If Native America was never discovered or conquerd

Ah, both are easy possibilities. Harsher black plague would've hindered the Europeans for sure. Also, the Chinese were not so into colonization, especially if the colonies would be on the other side of the world. They'd consider it to be easier and more interest to simply maintain trade posts along the Pacific reaching to perhaps the Pacific Northwest and stretching down to Mexico to trade with the people along that area. Doubt they'd sail even further south, but they'd still maintain quite friendly relations with the Mexican peoples probably. After all, they had common interests trade-wise: jade was extremely valuable to both after all, I'm not sure about the Chinese but among the Maya (and Aztecs I think) jade was worth more than gold. Not sure what the Mesoamericans would want in return for jade, gold, chocolate, cotton, honey, spices, and animals exotic to the Chinese (as in iguanas, chicken of the forest ;)). Perhaps guns or rockets maybe, in addition to other metal objects and weapons.
 
Ok so if Europe had sufffered this plague for longer and through worse seasons of it. Also Christopher Columbus himself got it, died from it, or...
according to research believed in "incorrect" calculations about the size of the earth and if so was even more incorrect, thus never finding America or limiting his chance of finding it or funding for the original voyage.

In accordance to this, there is possible sabotage on the ship just a few days into the journey. Also when the compass no longer pointed to north there is mention that several days passed before the crew were alerted and hence panic set in. Its considered a legend is that the crew grew so homesick and fearful that they threatened to sail back to Spain.

Upon arrival Columbus founded the settlement La Navidad and left 39 men. What would have happened if he had been lost at sea?

So if the Chinese discovered America, on the Western Coast, they could have brought their knowledge and culture to the Natives there, form trade routes.
http://www.sciforums.com/showthread.php?t=99422

In 1492, Hongzhi is emperor. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hongzhi_Emperor . So colonies could have been formed on the Western Coasts of America and become part of The Ming Dynasty?

After a few years of co-exhistence, if Europeans started to uncover the Eastern coast and conquer... could there have been an early world war? A war between a bigger more powerful China and Native America -- and the European nations?
 
What was the ship technology for China like in 1400-1500? Could they have sailed to the new world or is there evidence to suggest they had discovered it prior to Columbas anyhow?

In 1405, the Yongle Emperor entrusted his favored eunuch commander Zheng He (1371–1433) as the admiral for a gigantic new fleet of ships designated for international tributary missions.

What if Zheng He had discovered the New World in say 1420.

https://www.alternatehistory.com/discussion/showthread.php?t=159225&page=2
 
What was the ship technology for China like in 1400-1500? Could they have sailed to the new world or is there evidence to suggest they had discovered it prior to Columbas anyhow?

In 1405, the Yongle Emperor entrusted his favored eunuch commander Zheng He (1371–1433) as the admiral for a gigantic new fleet of ships designated for international tributary missions.

What if Zheng He had discovered the New World in say 1420.

https://www.alternatehistory.com/discussion/showthread.php?t=159225&page=2

Their ship technology was perfectly adequate for it, and indeed in many ways was more advanced than that in contemporary Europe. Alas, you don't go exploring based on ship technology - exploration requires navigation technology. In terms of navigation techniques, the Chinese were behind the best in Europe, and not innovating, while Europe was advancing. For that matter, the Chinese were actually at a disadvantage to the Polynesians in that respect.

All they'd do is hire navigators who'd already sailed a certain route - Indians, Arabs, Indonesians - and have them pilot the ships while training Chinese navigators. The end result was that their huge fleets of gigantic ships sailed everywhere.... that someone had already sailed. There was zero exploration.

What you'd need for the Chinese to get there would be a fleet to be sailing somewhere East of Japan (and why would they do that?). When it's there a typhoon could possibly knock it the right direction and get it lost. The logical thing to do then would be to try to sail right back, but if ships were scattered a captain might decide to follow the current. If they didn't starve to death first, they'd end up in British Columbia. They might make it south of there after picking up supplies, if they had the crew left. They could potentially pass on a disease or even introduce livestock if they hadn't eaten all of them.

If they were in the Pacific Northwest or California it wouldn't matter outside the region - the Rockies and deserts were an effective barrier to disease in OTL. Further south it would make a difference. A hundred years wouldn't be long enough for pigs or goats to cause deep environmental damage in Mexico, but would be long enough for them to help the population recover from an epidemic or two. Maybe they'd even grow beyond our TL's levels.

