Lands of Ice and Mice: An Alternate History of the Thule

[fasquardon]

Sorry for taking such a long time to post. I needed to take a wee break from the Thule.

LOL. I don't see that either.

Me neither, unfortunately. But I do like to see timelines that are a bit less "Christianity wins", like ours has been.

There were Buddhist and Muslims active in Siberia, but they didn't have the logistical capacity to really make much headway. So I can see Muslim or Buddhist preachers reaching the Siberian Thule, even managing to convince the Siberians to let them stay among them and preach. But while they might (I stress MIGHT) convert a few people, the Thule are very unlikely to come into contact with the full Islamic or Buddhist packages, and thus aren't likely to be impressed enough to ever have any interest in adopting the religions in any significant way.

Well that was in the context of the continual subjugation of the Southern Tribes. Christianity did a relatively poor job of displacing Animist faiths in Africa, and made very little headway displacing Hindu polytheism, establishing itself only as a middling presence in India. In French indo-china a hundred years of colonialism produced only a Christian minority. In Thailand... not much. Christianity had a minority presence in pre-communist China.

The Animist faiths in Africa were going strong in 1900, even in 1950. But since decolonization, Christianity and to a lesser extent Islam have really expanded in Africa (not just absolutely, but proportionally as well). Animism used to be THE big thing in sub-saharan Africa, now it is a minority faith across the continent. (Just over 10% of the population Sub-Saharan Africa plus the African diaspora.)

In Korea, the largest religion is not Buddhism, Confucianism or Taoism, no, it is Christianity (c. 29% of the South Korean population, numbers from the North are less reliable, but even assuming no Christians in North Korea, all the Christians in the South still mean Christianity is the biggest single religion in the peninsula).

And Hinduism is quite a complex entity (if indeed it counts as a single entity at all) - "Hindu" is the word that the modern "India" is derived from. It comes from the old name of the Indus river (Sindhu, which also gave its name to the Sindh region) - to the people West of the Sindhu, be they Persians, Greeks or Englishmen, the subcontinent was "that stuff across the Sindhu/Hind/India". So all "Hindu" means is "religion of India". And there are ALOT of religions in India. Be they Jains, Northern Hindus, Southern Hindus (which are very, very different), Vishnu worshipers, Shiva worshipers... So speaking of the Hindu struggles against Islam, Christianity and Buddhism is not really accurate. What actually happened is that various Hindu pantheons, cults and political groups were competing with each other and challengers like Buddhism, Islam and Christianity. Often, the existing Hindu contenders were out-competed by the three challengers, but new strands of Hinduism arrose that were able to compete on a more even footing. In the case of Buddhism, the Hindu addaption to it (the rise of near monotheistic Vishnu cults that look an awful lot like Buddhism, except they were more friendly to the power of royalty and priesthoods), the adaption was so successful that Buddhism was reduced from being the dominant religion in many regions of India to a very marginal minority.

The Hindu responses were also enabled by several things the Thule don't have:

1) Hindus had Sanskrit. The prestige of Sanskrit is huge. HUGE. Sanskrit is THE reason that the North Indian religions absorbed the South Indian religions. It also tells us that Hinduism started off as one of the most organized religions of its age (they managed to write down their hymns before anyone else and managed the same feat to keep those first hymns for over 3000 years).
2) India had a complex organized society - they had kings and strong priesthoods who could influence large chunks fo the subcontinent and who could respond to the challenger religions strategicly and also had a wealth of information about exactly what they were fighting - the Thule have nothing like this level of organization or this scale of organization. Thule shamen are going to have to respond on a village level absent a few who manage to influence larger regions for brief times.
3) Hinduism had thousands of years to adapt - they first had to deal with Zoroastrianism, the first great monotheistic religion, but whose level of organization wasn't that great. Then they had to deal with Buddhism, which almost won the competition for the Gangetic plain. Then they had early Christianity to contend with. Then early Islam, then middle Islam (it took the Muslims 500 years before they started making big inroads into India), which like Buddhism, was very successful for a while. Then they had to deal with late Christianity. By contrast, the Thule aren't going to have a chance to improve their shamanic toolkit as they face off against slightly better organized religions, they are going right into the deep end against post-reformation Christianity.

Also worth mentioning - I've read a theory (I am not sure I buy it, but it is food for thought) that Buddhism faded in India because the original Buddhism was a religion of personal enlightment - withdraw from the world and strive for nirvana - whereas Hinduism was a religion that stressed societal relationships - how kings should treat priests and farmers, the duty of warriors to fight even if they are bad warriors etc. Fulfilling your Dharma (your place in the order of things) is an important concept in Hinduism. So while Buddhism initially flowered by offering improved status to both the lower castes (since Buddhism had no castes) and women, in the long run it wasn't able to compete with the powerful ideas of societal regulation in Hinduism.

In Thailand and Vietnam (also Cambodia, Laos, Indonesia, Burma and the Phillipenes), Christianity was facing Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam and a grab bag of shamanistic beliefs. Hinduism didn't do so well here in more recent times (it was the dominant organized religion for centuries mind), and the others have all expanded to varying degrees. But the local shamanic religions, like those in Africa, have been declining very fast, particularly since the 1950s. Mostly this is because modern transport means that the interior tribes are more exposed to the religions coming in from the coasts.

Generally speaking, organized religion seems to act alot like agriculture - well organized religions moving into an area with shamanic religion generally result in the shamanic religion becoming displaced like it is the hunter-gathering of religion. So while I can see the Thule avoiding conversion for a long time, I think it is highly likely that by 2000 the Thule will be majority Christian.

Nevertheless, there is a genuine intangible quality that for want of a better word we will call genius which is distinct from simply being smart or driven. If I had to define it, I would call it the ability to take what appears to be an intuitive conceptual leap which is not previously apparent and are able to incorporate that intuitive leap into conceptual frameworks.

The brain biochemistry and neuroscience work that has been happening lately is fascinating. I'm kinda tempted to go into it here, but maybe it would be taking the thread too far away from the topic? What do you think?

In reference to the original question (development of innoculation), I suppose what is really important is that while geniuses might make amazing leaps, they have to stand on the shoulders of the giants they are issued with, so to speak.

Also worth mentioning - while the Thule haven't had much in the way of real geniuses so far, they also haven't had much in the way of influential fools. The closest we've come is the inventor of Walrus riding. The Thule need their Lysenkos as well as their Darwins.

So its arguable that the pieces [for a medical package] are all laying around in the culture.

I think the main development the Thule need to make to go from folk medicine (and lemme tell you, all the folk medicines I've ever read up on are amazing bodies of knowledge) is the idea of systematizing that knowledge - in our history, the systamatizing of medical knowledge was a rare thing. To the Thule, medicine will be ritual, magic and spirit diplomacy. Personally, I expect that the Thule will not organize their knowledge until European contact heats up. Either getting the idea from the Europeans directly, or organizing their own knowledge as a response to the European plagues killing off so many of the repositories of that knowledge. One of the ideas I had for a plague-era story was a Shaman in the Mackenzie basin in the 1700s who, seeing so many of his fellows dying off, makes it his personal mission to write down as much knowledge he can learn before he and others are carried away by the plagues.

West Africa.

Ahh, my bad.

West Africa, to my thinking, is a much more persuasive case for an independent invention of variolation simply because the pathway of cultural transmission is so attenuated. We don't have anywhere close to the documented volume of travel and trade, of the movement of memes, and cultural exchange. So the technique seems to stand out.

Not so attenuated. Caravans were traveling back and forth - both along the North/South axis and along the East/West axis. People were going to Mecca, Medina and Jerusalem on pilgrimage. Morocco had a pretty big sub-saharan empire back in the day. The Ottoman Empire had tributaries in the Sahel before the loss of Libya cut them off, and the Mande speaking peoples (in what is now Niger, North Nigeria and Mali) were well aware of the latest learning in the Ottoman lands.

Also, keep in mind, the slave trade was bringing people from all over. Some of the biographies of slaves that I've read are spectacular - they traveled enormous distances as soldiers, merchants, pilgrims and slaves in their lifetimes. Like real life Conan the Barbarians, only the ending is alot less happy.

West Africa's medical skill set is not the product of thousands of years of medical science at the cutting edge of medical practice.

