North America wasn't "taken." It had a demographic collapse in the early 15th century.
It was still "taken". Having a demographic collapse doesn't change that.
And frankly, 100,000 is less than the population of say, Finland.Around 1600, at least 100,000 people lived in New England, and the population was growing rapidly. Europeans would occasionally come ashore to trade and grab slaves, but every attempt to build permanent settlements was defeated. In 1616 an epidemic killed 90% of the population in New England. Plymouth was founded only four years later, which started the settlement of the region by the English.
The Pilgrims were not, of course, actually soldiers. They were basically expanding into empty land, and did not have entirely hostile relations with the remnant population of Native Americans in their territory. But there was such a population vacuum in the region England had time to send over many migrants, who also had natural population increase. These yeoman farmers put pressure on the surviving tribes as the 17th and 18th centuries rolled on, which caused them to lose all their territory.
Except that unlike Korea, it can be conquered by Europeans without too much trouble.But the land they held was only important enough to fight for because there were English farmers right there already. If the area was still densely settled by Native Americans, it would be as effectively useless to westerners as prime farming country in Korea was. Worse, the land would steadily be getting more useless, as New England was entering an agricultural revolution just as contact began, with maize farming becoming more central to food production.
What state funding did Cortez use?You know they needed state funding during this period, right? Enough miserable failures are really going to put a crimp in that.
Nope. Two thirds of the growth from 1760 to 1830, but Europe's industrial power per capita is on average on a par with China - England is slightly ahead of average per capita (comparison as of 1750, later figures get more in Europe's favor).As you pointed out, over half of it was in England, so if anything, the rest of Europe was on a per-capita level less productive than Asia.
If you want specifics:
Europe on the whole (manufacturing output): 23.2% to 28.1% (1800) to 34.2% (1830). China goes from 32.8% to 33.3% to 29.8%.
Britain goes from 1.9% to 9.5%
Per capita levels of industrialization (relative to the UK in 1900 as 100):
Europe on the whole: 8, 8, 11 - with the UK going from 10 to 16 to 25.
China goes from 8 to 6, 6.
For comparisons to a nonEuropean society that managed to not merely survive European hyper-expansion but claw its way up into great power status - Japan:
Per capita industrialization: 7 (equal to the Habsburg Empire and slightly ahead of Russia until 1830).
Do you really think that North American societies are even close to that?
Supply lines didn't stop Europeans from campaigning further abroad than the Americas.You ever hear of supply lines?
And not nearly dense enough to resist a determined attempt at conquest.Honestly, European powers could easily conquer (if not hold) the East Coast eventually. But they'd need to have port cities as bases of operation to work from. And without a collapse, North America is in a weird middle ground - too dense to roll over demographically, but not developed enough to slowly buy out the way India was.
So frankly, North America is vulnerable to any organized attempt to conquer it.
Yes, it really is.No, it really isn't. The Pueblo peoples picked up horses from the Spanish in 1621. A bit over a century later, horseback riding had spread all the way to Saskatchewan. Note that not just riding was passed along, but knowledge on how to selectively breed horses, make horse-riding gear, and everything else which was needed to be a pastoral nomad. The Comanche even figured out how to do mounted archery. This is astoundingly rapid cultural change. If very small populations could adopt this rapidly, the innovation of denser groups of Native Americans could be even more rapid.
This puts the Comanche on the same level of somewhat before AD 1000 Eurasians (I'd have to look up specifics to get a more precise date).
Going from that into the technology of the tericos and such is going to be much harder.
Can they do it, given time and no interference? Sure. But being able to have armies capable of beating any European 16th century army isn't going to do them that much good in the 1700s.
I'm sure that if their societies aren't destroyed by disease and civil war, the more organized polities have a chance - but treating them as if they can just leap across centuries of development to something like this . . . is giving them too much credit.
Comparisons to areas like Iran that were on the same level (essentially) as Europe entering into this period is of little help in understanding how much of a chance the Mexica have.
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