I was recently reading about the affects of diseases the Europeans brought with them to the New World on the Native American population and how it seriously hampered their ability to resist conquest and colonization. However, what if those diseases already existed in the Americas?
How and why? Earlier contact, by Norse explorers, Basque fishermen or Irish monks bringing the deseases over?
Or the same diseases as in the Old World being common in the Amaericas since the last Ice Age?
Whatever PoD you pick, by 1492 the demographics anmd ethnic composition of the Americas will look completely different. There will be kingdoms of people we have OTL never heard about.
How long could the natives resist?
Longer than OTL, but if the main difference is the presence of those germs, than the colonists still have the advantages of horses, domesticated cattle, pigs, sheep and goats, ironworking, firearms and a more sophisticated societal organization. To name but a few.
India and many parts of Africa had all theses benefits as well, but the Europeans still subjugated them (but did not manage to genocide or remove them).
How would the attempted European conquest proceed if they encountered some real robust resistance from natives that were not dying of disease in catastrophic numbers?
Subjugation and a role as colonial subjects or second-class citizens. But survival and the potential to chase away the Europeans one day.
Or a mixture of cultures, like you see in many parts of Latin America, where the indigene numbers were higher to start with.
For all we know, there might be settler-derived *leftists today demonizing the native aristocracy for clinging to their unearned privileges and their many square-miles of unused wilderness, thereby depriving the common man of cheap land to build homes and grow crops on.
No reservations, but princely states of Sachems and Sagamores instead of Maharajahs and Nawabs.