Most likely it was. Timbuktu has one of the greatest libraries of the world for a few centuries and regular contact with the Islamic world.

In any event, the technique itself is not contingent upon a vast body of accumulated incremental medical knowledge and technique. There are technologies and practices that do have those requirements - forms of surgery, such as removing an appendix as an example - it takes a great deal of accumulated incremental medical knowledge and technique to open a body cavity, manage to avoid cutting or damaging something vital, like an artery or an organ, accomplish anything, and not have the patient die of trauma or opportunistic infections. Or as another example, developing a specific medical instrument like a hypodermic needle.

In contrast, variolation can be accomplished with stone age technology and relatively low levels of skill and training. It can be done by folk medicine.

And yet, stone age societies did have several surgical techniques. We know of no stone age societies that developed variolation.

Indeed. Mortality rates are universally acknowledged, the general number is 1%. Given that the Thule are a naive/virgin population, in my discussion, I chose to increase that number fivefold to 5%. I've also suggested that in the likely circumstances where you would have widespread variolation - ie, with a pandemic and panic close at hand, you'r mortality rate would be even higher - 15%. So this is factored in.

I'm even prepared to acknowledge the likelihood of at least a few local variolation induced epidemics. Of course, variolation would tend to occur under very controlled circumstances which would reduce the likelihood of outbreak.

5% is 1 in 20. Imagine 1 in 20 of everyone you know dying, and then tell me if you would accept the medical involved being used on you? Today, millions of parents are refusing to have their children treated with the MMR vaccine with far lower levels of POSSIBLE harm, risking the population being ravaged by REAL epidemic disease in doing so. 15% is an epidemic. It is 3 in 20 of all of your friends dying.

And if variolation triggers an actual epidemic (as it is very likely to do in my view)... That's at least a 3 in 10 death toll, if not a 7 in 10 death toll.

And that variolation has to contend with several diseases coming in close succession to each-other, diseases that look alot like each-other, diseases that will be killing the medical experimenters as well as ordinary people. I don't think the Thule will see variolation as bringing any benefits even if it does actually have a small benefit.

I have great difficulty seeing the Thule accepting even the best case scenario as a good trade off. And given how likely it is that the worst case scenario will happen several times, I think if the Thule do try variolation, they will drop it like a hot potato.

Quarantines are certainly effective, and they are orders of magnitude better than nothing, but they're also far from perfect.

Amen to that. But as imperfect as it is, I have trouble seeing the Thule harnessing any better tools.

I'd like to write a piece about how the "shaman class" transitioned to a real aristocracy in different ways in different Thule regions starting around 1550.

I've been working along very similar lines. So similar, in fact, it is uncanny.

There will be more than just Shamans happening in Thule society - other power centers will emerge.

Also, when things do evolve from shamanic roots so far that they stop being shamen? For example if the Thule give rise to "priest kings", well, the priest kings may evolve completely beyond their shamanic roots except for an idea that "we are king because the great spirit of the sea says we are", but losing all the fasting and mysticism.

By 1550, there may no longer be a real "shaman class", but rather a priest class, a medicine man class, an aristocrat class, a scribe class, a witch class and so on - all of which have roots in the same mystical shaman class of old, but now see themselves as being completely distinct and closer to the good old ways than those charlatans over there...

Or maybe it will take the plagues to break things up like that...

Actually, this gets us into a dichotomy I've been working with. Where does power come from in a society? Stripped down to its essence - power is a function of either person or resources (land, animals or people). Shaman's as a class are people who exercise personal power - their power is based in their identity as Shamans, in their intelligence and skill, their reputation, their mystical and practical abilities. However, other constituencies may have power based in more tangible things - land or animals say, its more durable, easier to control or organize people by offering them shares or payments. So my read of Thule society is that you are getting secular classes emerging, big landholders, big herdsmen, or families which command inordinate resources. What I'm saying is that it isn't all Shamans. They are at the cutting edge of social transformation, so they get a lot of press. But they're not the only thing there.

As I see it shaman is basically a service professional. Even the mumbo-jumbo showmen are useful for providing placebo cures, helping people realize what they already knew and helping the group live with the fluctuations of a harsh world (and the emotional stress that causes, especially when those fluctuations lead to your favorite daughter dying). That utility is ultimately what their power rests on.

But that is just my guess. And I don't have the depth of knowledge to guess with any degree of authority.

I don't know where this 'quasi-scientific' stuff comes from.

Perhaps from the way the shamen are so willing to experiment. I must admit, I see the society as being "quasi-scientific" too, with an emphasis on the "quasi". Maybe it would be better to say "the Thule are open minded flexible experimental and superstitious as all heck".

Disease Question

By the way DValdron, did you ever go into the other two diseases in the Thule disease triad? I remember a post exploring Bruce, but I can't remember anything beyond asides about Joan and Mona.

fasquardon

 

[Pesterfield]

But since decolonization, Christianity and to a lesser extent Islam have really expanded in Africa

Any idea why?

If you're finally free of the foreign occupier why not kick out their foreign god too?

Depending on how tied in the old religions of a country is with secular power, or how much the new leaders can say they are, bringing them back would make political sense too.

 

[DG Valdron]

I would suggest that the rise of Christianity in post-colonial African states has a lot to do with extremely rapid and somewhat catastrophic social change. Runaway urbanisation, the collapse of the countryside, overpopulation, land disputes, the failure of state bodies and state institutions to cope with social, economic and demographic shifts, and the breakdown of traditional social structures.

What happens in this situation is that Christian churches and Christian missionary cults emerge to organize people, provide social services, monopolize state and private aid, and provide a new social matrix and organizing system.

In a sense, this is also why evangelical American churches are supplanting catholicism in Latin America. The Catholic Church has become part of the problem, or at least ineffective in addressing social and economic change. So it is being pushed out in many places by alternate Christian faiths which at least offer a different set of promises.

Edit: On reflection, I'm fairly shocked at my own cynicism.

 

[Falecius]

Edit: On reflection, I'm fairly shocked at my own cynicism.

Fair enough.
Especially since, while Latin American Catholic Church can actually be blamed on several grounds, failing to adress problems related with sudden social changes is not among its more noticeable faults. If anything, it's better at it than any South American evangelical church I know of.
Africa is sort of a different beast in this respect. I agree that Christianity has been getting a deeper root there as a force able to offer answers to social changes, but I doubt it is the only factor.

 

[wannis]

There's also a ratchet effect with proselytizing, monotheistic religions - traditional animism is relatively open and more about sharing beliefs and rituals with an immediate community; that's why, in the initial stages (and, in rural areas, often for centuries) you often have converts who practice both their community religion and the old religion together. But the proselytizing religions normally try to fight that and exterminate the aninimist practices. Animism rarely fights back, mostly offering only the passive resistance of habit and communal cohesion The same was true for pagan religions in medieval Europe - there often was an initial blocking against missionaries and some attempts at push-back, but nothing compared to the constant work of proselytizing and education / indoctrination done by the Christian or Islamic clergy. If you combine that with the braking down of traditional communities, the development will go only into one direction - from animism to the monotheistic proselytizing religions (or, in modern times, proselytizing ideologies).

 

[DG Valdron]

Especially since, while Latin American Catholic Church can actually be blamed on several grounds, failing to adress problems related with sudden social changes is not among its more noticeable faults. If anything, it's better at it than any South American evangelical church I know of.

I would disagree strongly. Speaking as a Catholic, the Church is very good at paying lip service to the poor, and at providing and maintaining a stable network of social services, but the Catholic Church in Latin America has always been at the service of a rich and powerful and has been a pillar of social order and stability. The notion of the Church as wrestling with or coping with social change, with breakdowns of established social structures or the emergence of new social structures seems... dubious. As far as that goes, guys like John Paul II and Benedict spent a couple of decades working very hard at rooting out anything like progressivism in the church. The Papacy chose its side.

The evangelical cults are not necessarily better at addressing social breakdown, but they don't have to be. All they have to do is exploit the breakdown and failure of the Catholic Church. A niche opens up, they rush in to fill it. Simple as that. If the Catholic Church wasn't dropping the ball, and niche's were not opening up, then they wouldn't be there. Simple as that.

Now I suppose that this seems counterintuitive coming from someone who is by heritage and upbringing a Catholic. But I would argue that any appreciation of Catholic theology or history, or in a larger sense Christian Theology or history, must inevitably produce a deep and abiding cynicism.

