of density and had significant trade networks to transfer disease. If you begin the exchange earlier when the populations are more sparse, then there is less opportunity for the disease to hit everyone which means that if there is a "return" of the Europeans and diseases for some populations it will still be a virgin soil epidemic.
I did a little checking a while back and it looks like a few centuries wouldn't be enough to mutate the disease so that it matters.
One should also look into how fast populations recovered among the natives in the west and midwest when the diseases had been present on the continent for 250-300 years.
Now. This is happening in my own TL The Raptor of Spain. Here's how I'm proceeding for those unfamiliar: In this case the colonizer is Ireland. A state that has some population issues and seeks both space and resources in the new world but isn't populous enough or have incentive enough to really settle the countryside like the English did. Other states just think Over-Seas (Outremer in-universe) are just a bunch of cold forested islands.
The natives are less numerous in 1100 than in 1500 so the diseases don't reach as far inland. They do however travel along the coast (since the Irish and natives run around in boats). Lower population density means disease doesn't spread quite as rapidly either. Finally, there is no taboo about intermarriage among the Irish if the natives are Christian. As well, like in OTL, some Irish find the native cultures more appealing and join them.
These events retard native polity development (less people, more resources and space means less need to ramp up development to expand), but they also create a mixed-race class analogous to the Mestizos in OTL and at a point where religion instead of race matter more to the Europeans. It also provides methods in which natives can adopt more agricultural techniques from the Europeans potentially improving their population recovery. This opens the door to a more South America like situation developing as in OTL, which I see as the best plausible option until you get far into the interior.
It's a very interesting idea, but would probably be not too different from OTL. Portuguese still find Brazil; the desire for a "quick trip" to India/China still leads to exploration.
I think a disease exchange several centuries earlier (say 1000) is more interesting, as I've tried to imagine a scenario where the natives have recovered from disease losses (although even 4 or 5 centuries might not do it) and somehow have progressed a little more in technology.
Of course I'm always imagining some kind of "Greater Vinland" scenario, but they're usually shot down because of facts.
Edit: See the post above for facts.
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It's is important to remember that the Mississippian societies of North America appeared to be in decline when De Soto made contact. Archeology indicates that civilization peaked around 1200-1400. It began around 1000, so when the Vikings settled Vinland around that same time, I don't think it is far fetched to assume that the Mississippi River and its tributaries were not already being used as a communication and transportation highway. Of course the native population was not quite as high in 1000 as would be three centuries later, but I don't think that necessarily means the spread of diseases would necessarily be as limited as you suggest.
Well that's true, but more people = more trade = more contact. I'm not entirely sure what the evidence shows about when and how badly western native tribes were hit as opposed to more eastern populations, but real agriculture (from the south) only began to be adopted in the NE around 1000 so I feel confident suggesting trade was less robust in 1100 than in 1300 or 1500 as a whole. If I somehow missed the point with this response, I apologize.
Unconsensual
Banned
Yeah also you need at least 500K+ of closely packed people in order to sustain the really deadly epidemic diseases, other-wise it'll burn out (though leave some resistance through natural selection). Considering the development of New World societies I'd say that 1100-1200 is the earliest for deadly diseases.
Before that all you get is devastating contact in localized regions (with meager immunity gained)
Before that all you get is devastating contact in localized regions (with meager immunity gained)
Ah, yes, I think some of you may have thrown a little cold water on my "Native populations 5-9x higher than OTL theory. The far Northwest is a "bad" place for an epidemic to start, because the area is sparsely populated and I think the population would be mostly hunter-gatherers around 1000 (and later).
Still, it might take epidemics hundreds of years to make their way all the way to Central America, at which time there will be agricultural civilizations there.
The epidemics have to make their way down to the the Mississippi River Valley or Mesoamerica and South America, which are the places where the population is sedentary and high enough to create the disease reservoirs, resulting in repeating epidemics like the ones Europe went through, which would confer immunity on the descendent populations hundreds of years later. Via trade these epidemics would probably also spread to the outlying migratory tribes in North America.
I've heard that Cahokia and the rest of the Mississippian culture were in decline due to the effects of the Little Ice Age causing crop failure and increased inter-city warfare due to the food shortages creating a vicious cyle, etc, etc. But of course that's just a theory. At any rate the population of Mississippian cities was definitely higher in the 1200s and 1300s than it was at the time of the Exchange.
Yeah, on further thought here's my biggest hangup about my own theory about Amerindian numbers being able to bounce back to pre-contact numbers. I can distinctly remember reading that of the West Coast Natives Lewis and Clark had visited in the 1790s, 75% would die of disease epidemics within the next 50 years. (Not because of the expedition, just because of the general spread of disease). I know there was also an extremely deadly smallpox epidemic in the interior of the continent in the 1770s. (Which had started in, and also killed many in the American colonies, but at nothing like the death rate it was killing Indian tribes in the middle of the continent)
What this means is that there must have been incredibly deadly European disease epidemics hundreds of years after there were already known epidemics in the region, such as the one that wiped out the Mississippian Culture in the late 1500s, meaning that like Unconsensual was saying, a one-time burn-through apparently doesn't confer a lot of resistance on descendent populations. Although if anyone knows more about this or has information about which tribes were affected by the 1770s epidemic I'd love to hear it.
Anyway, in conclusion I think my 5-10 times larger Amerindian population estimate might be a little high, and something more like 2-4 times OTL's might be more realistic. That's still a huge difference than OTL, though.
Still, it might take epidemics hundreds of years to make their way all the way to Central America, at which time there will be agricultural civilizations there.
The epidemics have to make their way down to the the Mississippi River Valley or Mesoamerica and South America, which are the places where the population is sedentary and high enough to create the disease reservoirs, resulting in repeating epidemics like the ones Europe went through, which would confer immunity on the descendent populations hundreds of years later. Via trade these epidemics would probably also spread to the outlying migratory tribes in North America.
I've heard that Cahokia and the rest of the Mississippian culture were in decline due to the effects of the Little Ice Age causing crop failure and increased inter-city warfare due to the food shortages creating a vicious cyle, etc, etc. But of course that's just a theory. At any rate the population of Mississippian cities was definitely higher in the 1200s and 1300s than it was at the time of the Exchange.
Yeah, on further thought here's my biggest hangup about my own theory about Amerindian numbers being able to bounce back to pre-contact numbers. I can distinctly remember reading that of the West Coast Natives Lewis and Clark had visited in the 1790s, 75% would die of disease epidemics within the next 50 years. (Not because of the expedition, just because of the general spread of disease). I know there was also an extremely deadly smallpox epidemic in the interior of the continent in the 1770s. (Which had started in, and also killed many in the American colonies, but at nothing like the death rate it was killing Indian tribes in the middle of the continent)
What this means is that there must have been incredibly deadly European disease epidemics hundreds of years after there were already known epidemics in the region, such as the one that wiped out the Mississippian Culture in the late 1500s, meaning that like Unconsensual was saying, a one-time burn-through apparently doesn't confer a lot of resistance on descendent populations. Although if anyone knows more about this or has information about which tribes were affected by the 1770s epidemic I'd love to hear it.
Anyway, in conclusion I think my 5-10 times larger Amerindian population estimate might be a little high, and something more like 2-4 times OTL's might be more realistic. That's still a huge difference than OTL, though.
FDW
Banned
The Northwest was home to Hunter-Gatherer populations, but given that the land was so rich, the Hunter-Gatherer population were actually sedentary and had a fairly high population density.