What would this mean when the Europeans arrived? Instead of ~96% die off of the natives, you'd see as little as 75% die off. The improved native technology isn't going to save the *Aztecs, unfortunately, because the masses of revolting vassals that sided with the Spanish will have the same technology.

Honestly, if you want to save New Worlders, you should be looking at South America, not North. The Peruvian peoples were much more isolated and, in many ways, more advanced than the Mexican civilizations. If the first adventurers under Pizarro had failed, the Spanish would likely have never taken the place, because it was in the Portuguese zone of influence. [The original set up was Spain north, Portugal south. It was after they realized Spain had Peru already that it split Spain west, Portugal east.] Worst case scenario then, they end up vassals of the Portuguese, fragment under the economic disruption, and rebound to be a poor-man's Persia a couple centuries later.

Compared to OTL, that's a tremendous victory.
 
I really think that this thread belongs in ASB's.

There are just too many outside forces that are needed for America not to be discovered in the time it was.Even if you 'get rid of' Columbus,there are other explorers around that could make the same voyage.

How later will you have the plagues going ?

You'd need them to be going at least 10 or 20 years longer than they did in the OTL.

Even if both the plagues went on longer and Columbus dies/gives up you would also have stop the various Danish peoples who were creeping ever westward from Iceland and Greenland,both countries which did not suffer any ravages of the plagues.

Heck these why not use the Vikings to advance the Native Americans with advanced metalworking skills,agriculture and the advanes that could be made by the two cultures interacting with each other far eariler than in the OTL?
 
Well, yeah, the opening post would be ASB.

He's moderated his expectations since then, though.

Let's face it. If you completely wreck the Old World, or somehow arrange widespread-but-temporary contact with the New, it will help. What it won't do is change the power dynamic.

If the goal is for more native cultures and languages to survive, you just need to change the discovery of the New World. The best case scenario is simply that Spain isn't the one who discovers the Americas. Instead it's someone focused on trade. Trade will break down local economies, leave governments powerless, force all but the most isolated states into positions of dependence, introduce Christianity, and spread diseases that will kill off most of the locals. It just won't destroy their cultures.

At the end of several hundred years, you have marginally larger populations, in much smaller divided states. A few of these states are Christian, a few aren't. All speak primarily their native tongues, with one or more European language serving as lingua franca. These states are mostly protectorates of European powers.

That's best case Mexico. Peru could do slightly better. If you're talking about the rest of the Americas.... the best they can probably hope for is for small native states to be incorporated into the federal frameworks of colonizing powers. Think the surviving native states in LTTW's Empire of North America, the Apache and Navaho in our US, or the natives of Guyana.
 
Well ok, lets consider the Vikings.

There are reports they landed in America first, so what exactly happened?
http://news.softpedia.com/news/How-Did-Vikings-Discover-America-49891.shtml

If the Vikings had created a small colony there and started to grow a forte, what could have happened then? How would they have likely interacted with the Natives and what kind of cultural exchanges would have taken place. If we consider European dieseases again and the kind of time scale we are talking about would this have given the Native Americans time to adapt to the diseases etc...
 
Well ok, lets consider the Vikings.

There are reports they landed in America first, so what exactly happened?
http://news.softpedia.com/news/How-Did-Vikings-Discover-America-49891.shtml

If the Vikings had created a small colony there and started to grow a forte, what could have happened then? How would they have likely interacted with the Natives and what kind of cultural exchanges would have taken place. If we consider European dieseases again and the kind of time scale we are talking about would this have given the Native Americans time to adapt to the diseases etc...

Yeah, but the trip from Norway and Denmark to Iceland, from there to Greenland, and on to Vinland was too long. Most European diseases would not last within the crew the whole length of the voyage - they'd burn out before Greenland. Quite a number were also unlikely to end up on the ships in the first place: Malaria was never that far north and Plague wasn't even in Europe yet.

Add to that that the populations in North America were too small to sustain diseases and you've got an interminable problem. Unless you have a large enough population, most diseases will burn through and then be gone. Then your children are in the same position relative to the diseases that you were. Even the initial European colonies in North America were too small by that standard - despite a tendency to be better fed and healthier than their relatives in Europe they consistently had higher rates of die-off when an epidemic moved through. None of them were large enough for a disease to maintain a sustainable presence. It doesn't help that smallpox (for example) went through a hundred years ago, it only helps if it's come through in *your* lifetime.