My Catholicism urges me to be the best person I can be, to try to respect and assist the less fortunate, and to regard things like pride, greed and sloth as sins which open the doorway to evil acts. On the other hand, I'm not prepared to respect the notion the putting a piece of rubber on my dick is an abomination to god just because some geriatric celibate says so.

I acknowledge, this may be seen by some as an inherent contradiction in my Catholicism, but I will say that my Church is huge and embraces many contradictions so immense and damning that mine is but a fart in a hurricane.

We got free will for a purpose. God has no blame for the shit we do to each other, and gets no credit for the good we do. That's just us. We're the ones that make the Churches, and we make them for each other, just as we make prisons, God has no need of either.

And for the record, I generally don't discuss my faith. I've tried to avoid personal matters, I suppose, up to the decision to leave.

Africa is sort of a different beast in this respect. I agree that Christianity has been getting a deeper root there as a force able to offer answers to social changes, but I doubt it is the only factor.

Difference of perspective. I don't see Christianity as offering 'answers'. That would imply people are asking questions.

Rather, its a matter of needs and function. People exist and are supported by networks. In village life, you have your relatives, your land, your animals, your friends, your relationships and obligations back and forth. This sustains you, particularly in tough times.

Village life breaks down, people are forced into urban settings, the old rules, old paradigms, the old networks of relationship and obligation aren't in place. You have to come up with new ones. People don't go "I'm looking for an answer." They're going "I'm looking for fresh water, and a school for my kids, and someone I can go to when I'm sick, and someone I can trust to help me steal the wheels off that car." A church/congregation offers a matrix where you can build a social network, see your needs met, where you can rely on people to help you, and people can rely on you.

It's not like a bunch of animists are sitting around and going 'Wow, when you think about it, Christian theology is clearly more organized and coherent and quite superior to our way of ordering the cosmos. I must buy in....'

I suppose that does happen. Every crazy thing in the world happens out there in some way at some time. People do genuinely convert because they just like Christianity better, or Islam, or Buddhism...

But generally, that's not how people function, as has been pointed out on the Board, Livingston was a missionary in Africa for a decade and arguably made no real converts, except for one guy who manufactured his own version of Christianity. Animist cults in west africa were exposed to Christianity for several hundred years, including perhaps a hundred years of direct colonialism and held out pretty well.

And in any case, Christian theology is a grab bag of apples and excrement, a mixture of accretion, interpretation and fabrication fractured into a myriad of sects and cults. It's theological coherence and beauty is apparent mainly to people raised in it and people proselytizing it and hardly obviously apparent to anyone else.

My point is that if Christianity makes huge strides in a single decade, but does nothing in the previous five decades, I think we have to look at anthropological issues, at social changes and the breakdowns and establishment of orders that undermines one faith and elevates another, rather than relying on the notion that one faith is inherently superior to another.

Anyway, will Christianity dominate the Thule in the 20th century? Maybe, maybe not. Don't really care. That's 300 years away so even if I wanted to take it up to that point to see, there's a whole shitload of intervening work. Frankly, I'm not going up to the 20th century, so I suppose people can argue for anything.

As to what its contribution will be, and where, between now and 1700 or so, when I call it quits... I dunno, we'll have to work it out and see. This timeline has often surprised me.

I hope that this doesn't offend anyone. True believers are entitled to go on truly believing, and I'm happy to respect that. But my opinions are my own and I'll lay claim that I have a right to them. And as for this timeline, I'll write it to my satisfaction until such time as I stop writing it.

 

[DG Valdron]

There's also a ratchet effect with proselytizing, monotheistic religions - traditional animism is relatively open and more about sharing beliefs and rituals with an immediate community; that's why, in the initial stages (and, in rural areas, often for centuries) you often have converts who practice both their community religion and the old religion together. But the proselytizing religions normally try to fight that and exterminate the aninimist practices. Animism rarely fights back, mostly offering only the passive resistance of habit and communal cohesion The same was true for pagan religions in medieval Europe - there often was an initial blocking against missionaries and some attempts at push-back, but nothing compared to the constant work of proselytizing and education / indoctrination done by the Christian or Islamic clergy. If you combine that with the braking down of traditional communities, the development will go only into one direction - from animism to the monotheistic proselytizing religions (or, in modern times, proselytizing ideologies).

Well, structurally, the Abrahamic faiths were much more organized and hierarchical - that's a given. With Catholicism, you had an organized hierarchical system that extended across Europe, from the village level, all the way up to the Pope, and which operated as a mechanism for holding vast amounts of property, confiscating huge surpluses, organizing vast numbers of people in a variety of ways. This is pretty much the same advantage that any big organized structure has when it impacts a diffuse unorganized structure.

 

[DG Valdron]

Back to Topic

It's now 1610. Who and what has Henry Hudson encountered on the west side of Hudson Bay.

 

[Shevek23]

Back to Topic

It's now 1610. Who and what has Henry Hudson encountered on the west side of Hudson Bay.

The primitive beginnings of something like an empire of city-states. More like a confederation of tribes and villages I'd think, actually. But a power that can mobilize efforts across half a continent, if only thinly.

A power that can appreciate guns, and can lay hands on gold to buy them, as well as the unique products of Thule cultivation, crops and furs.

Someone well worth trading with in lieu of China, with as much tonnage as the English can muster and thread through the perilous passages. In some ways better than China; the Chinese are hard customers to please, unless one can arrange to addict them en masse to opium and then monopolize the opium trade. These people are potential sources of weird drugs instead of markets for them--though I suppose they might appreciate coffee or hard liquor.

That's what I gather from all the pages we went over months before. Their metallurgy is primitive and they'll appreciate finer steels, but far overland, where the English will be hard put to drive a colonial boundary of their own all the way to, there are deposits of gold and copper.

If Europeans come in numbers they will bring their diseases with them; if they try to push Christianity, the diseases and the cross will signify much leading to unpleasantness among the survivors, nor will a massive die-off of Thule open the way for easy colonization.

I don't suppose you figure by now it's going the way DirtyCommie showed us in the opening chapter, but something vaguely akin to that is in the works. First there will be contact with the Hudson shore Thule, who will suffer for it--but deep inland, the Thule survivors will rally and meet the English and any other Europeans who try to dog their heels on their own terms.

For now--Hudson has a mission. When he gets back to England, assuming some butterfly-storm doesn't sink them on the way, funding should be ample for a return in force--not necessarily force intended to overwhelm the Thule, but hulls full of trading goods that are intended to be full on the way back, and the Muscovy Company, perhaps renamed, will be in business.

They might also get some insight into how to deal with the other Thule who will surround their ships when they first make landfall in the Americas.

Now, how all the other European powers DC showed us up front will horn in is more of a story but it seems plain enough. No matter how fast and quietly Hudson and the Muscovy backers (who will doubtless include King James himself) fit out the next expedition, some kind of word will leak out. The more vague the news is kept, the more wild guesses other competing powers--France, perhaps already the Dutch, Spain or Portugal, conceivably some Hanseatic consortium, quite likely the Danes or other Scandinavians--will make. Those in a position to find out what cargoes Hudson is selling will realize they've made contact with some rich Thule inclined to trade, those kept in the dark might guess he did manage to find the Northwest Passage and made it to China or Japan. Either way--it's worth chasing after him and the English--presumably, the Anglo-Scots, in personal union under the Stuarts--will be hard pressed to make or enforce a claim to own a franchise on the route.

A century before, the Pope could mediate an agreement between the Portuguese and Spanish as to who got dibs on what parts of the world. (By that agreement the Portuguese should stay out--unless they contend that the English are trading with China, which is their turf, therefore they have in interest in checking the matter out). By now though, such rulings are dead letters, even among Catholics, and of course the Protestants of the north, now including the English despite the intrigues of some Stuarts make a point of demonstrating contempt for Papal presumption. It's all about who can get to the strategic choke points and markets firstest with the mostest.

Well, it's just one expedition. It may take a while for the news to spread and the balls to get rolling and meanwhile relations with the Thule along Hudson's Bay could go sour any number of ways, closing off the opportunities before they are really appreciated.

But--riches and gold in the north, that's what I think Hudson believes he's found. China can go hang!

And no one is in a particularly good position to pre-empt the English, except maybe the Danes. Or, if a secessionist kingdom incorporating some Thule around Trondheim has split off, or that's now in the cards, those guys could probably win over the otherwise disgruntled and neglected Icelanders. But even they don't have a much better shot at the route Hudson has explored than the English and/or Scots (depending on how much coordination James imposes on his two kingdoms--well, three counting Ireland). The Dutch are almost as well positioned, and the French are not far behind--indeed if things have gone as OTL they already have a base on the St. Lawrence.

Spain might also horn in and preemptively move up the Atlantic coast, much as they would a couple centuries later to head off the Russians (and British) on the Pacific. OTL they failed to deter the English from settling Virginia and farther south though they did draw a line at St. Augustine, but here their attention is being drawn northward a little bit earlier. Not a whole lot, Jamestown and other English settlements may still check them and keep them out of this particular brouhaha, Treaty of Tordesillas or no.

DirtyCommie of course mentioned Portuguese and not Spaniards, I frankly don't see how that works; if the Spanish can't force their way in I don't see how the Portuguese do, them being in the wrong hemisphere and all, and with the only other Catholic contender for the Thule trade, France, not being keen to invite them in as partners.

The logical first-rank contenders to me seem to be the Anglo-Scots and the Scandinavians, with a splinter group of Trondheim-Icelanders having the best angles in versus the Brits, or the Danes if the Danish kings can play it cool enough to keep the various other Scandinavians onside.

I do think that over centuries, the French might soldier on in New France and from there, via a succession of negotiations with the Thule-hating peoples between then and Thule land proper, cut a southern overland route to Thule trade, mediating something like peace between some Thules and other Native Americans for the first time in the east anyway, and even bringing some Thule onside as Catholic converts and agents of New France.

I'm going to close with a fantasy I had way way upthread, of Montreal mustering a striking force of Thule snow-forces that are no threat in summer--but come winter can strike deep and hard into New England and perhaps as far south as Virginia, given French arms and generalship. I think in winter, North America that far south (well, maybe not Virginia, except in the mountains, but surely Pennsylvania and New York, and out in the midwestern forest and plains) is geographically and climatically if not ecologically an extension of Thule terrain and their comfort moving on it, and ruthlessness, will make the winters a terror for other powers that don't have Thule auxiliaries.

Or of course, it could be that instead the Thule reject French advances and use that same winter-power to strike south, with English or Dutch arms and encouragement, and wipe out New France once and for all.

 

[DG Valdron]

The Western Coast of Hudson Bay, particularly the shorelines south of Chesterfield Inlet and the Chesterfield inlet into Baker Lake are one of the three originating sites of Thule Agriculture, dating back to 1170. So this has been a region of robust and expanding agricultural societies for 440 years, a region of heavy population density and innovation for perhaps 500 to 550 years.

The largest communities in the region may reach ten thousand or more. Communities of several hundred are relatively common. The total population of the Hudson Bay region is under a million, roughly 750,000, give or take 50,000.

The region is classic arctic Tundra, more hospitable than Baffin Island or Ellesmere or the Islands of the Archipelago, not as rich as the McKenzie Basin or Alaska.

A mainland territory, microclimate engineering works particularly well here, particularly in the interior. The moderating element of the Arctic ocean is muted. The diversity of landscapes is extreme.

What this means is that through the region, there's a lot of heterodoxy. The landscape roughly divides up into four kinds of territory, with lots of mixtures. Herding country, mostly caribou; Farming country, with a diversity of farming styles including proto-specialized crops like berry farmers; Fishing/Sea lands; Specialized terrritories - producers of flint or soapstone, or wood, or notable trading points.

This is not dissimilar to the layered subcultures of Greenland, but whereas in Greenland, you saw the subcultures occupying continous parallel bands between coast and glacier, here there's substantial complexity.

Due to the diversity, in many areas, something very close to commercial trade has been emerging over the last 500 years.

Traditional trade essentially involves very small volumes of goods, passed from hand to hand in a kind of extended game of telephone, exchanges are as often political and gift oriented as they are exchanges of items of value.

Certain things signify the movement towards 'commercial-like' trade. One is the reduction of the number of 'players' in the game of telephone - objects travel through fewer hands from production to destination. There is more of a concept that the item is for purposes of trade - ie, meant to be passed to an ultimate recipient. There is some expectation of value to be harvested from trade -ie, the trader is making a living in harvesting the relative values between producer and recipient. The volume of goods in flow has increased substantially.

We're seeing this in Hudson Bay. The Ellesmere Trading network reaches here, and has inspired local trading organizations, and groups and communities have begun to make their living or a part of their livelihood from trade. Local centers have emerged all over, where people travel, gather and meet to exchange. Agricultural specialists have emerged, both within communities and broadly in regions and as communities, maximizing particular forms of production. In particular, berry farmers are often very close to single crop producers, exchanging their crop for other production. Medicinal roseroot is similar. Fishing communities are exchanging strongly with inland communities. Divisions of labour and specializations have emerged in many communities.

Caribou Herders become instrumental in moving large quantities of goods over substantial distances. Most of the rivals to the Ellesmere trading network are emerging here, copying the patterns of family organization and diffusion on smaller scales. Literacy has proved a valuable tool in negotiations between different small trading networks.

A unique phenomenon among the Thule is the great summer wood harvest. An organized movement of large numbers sails south along the Hudson Coast, for sustained logging. The logs are floated back up, and distributed into the Thule communities. This has required an unprecedented degree of social assembly, cooperation and organization.

The Hudson Bay complex is a 'crossroads' region, to the North and East is Baffin, Ellesmere, Greenland and Labrador. To the West is McKenzie. To the south are the forested lands of the Cree.

So over the last 440 years, the Hudson Bay region has been the recipient cultural flows and innovations from every direction moving backwards and forwards. Roseroot, Labrador Tea, Dwarf fireweed and Kvan came from the North and East. Claytonia came from the west. Copper and Bronze drifted in from the west, Iron filtered in from Greenland and Labrador. The Caribou was domesticated here, the Musk Ox filtered in as a minor domesticate from the Archipelago.

The Norse interchange barely reached. Sheep did not make it in - showing up instead on Baffin and Labrador, but carrots and onions did, literacy took hold, fishing nets were adopted widely.

Of course, it is not all peaceful. Sometimes its cheaper to rob than to trade. Various groups have various advantages. Local and regional warfare goes on. Alliances, defensive and offensive, have been evolving steadily.
Short lived regional hegemonies have been emerging and falling apart continously since at least 1300 onwards, becoming increasingly elaborate, complex and durable over time. Hegemonies collapse under their own weight, fade over time, or are overthrown by rivals. Political maps separated by a decade will look completely different. The one trend is that it's kept getting bigger and more ambitious with each iteration. Enforced tribute and looting are both well accepted. Increasingly, hegemonies are tied to population centers, particular communities, subcultures, trading or other sorts of networks. The connections that support peaceful coexistence and facilitate trade and cooperative endeavor are the same ones that allow you to gather up and maintain a mighty coalition of warriors to give a drubbing to your enemies and enforce tribute from those who would rather not fight.

 

[DG Valdron]

The primitive beginnings of something like an empire of city-states. More like a confederation of tribes and villages I'd think, actually. But a power that can mobilize efforts across half a continent, if only thinly.

We're kind of at a Shrodinger Cat moment, Shevek. A point of manifold potentials waiting to crystallize into a choice. Consider:

* A Regional Empire dominating the Bay, or perhaps just the west side of the Bay, of indefinite age and unknown sophistication.

* Would it collapse on contact as the southerly states did, at the hands of enterprising adventurers?

* Would it form a coherent pro-active response, meeting the Europeans on its own terms.

* Instead of an Empire, a Federation?

* Or perhaps instead, a few of rival states or statelike entities, jockying for supremacy.

* If a multiplex, will the Europeans play them off against each other.

* Would one use the European trade to make itself supreme? Build an empire, as the Hawaians did with European technology at hand.

* Or would there be no state or statelike entity at all, but just a loose series of communities, each village or town its own land

* If a series of communities, will European contact trigger something like New Zealand's musket wars?

* Or will Europe simply proceed with colonialism over a divided quarreling people, something like the British in Inda?

* Who will control the interior trade? Europeans, a la a steroid version of the Hudson Bay Company?