Now if you're talking about a Viking community staying permanently and inter-marrying with the natives, they would be slightly different. While they'd still have the disease issue, they might be able to bring something permanent if it was in their livestock. More importantly, they'd be bringing livestock, iron-working, and some crops. The crops wouldn't be much better than corn, but they would probably include something that could be planted when corn depleted the soil. Which it always does. Mayan or Mississippian or Olmec collapse, it's only a mystery if you're not paying attention.

So a society with livestock, a more stable crop package, possibly an animal disease reservoir to keep their antibodies paying attention, iron, and maybe even horses could have a few hundred year to spread into either the St Lawrence Valley or New England. Culture wise it would be Norse with a strong flavoring of Iroquois or Algonquin, depending. Genetically it'd be in the area if 2/3 to 3/4 northern European. They'd be much stronger than their neighbors, and have higher population density, so expect them to take the best land (river valleys). Although there would be some transfer of technology and stock to the natives in the process.

When the rest of Europe arrives on the scene, they will be, depending on their start point, either dominating the New England lowlands or extended up the St Lawrence to the Lakes Champlain, Ontario, and Erie. Then, ironically, they'll likely die off more than most Indian tribes. The "best land" - along river valleys - is also where population density and trade routes funnel epidemics. The nearby Indian tribes would be hit less frequently. As populations collapsed, they would come out of the highlands and settle areas the pseudo-Norse had abandoned. [This is essentially what the Cherokee did in OTL, moving from the south Appalachians into better land in Georgia and Alabama as the locals died off.]

The end result would be fairly awesome, but it's still not really what you seem to be looking for.
 
Now if you're talking about a Viking community staying permanently and inter-marrying with the natives, they would be slightly different. While they'd still have the disease issue, they might be able to bring something permanent if it was in their livestock. More importantly, they'd be bringing livestock, iron-working, and some crops. The crops wouldn't be much better than corn, but they would probably include something that could be planted when corn depleted the soil. Which it always does. Mayan or Mississippian or Olmec collapse, it's only a mystery if you're not paying attention.

So a society with livestock, a more stable crop package, possibly an animal disease reservoir to keep their antibodies paying attention, iron, and maybe even horses could have a few hundred year to spread into either the St Lawrence Valley or New England. Culture wise it would be Norse with a strong flavoring of Iroquois or Algonquin, depending. Genetically it'd be in the area if 2/3 to 3/4 northern European. They'd be much stronger than their neighbors, and have higher population density, so expect them to take the best land (river valleys). Although there would be some transfer of technology and stock to the natives in the process.

When the rest of Europe arrives on the scene, they will be, depending on their start point, either dominating the New England lowlands or extended up the St Lawrence to the Lakes Champlain, Ontario, and Erie. Then, ironically, they'll likely die off more than most Indian tribes. The "best land" - along river valleys - is also where population density and trade routes funnel epidemics. The nearby Indian tribes would be hit less frequently. As populations collapsed, they would come out of the highlands and settle areas the pseudo-Norse had abandoned. [This is essentially what the Cherokee did in OTL, moving from the south Appalachians into better land in Georgia and Alabama as the locals died off.]

The end result would be fairly awesome, but it's still not really what you seem to be looking for.


ok so what if the Vikings, Chinese and maybe even the Mongols had colonised parts of America before Europe had arrived.

Mongols in America?
https://www.alternatehistory.com/discussion/showthread.php?t=158989

What about the Greeks?
https://www.alternatehistory.com/discussion/showthread.php?t=155309

What if the Greeks had colonised parts of America? In particular a combination of Greek, Viking and Chinese nations? What would have weakened Europe to going over to the New World? The black death? Columbus? Walter Raleigh?

Be curious to see what kind of flag they would have, if they ever declared independence?



Fiction about a stronger Native American Empire in modern times
https://www.alternatehistory.com/discussion/showthread.php?t=159225
 
You can have early PODs of how lost and marooned fleets of Carthaginians, Greeks or Romans arriving in the Americas. I am sure the native population would benefit to a certain degree from this limited cultural and technological exchange without making the world too different from it is now.
 
Surely though with a thriving set of colonies from Rome, Greek and Carthaginian empires, that would have an impact more so. Not just in terms of technology but also immunity to European diseases?
 
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