* Or ambitious Thule....

As I said, not crystallized, it could go in any direction. The only sure thing is that the consequences of European contact will be huge - not just the diseases, but the awe inspiring diversity and quality of European goods and artifacts, the technology available. As one obvious example, regular trade with Europe will simply devastate the Thule metallurgical subcultures.

I think I'd like things to be interesting though.

A power that can appreciate guns, and can lay hands on gold to buy them, as well as the unique products of Thule cultivation, crops and furs.

Gold is far to the interior, and won't really show up until much later. I wouldn't rule out an 18th century gold rush, but I suspect a 19th century gold rush is more likely.

There will be enough key Thule products to sustain a trading relationship though.

Someone well worth trading with in lieu of China, with as much tonnage as the English can muster and thread through the perilous passages.

Hudson Bay seems to be the most accessible, perhaps the only accessible point from the East.

Sail up fom Hudson Bay, and between Melville Peninsula and Baffin Island, you have the Foxe Basin which is a sea of perpetual pack ice, one which is only ice free come september, just in time to start freezing again. Then you come to the Fury and Hecla strait - perhaps two miles wide at its narrowest and icelocked year round (especially in the little Ice Age).

Go along the northern shore of Baffin Island, you pass through Lancaster Strait, which is ice free. That takes you into the interior archipelago. But odds are against finding your way through enough safe water, even in the summer, to establish regular contact with the McKenzie Basin culture.

You might, of course, going through Lancaster strait, make enough contact with the interior Islands that you could set up a trading station for Musk Ox Qviat, if that becomes valuable enough.

Or you could pass directly north of Baffin and reach Ellesmere. But there may not be much there that the Europeans want.

Greenland and Labrador are accessible directly of course.

The Hudson Bay seems to be the natural big interface. Beyond that, sea access is restricted. You're looking principally at overland routes.

Even sea access during this time is likely restricted to two to three months a year. Tricky, given that getting there at all is going to take a month.

Of course, Alaska and Siberia can be reached from the Pacific. But you can't sail along the Alaskan shoreline into the McKenzie Basin.

In some ways better than China; the Chinese are hard customers to please, unless one can arrange to addict them en masse to opium and then monopolize the opium trade. These people are potential sources of weird drugs instead of markets for them--though I suppose they might appreciate coffee or hard liquor.

It's almost the opposite of China and India. These countries were loaded with things that an impoverished Europe wants desperately, so the Europeans travelled out to get them. In the case of the Thule, they'll want pretty much everything the Europeans can offer. If they could, they'd be Kayaking to London and Paris en masse with shopping lists.

That's what I gather from all the pages we went over months before. Their metallurgy is primitive and they'll appreciate finer steels, but far overland, where the English will be hard put to drive a colonial boundary of their own all the way to, there are deposits of gold and copper.

The fact that they've got metallurgy at all is something I got dragged into kicking and screaming. But yes, the metallurgical subcultures will be devastated. Labrador Bog Iron is going to vanish, and the meteoric and telluric Iron coming through the trading network will be almost completely pushed out by European iron.

If Europeans come in numbers they will bring their diseases with them; if they try to push Christianity, the diseases and the cross will signify much leading to unpleasantness among the survivors, nor will a massive die-off of Thule open the way for easy colonization.

I've been thinking about that. There are a lot of Thule, even a massive die off, or series of die offs, may be survivable.

There are a number of factors - the length of the voyage over, the short period of time for trading, a degree of wariness derived from now ancient and second hand experience in labrador and greenland, the teachings of Manupataq and the persistence of her cult, and possible Thule efforts to impose their own monopolies may mean that the inevitable disease outbreaks happen a little later rather than sooner, and that the trajectories get interesting.

I don't suppose you figure by now it's going the way DirtyCommie showed us in the opening chapter, but something vaguely akin to that is in the works. First there will be contact with the Hudson shore Thule, who will suffer for it--but deep inland, the Thule survivors will rally and meet the English and any other Europeans who try to dog their heels on their own terms.

That's the trouble with an opening scene far in the future of your timeline - things often go adrift. I think that there will be something like that scene in some way.

For now--Hudson has a mission. When he gets back to England, assuming some butterfly-storm doesn't sink them on the way,

I haven't gone to the trouble of saving his life to sink him in a storm. He makes it back safe and sound.

funding should be ample for a return in force--not necessarily force intended to overwhelm the Thule, but hulls full of trading goods that are intended to be full on the way back, and the Muscovy Company, perhaps renamed, will be in business.

I have some interesting ideas in the back of my mind there. Not sure if they'll get out to play.

Now, how all the other European powers DC showed us up front will horn in is more of a story but it seems plain enough. No matter how fast and quietly Hudson and the Muscovy backers (who will doubtless include King James himself) fit out the next expedition, some kind of word will leak out. The more vague the news is kept, the more wild guesses other competing powers--France, perhaps already the Dutch, Spain or Portugal, conceivably some Hanseatic consortium, quite likely the Danes or other Scandinavians--will make.

I think other Europeans will be involved, definitely. Certainly the Danes and their trading company will dive in. The Dutch will be players. Swedes, probably not, their focus is the Baltic. The Hanseatic League is well into decline at this point, probably no longer a factor. The Portugese nosed around the region a few decades prior, might return. The Basques ... maybe some butterflies there. The French will be in like a dirty shirt.

Those in a position to find out what cargoes Hudson is selling will realize they've made contact with some rich Thule inclined to trade, those kept in the dark might guess he did manage to find the Northwest Passage and made it to China or Japan. Either way--it's worth chasing after him and the English--presumably, the Anglo-Scots, in personal union under the Stuarts--will be hard pressed to make or enforce a claim to own a franchise on the route.

OTL, Hudson Bay turned into a British Lake, but that was much later. Basically, some French fur traders got screwed over, took their geographical knowledge to the Brits and the HB company started up. Part of the reason that they monopolized the Bay was that no one else seriously wanted it - the French had much better fur trade routes that were already well developed through the Saint Laurence and Mississippi systems. The Spanish and Portugese were heavily invested in the South. The Danes, Swedes and Dutch all focused on the American seaboard.

Here Hudson Bay is going to be a profit center in this ATL, so we may see the same jockying between powers, and the same multiple party chases that we saw in Svalbard or India. A British monopoly is unlikely.

Well, it's just one expedition. It may take a while for the news to spread and the balls to get rolling and meanwhile relations with the Thule along Hudson's Bay could go sour any number of ways, closing off the opportunities before they are really appreciated.

I'm not sure how long it will take the Hudson expedition to trigger another voyage. Hudson returns a year late, likely given up for dead, a lot of people having lost their shirts. But he's got a valuable cargo. But it's probably too late to go out there again that summer of 1611.

So when does the next expedition go? 1612? Are they just mad for it, balls to the wall, going for the gusto? Frobisher would and could, but Frobisher was selling gold fever. This new cargo of Hudson's is new and unknown stuff. Maybe test the market. Put a new consortium of investment together... 1613? 1614? 1615? I don't see later than 1616 likely, that's too long a delay. I think 1613 to 1614 is most likely. 1612 is possible, but quite ambitious.

Of course, Hudson's going to be singing some very loud songs. 1612 is not out of the question.

But--riches and gold in the north, that's what I think Hudson believes he's found. China can go hang!

Given Frobisher's bad experience, I think arctic gold may leave a bad taste in investor's mouths.

But there's other value - Medicinal Roseroot will be the big leader, but then that will open the door to secondary production - labrador tea, qviat, ivory, furs...

I've got a couple of ideas I'm kicking around. One is the suggestion someone made that the Thule might take up fur-farming, given that a couple of their semi-domesticates - ermines and fox are valuable fur animals. The other is that in the quest to obtain European goods and monopolize European trade, the Thule may struggle with Europe for control of the southern shores of Hudson and James Bay and access to the interior peoples and their furs.

 

[The Professor]

Interesting updates.

While I agree that Hudson Bay won't be a British (Anglo-Hiberno-Scots) monopoly TTL I can certainly see a Hudson Bay (perhaps Thule) Company being a strong competitor; the MacDonalds to the French or Danish Burger King.

My opinion of Western Bay Thule is that they are "Icetecs". A sort of imperial alliance of tribes with some placed above the others and every so often being replaced without the fundamental structure being damaged.

 

[Shevek23]

Why do great threads languish when I have free time then heat up when I have to focus on getting to work?

See y'all this afternoon, Pacific Time.

 

[Dathi THorfinnsson]

Speaking of said disaffected French traders, it would be amusing if radishes and gooseberries made it big in the Bay...

(Being the names us irreverent students hung on them in history class)

 

[Hobelhouse]

My thinking is there's going to be a loose network of shaman-dominated city-states each controlling a few hundred square miles at most. Plus perhaps larger federations along major rivers. I think management of irrigation sources is the only state-forming impulse the Hudson Thule have had time for at this point. *Musket Wars are a possibility, but the shaman-dominated hierarchy doesn't seem like it would be very aggressive to me - but add some charismatic heterodox challengers like in Greenland and you may have the necessary components, as holders of aggressive doctrines attempt to spread their influence. I think the Siberian Thule are a better candidate for a Maori-like experience however.

 

[Shevek23]

Oh, hai, I said I'd be back in the "afternoon" and here it is, evening already. Sorry.

...this has been a region of robust and expanding agricultural societies for 440 years, a region of heavy population density and innovation for perhaps 500 to 550 years.

The largest communities in the region may reach ten thousand or more. Communities of several hundred are relatively common. The total population of the Hudson Bay region is under a million, roughly 750,000, give or take 50,000.

"Heavy" population density is quite relative then--it's very impressive considering the environment, but these sorts of numbers make it rather like a kingdom of the Anglo-Saxon Heptarchy, long before the various kings had gotten far in their schemes of unification. They don't even have a London (of those days) or a York. Their culture is very young, not haunted--or guided or inspired--by the ghosts of anything like Rome; their technology is a thousand years or more behind even those Saxons.

My oft-repeated confidence that the Thule will not succumb the way the peoples of Mesoamerica or the Andes did is based mainly on the "Arctic Fastness," on the idea that Europeans won't have the will to make the effort to chase them too far into the vast and difficult terrain of the tundra. And that they can't learn to support themselves there as well as Thule can, not without making Thule friends. And then those Thule allies will themselves be a basis for the autonomy of Thule culture--and even with their help, I don't think the Europeans will reach too far from the Bay.

Obviously it isn't based on the might of Thule numbers or technology! Though you yourself have stressed what formidable fighters they were even OTL and their more advanced technologies here will make them more so. On their turf, small numbers of Thule can counterbalance larger numbers of Europeans or Native American allies.

By the way, how do the numbers and population densities you've just described compare to those of people living in the same territories of Canada today? I suspect the Thule numbers are already larger. They'll get smaller, but then if Thule can learn to incorporate European goods and knowledge into their own societies--the "purer" ones far from the Bay, the hybrid ones closer to European strongholds--they can be larger still come later centuries. I don't think you ever wanted to go so far as to get to the time their population fully recovers from the diseases and other disruptions but I'd think if we did, we'd find quite a lot of Thule or Thule-related people, far more even than this million in this region, by 1900.

... through the region, there's a lot of heterodoxy. The landscape roughly divides up into four kinds of territory, with lots of mixtures. Herding country, mostly caribou; Farming country, with a diversity of farming styles including proto-specialized crops like berry farmers; Fishing/Sea lands; Specialized terrritories - producers of flint or soapstone, or wood, or notable trading points....
Due to the diversity, in many areas, something very close to commercial trade has been emerging over the last 500 years.

Traditional trade essentially involves very small volumes of goods, passed from hand to hand in a kind of extended game of telephone, exchanges are as often political and gift oriented as they are exchanges of items of value.

Well, I can't cite sources since I read this maybe 20 years ago, but I remember reading studies that showed that even early in the Neolithic, trade in certain items was already surprisingly well-organized. It was based on studies of the archeological distributions of certain kinds of flint, that could be clearly identified as coming from one distinct source. I specifically recall that they compared the distribution with the hand-to-hand "traditional trade" model you describe there which would imply an exponential drop-off in the incidence of findings of those particular flints--what they found instead was a much wider pattern, not consistent with that model, that implied that already certain goods were being carried in large quantities to be distributed much more widely than such a hand-to-hand model could account for.

At the same time, I strongly disbelieve these (temperate-climate, Eurasian) neolithic peoples were indulging in "trade" in the Adam Smith sense of self-interested individuals acting as peddlers in accordance with his "propensity to truckle and bargain" theory of human nature. The point is, people who are light-years away from having a capitalistic or even merchantile mindset still form complex, organized systems of making and distributing goods.

That said--see below, I think perhaps the Thule fit the Smith model better than most neolithic peoples would. So you are convincing me anyway.

Certain things signify the movement towards 'commercial-like' trade. One is the reduction of the number of 'players' in the game of telephone - objects travel through fewer hands from production to destination. There is more of a concept that the item is for purposes of trade - ie, meant to be passed to an ultimate recipient. There is some expectation of value to be harvested from trade -ie, the trader is making a living in harvesting the relative values between producer and recipient. The volume of goods in flow has increased substantially.

Again I'm not sure that these capitalistic terms cover the cases--they are how a person of capitalistic mindset sees these organized activities but there are other bases for conceiving of one's work as being abstracted from meeting one's immediate utilitarian needs.

And again--maybe nevertheless, in Thule country the model of Marx's "simple commodity production," which generally never existed anywhere in the real world and served Marx mainly as a conceptual tool for analogizing to actual capitalist structures (the best exception to the "rule" of "no actual simple commodity producers in history" being the Americans of British North America/USA, and even they always coexisting with a lot of already capitalist development)--maybe as for the Yankees and other settler Americans it actually exists among Thule in ways it never existed in the ancient or classical or medieval Old World, or in Native America to the south.

....
Of course, it is not all peaceful. Sometimes its cheaper to rob than to trade. Various groups have various advantages. Local and regional warfare goes on. Alliances, defensive and offensive, have been evolving steadily.
Short lived regional hegemonies have been emerging and falling apart continously since at least 1300 onwards, becoming increasingly elaborate, complex and durable over time. Hegemonies collapse under their own weight, fade over time, or are overthrown by rivals. Political maps separated by a decade will look completely different. The one trend is that it's kept getting bigger and more ambitious with each iteration. Enforced tribute and looting are both well accepted. Increasingly, hegemonies are tied to population centers, particular communities, subcultures, trading or other sorts of networks. The connections that support peaceful coexistence and facilitate trade and cooperative endeavor are the same ones that allow you to gather up and maintain a mighty coalition of warriors to give a drubbing to your enemies and enforce tribute from those who would rather not fight.

There are several weird things about the Thule though, that tend to confound my usual templates for describing and understanding historical societies. One is their extreme environment. Another is that they tend to be alone with themselves, because their usual response to meeting any alien peoples is to fight them to the death until they learn to keep such a wide berth they never actually encounter each other again.

Whereas a classic old model for class and then state formation--at least in progressive to radical circles!--is the notion that early class societies often formed by one people conquering and subjugating another.

Thule have their own internal fracture lines, but I don't think the model works as well when both groups, the dominators and the dominated, are branches of the same heritage. This tends to work against the social theory that the lower class is by nature inferior and cannot hope to change places with the aristocrats. It would still be possible for Thule society to stratify by a kind of faulting and compression, but the tendency is countered by others. There is more of a tendency for everyone to maintain some standing to plead on their own behalf--really on behalf, and as a member of, a kinship group.

Early on in this thread, or perhaps the precursor AH challenge "pyrkrete" thread, there was talk that the Thule would be a slaveholding society, and even that the Greenland Norse might wind up surviving mainly as slaves. But as it has actually developed that aspect has yet to show itself. Instead of taking slaves from other Native groups as that talk led me to expect, they simply kill them to drive them off by terror. Indeed slaves taken from very different societies would tend to simply die in Thule captivity rather than stay on as a toiling class, because Thule cultural adaptation to daily survival in their extreme environment involves skills taught from infancy and of course being inured by habit from birth to the survivable but still doubtless challenging conditions for the human body their methods attain. A few Native Americans taken from southern peoples might manage to catch on well enough to stay alive for years or a lifetime--if they had the will to live that is. But those few would not form a basis for a slave-taking aspect of Thule society, and indeed it doesn't look like any Thule groups ever tried the experiment, except maybe in southern Alaska--an atypical region you point out is a softer, richer environment that most Thule make do in.

So the question is whether slavery, or something less extreme and offensive to our sensibilities but still amounting to some degree of consistent subjugation, would arise among Thule themselves. I suppose the latter might, the former probably goes too far.

The Thule pattern will not closely parallel those of societies I know more about in history. At least not up to this point. European contact may change a great many things and would inherently tend to steer Thule, at least those working closely with Europeans, toward mentalities that are more in accord with the common categories in the larger world--as it is, not as I might wish it to be!

We're kind of at a Shrodinger Cat moment, Shevek. A point of manifold potentials waiting to crystallize into a choice. Consider:

* A Regional Empire dominating the Bay, or perhaps just the west side of the Bay, of indefinite age and unknown sophistication.

* Would it collapse on contact as the southerly states did, at the hands of enterprising adventurers?

Well, that particular piece of the larger tapestry that is Thule societies between the Bay and the Rockies might--but not so easily, the closely related and corresponding regions to the west and northwest. The farther we get from the shores of the Bay, the more stock I put in the idea of the Arctic Fastness. And Thule living farther out of reach of the Europeans have kinship ties and trading ties to the ones who are more exposed, and might rally to help those they have ties to.

And between the Thule being, one on one, tough customers when they aren't dying of disease, and people with goods to offer in trade--literally bearing both carrots and sticks--and even the Hudson shore peoples living in environments Europeans don't envy and covet, and far from Europe, by an indirect and risky sea route that threads through more of their kin who have less to offer and thus less to expect to gain and already have been developing strong cultural ideas of generic hostility, the canny thing for most Europeans to do is try to come to agreements with these people rather than try to take their lands, even if they could somehow enserf these same tough Thule as an underclass. The Conquistadors could do that in Mexico in part because the local class societies had done the groundwork for them; they had already established social stratification, all the Spanish had to do was occupy the place once held by the Native lords. It isn't clear that any part of this region of Thule country has anything like that in place already, and if not there aren't any ready-made Thule serfs or even peasants.

The sort of quasi or proto-merchantile society you were describing above seems to develop, not on the evolution from sharing gatherer-hunter societies via a gift-exchange system of Big Men who seek to enlist lieutenants by putting them into the debt of gratitude via gifts (extorted by patriarchal or class relations) to ancient states that consciously manage redistribution of goods (on a class basis to be sure) to merchants trading between these on the periphery of all societies at each stage...but instead much more like Adam Smith, against the later evidence of anthropology, falsely (in general!) theorized, with capitalism as he viewed it being a natural substrate of all human societies--the "capitalist" ones proper being those who liberated this basic engine of productivity from a mire of abuses and superstitions, much as Enlightenment Era "natural philosophy" and engineering was pulling free of a similar mire in its history. Smith, I say, is wrong about fundamental human nature, wrong about history in general, and I'd even say he would err in his understanding of the Thule--but his errors would lie closer to the truth, close enough that if we could avoid butterflying him away he and most Europeans (and even Thule!) reading him in later years would think he'd hit the nail on the head.

The rise of the basis of entrepreneurial specialization among the Thule would tend to preserve the freedom of small groups, either very small settlements acting collectively among themselves but as a speculating individual in dealing with others, or families, to experiment and innovate as they will, negotiating agreements among others of their same status as more or less equals, equals free to walk away from any deal that isn't sweet enough and seek other opportunities instead.

The leadership among them might conceivably be warriors who set themselves up as a ruling caste, but perhaps more likely, would be the more canny and successful entrepreneurs--entrepreneurial families or communities actually. They would lead both because they have more leverage in terms of resources to agree to trade in or deny, and because their success commands respect--going along with their schemes instead of opposing them seems a safer way to prosperity, on the whole, even if many of their partners know for a fact that the deal is not entirely fair. Like good Pareto-optimizers, they will learn to look at which choice leaves them better off, not whether they are in fact enabling someone else to be considerably better off still.

These sorts of Smithian trucklers and bargainers, ready to give a new scheme a trial if the pitch is convincing enough and if they can manage their risk by hedging their bets, might seem a Godsend to men like Hudson. They have to worry about possibly getting rooked in deals--but the Thule, these Hudson shore Thule anyway, might be ready to make deals, and that's the main thing.

If the Thule present a face like that to the traders, they might not see any reason to try to mess around with Thule society at all (assuming their religious consciences about the Hellish destiny of these moderately virtuous pagans don't cost them too much sleep). Their main motive to interfere would be to preempt some rival Europeans from moving in to compete--they'll want to secure local monopolies, and while the Thule might not find that ideal they might also find it a tolerable condition of trade, in return for other considerations. Like say, the ability to buy guns and powder...

The main disruptive factor I worry about on the west Hudson shore is not European imperialism but disease. Not only would disease decimate their otherwise good Thule customers, it very plausibly, as in Greenland, could lead to an implacable hostility that can't be overcome by any number of beguiling trade goods.

Without that factor to consider I'd think it could become quite a beautiful friendship.

* Would it form a coherent pro-active response, meeting the Europeans on its own terms.

* Instead of an Empire, a Federation?

* Or perhaps instead, a few of rival states or statelike entities, jockying for supremacy.

* If a multiplex, will the Europeans play them off against each other.

Wow, I think I addressed this spectrum of questions!

* Would one use the European trade to make itself supreme? Build an empire, as the Hawaians did with European technology at hand.

That is something to consider; I think that if in fact the Thule Big Men (they will probably increasingly be men, given European cultural norms and the possible polarization of Thule into actually warring clans) are also the big enterprisers and lead for that reason, we might get increasing stratification and consolidation, and class polarization, around each trading center--it would start moving toward an approximation of a European state, on a very small scale. Say like a city-state, a merchantile one like Hamburg or Bremen.

On the other hand, rival European traders, rebuffed at one port, will seek to cultivate others. So instead of there being one big port and one big man moving from first among equals (within a peerage of big magnates) toward a king, there would be lots of these, each with their own leading families. Each would have a crazy-quilt network of ties into the back country and beyond, the alliances would rival one another and there would be betrayals, shifts of allegiance--the question would be, would it be more like war or more like business?

* Or would there be no state or statelike entity at all, but just a loose series of communities, each village or town its own land

* If a series of communities, will European contact trigger something like New Zealand's musket wars?

* Or will Europe simply proceed with colonialism over a divided quarreling people, something like the British in Inda?

They might progress somewhat like the Raj, except that the Thule will not have obligingly supplied the pattern in which Britons can either step in directly as the replacement of the old ruling dynasty or alternatively ruling indirectly by a mutualistic arrangement with that dynasty. If the Europeans feel compelled, by royal decrees or religious fervor, to move in and set up their own own order on their own model, they will have a hard time ensuring the crops grow and the herds are tended and then brought to market--trying to enserf Thule will probably make them run if they decide they can't win a fight.

So it might be seen as some analog to the Raj except that the Thule partners in the deal will be very canny and assertive, or the whole thing collapses on the greedier or more enthusiastic Europeans. Leaving their cooler rivals to pick up the pieces.

* Who will control the interior trade? Europeans, a la a steroid version of the Hudson Bay Company?

* Or ambitious Thule....

As I said, not crystallized, it could go in any direction. The only sure thing is that the consequences of European contact will be huge - not just the diseases, but the awe inspiring diversity and quality of European goods and artifacts, the technology available. As one obvious example, regular trade with Europe will simply devastate the Thule metallurgical subcultures.

I think I'd like things to be interesting though.
...
...There are a lot of Thule, even a massive die off, or series of die offs, may be survivable....

And even in their weakened state, the Europeans can't easily just walk in and take over. The smart thing for them to do is patch over any bad relations the diseases tend to promote and help our their best friends who survive in setting themselves back up, to their mutual profit.

So the European traders each nurse their favorite partners through a convalescence or three and meanwhile, especially if they can avoid a mass panic flight from the coast carrying the diseases inland, the hinterland remains less decimated. The trouble with that is, it stretches the die-off over generations and centuries rather that getting all done in one quite fell swoop--but again that's not how epidemology works anyway, especially not with a sparse dispersed population like Thule. There will be many diseases (and let's not forget, sooner or later the other side of the Thule exchange will be shared--Europeans will suffer outbreaks of yet more diseases than OTL that will be burning through their numbers...) coming in wave after wave, and the same disease or a close mutant relative will have many outbreaks precisely because the chain of contagion will often be broken, leaving large populations who avoided exposure the last time.

If Thule, or a large number of them near the Bay, can socially adapt to a world where plague is a fact of life to be endured and one hopes, survives, that too will move them closer culturally to their European partners, who have to live with that Sword of Damocles over their heads all the time.

Who knows, maybe some Thule shamans or people somewhat inspired with that tradition will make some contributions to European medical practice--there's almost nothing they can do to make it worse!

But there's other value - Medicinal Roseroot will be the big leader, but then that will open the door to secondary production - labrador tea, qviat, ivory, furs...

I've got a couple of ideas I'm kicking around. One is the suggestion someone made that the Thule might take up fur-farming, given that a couple of their semi-domesticates - ermines and fox are valuable fur animals. The other is that in the quest to obtain European goods and monopolize European trade, the Thule may struggle with Europe for control of the southern shores of Hudson and James Bay and access to the interior peoples and their furs.

Despite the sketch I put up of Thule who would take Smith's Wealth of Nations as literal Gospel, I guess I can't believe in such a Whig-wank really. Just mean to suggest some odd tendencies, that some canny Europeans can link up to. I suspect the strongest interface society will be such an entrepreneurial partnership, and it has good odds of surviving, absorbing neighbors founded on less functional principles, and standing up to others--but yes, a whole smorgasbord of possibilities exists.

For one thing, if Europeans do manage to somewhat Europeanize some Thule, those ones might turn into scary apt pupils indeed. Thule hitherto have not been slavers for instance--but the justice and necessity and profitability of slavery is one of those lessons of enlightened civilization the Europeans are apt to teach, by example if not precept and quite possibly both.

So there might be a cultural hybrid offshoot of Thule who do belatedly take up raiding Natives to the south for purposes of slave taking, and figure out how to subdue a sufficient number without killing them off.

And I still like the idea of Thule terrorizing other European settlements far to the south, in the depths of winter, probably with a license equivalent to a privateer's commission from some rival European power.

If there are Thule slavers preying on Native Americans the raids would of course also be in midwinter.

 

[Hobelhouse]

So there might be a cultural hybrid offshoot of Thule who do belatedly take up raiding Natives to the south for purposes of slave taking, and figure out how to subdue a sufficient number without killing them off.

And I still like the idea of Thule terrorizing other European settlements far to the south, in the depths of winter, probably with a license equivalent to a privateer's commission from some rival European power.

If there are Thule slavers preying on Native Americans the raids would of course also be in midwinter.

It makes perfect sense actually. Thule are seeing an increased demand for their roseroot and there are very good reasons to meet that demand - European goods. At the same time they are seeing labor shortages because those plagues keep killing everyone. It's only a matter of time before some local group trades for muskets and starts preying on the weaker tribes to the south. After that it may be only a matter of time before they decide they can prey on other Thule just as well...

 

[telynk]

Hello! I have been following this thread about every since I joined AH.com a couple months ago, but have only now caught up with where the discussion is at.... I may offer comments here and there as things move forward....

One comment I had now is that there seems to be a discussion as to the nature of the political organization of the societies that Hudson meets in the Bay. Wasn't it decided way back (in a post about state formation) that the Bay was the most centralized of the Thule states. I seem to recall it being referred to as the Hudson Bay Empire? To be honest I don't remember the details, and I'm not confident enough with AH.com's search function to be able to find the post, but I'm pretty sure it was there....

 

[Pesterfield]

If there are Thule slavers preying on Native Americans the raids would of course also be in midwinter.

If I'm remembering the Thule crops right they should have a wider campaign season in general.

Planting and harvesting aren't such 'must be done now' priorities like they are with annual plants.

 

[DG Valdron]

Hello! I have been following this thread about every since I joined AH.com a couple months ago, but have only now caught up with where the discussion is at.... I may offer comments here and there as things move forward....

One comment I had now is that there seems to be a discussion as to the nature of the political organization of the societies that Hudson meets in the Bay. Wasn't it decided way back (in a post about state formation) that the Bay was the most centralized of the Thule states. I seem to recall it being referred to as the Hudson Bay Empire? To be honest I don't remember the details, and I'm not confident enough with AH.com's search function to be able to find the post, but I'm pretty sure it was there....

Hello Telnyk, welcome aboard. I hope that you've found this timeline to be an enjoyable experience.

You are quite correct in that I intended and I think I still intend to have a Hudson Bay Empire.

Basically, Empires arise in situations of a relatively dense, wealthy or powerful metropolis or heartland, employing its surplus to dominate the poorer, lower density hinterlands around it, and attempt to arrange matters so that the hinterland perpetuates the wealth or power of the metropolis/heartland.

In the Thule Realm, the only region which contains this mixture of heartlands and hinterlands is Hudson Bay, so an Empire forming there, in my view, is a close to inevitable development. There's just too much disparity regionally.

Elsewhere, Labrador and the Archipelago, we've essentially got straight hinterland. In the McKenzie Basin and Alaska we've basically got straight heartland.

As I see it, two things might butterfly the emergence of a Hudson Bay Empire. One is that Hudson Bay is overwhelmed and subsumed by the more powerful and populous McKenzie basin. But I don't think that's likely, because it will take much more time for McKenzie to consolidate, and even with consolidation, overcoming the logistical challenges of getting out there is difficult.

The other possible butterfly is European intervention. ie, European involvement disrupts the formation of the Hudson Bay Empire, or overthrows it, leading to a European colonial regime - perhaps something like India, perhaps something like Mexico.

I'm not terrifically enamored of rampant runaway European colonialism as an inevitable outcome. It's certainly a possible outcome, quite likely a probable outcome, but not inevitable. I'm quite engaged with the possibility of the Europeans encountering, or alternatively, with the Europeans inadvertently triggering the formation of a Hudson Bay Empire which attempts to contend and control them in the way that some of the Asian powers did.

Now, the interesting question, and the issue that has been thrust at me, is how fast is plausible for the emergence of a Hudson Bay Empire, or for that matter, states and state-like entities across the Thule Realm.

And at that point, the argument begins. I'm not sure about other threads like this, but for this timeline, I hope you notice two things: One is that I tend to do my thinking out loud, you can actually watch me process or mess around with ideas before they're set in concrete. The other is that at times its more a discussion than a monologue. People make suggestions, we argue, my ideas are (frequently) challenged, we argue, it goes back and forth.

So here we go. Is 450 years time enough for a Dawn Civilization to go from a standing start with the agricultural revolution to form an Empire, or Empire-like entity, to confront the Europeans. There's been debate on the subject, and some dissension. It's been argued to me that it takes time for a society to build the necessary complexity for form an empire.

That of course, brings about the question of what is an Empire, what is a state, who broad are those terms, and just how sophisticated or unsophisticated or unsophisticated, transient or durable will the Hudson Bay entity or entities be.

For my purposes, I define a state or state-like entity as an organization of people which identifies with, and claims and exerts a degree of authority over a territory or a population and which at points controls or manipulates specific resources or supluses within that population. We can throw in hierarchies, expropriation or monopolizatlion of surpuses or resources, or in critical cases monopolisation of control of a particular resource and a whole bunch of other criteria, but I think that's secondary rather than essential. An Empire is a state or state-like entity that projects authority over a hinterland.

I don't necessarily require a great degree of stability or durability. Hudson Bay, for instance, may be the scene of a series of empires of duration ranging from years to generation, rising and falling apart, or rising and eclipsing and being eclipsed, with only a hypothetical continuity.

But I'm thinking that there will be existing in Hudson Bay at the time of European contact, one or more organizations/actors/states which have sufficient authority, however diffuse, to qualify as an Empire or Empires.

I'm also thinking, and this is thinking out loud, that for such an Empire, the European trade represents a staggeringly rich and unique resource which they will seek to control and monopolize, and that the effort to do so, whether successful or unsuccessful, will be both profoundly transformative to the Empire, and will shape European and Thule relations.

So anyway, at this point, I'm thinking really hard about what it is that Henry Hudson encounters, who he encounters, how sophisticated are the entities which meet him and what they will do next, and what their options and abilities are.