Lands of Red and Gold, Act II
- Thread starter Jared
- Start date
Because in the Solomon Islands, cannibalism is more widespread in this period - or at least the Nuttana believe it is, which amounts to the same thing. Solomon Island cannibals also tend to give their appetites a whole-body workout, rather than the more ritualised Maori consumption of right arms and (occasionally) hearts. The Maori (unlike OTL) also don't collect heads.
In so far as they see a hierarchy of cannibals, the Nuttana see Catholics as least bad, Maori as somewhat bad, and Solomon Islanders as very bad.
Bilbies don't actually fit the same niche as rabbits. Rabbits are herbivores, eating mostly grass. Bilbies are omnivores, eating a variety of insects, small animals etc as well as plant material. And most of the plant matter they eat is seeds, bulbs etc rather than grass. This makes them a lot harder to feed and look after than rabbits. So I expect that while the Aururians probably still hunt bilbies, they probably haven't domesticated them.
mojojojo
Gone Fishin'
2 new potential invasive species for this TL?
I was reading this https://www.alternatehistory.com/discussion/showthread.php?t=328543&highlight=civet and a thought struck me. Could civets be introduced into Australia for the purpose of musk farming and making Kopi luwak?
Also, might skunks be brought in for their oil?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skunk_oil
I was reading this https://www.alternatehistory.com/discussion/showthread.php?t=328543&highlight=civet and a thought struck me. Could civets be introduced into Australia for the purpose of musk farming and making Kopi luwak?
Also, might skunks be brought in for their oil?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skunk_oil
I vaguely recall you explaining this at some point, but what is your connection to NZ? Are you one of the many who left NZ, or the child of such?
I remember watching OWW not long after it came out (probably on tv/VHS) but whilst I found it powerful, I didn't really get it as it was so far from my experience. Big city North Island state housing suburbs were a rumour to most of us living with our parents in the deep rural white South Island. Sure, we knew some of the names (Cannon Creek in Porirua for one was reasonably famous) but we did not know what it was like there, nor what day to day gang life or urban deprivation was like either. Bit of an eye opener really.
Whale Rider is a bit more cheerful
The Aururians - well, in the Five Rivers - already harvest another animal on that list: the musk duck. So while it's not impossible that something like civets would be introduced too, there's already an existing competitor, so I'm not sure if it's very likely.
Have skunks been domesticated? I'm not sure that any proposal to import wild skunks would work; even the suggestion would probably create a stink.
Not an NZ citizen, and not born there, but I lived in NZ for a number of years when I was younger. (My family moved around a lot.) Eventually moved across the ditch.
Where I lived in NZ, the state housing began literally at the end of the street. That wasn't one of the most notorious suburbs, and not really gang-ridden. But still, going there was a window into a whole other life.
mojojojo
Gone Fishin'
Well, they have been selectively breed in captivity (at least to an extent)
http://www.skunk-info.org/colrmark/marks.htm
FYI;Furriers used to call them civet cats to get around people's reluctance to wearing the fur of something with such a malodorous reputation
Speaking of introducing species. It just occurred to me that the climate in the Kingyu lands is also seems to be ideal for growing coffee. With cultivation starting to spread to India and the Europe developing a taste for the stuff. Prehaps the Nuttana might be decide they want a piece of the action.
Ahh ok. There are a surprising amount of Australians floating about NZ actually. Where abouts were you based?
I heard a radio show yesterday that was largely about Ethiopian grains, like Teff, which would be quite useful in say Australia or northern New Zealand.
Only grows at elevations between 1500 and 2200 meters. It's proven extremely difficult to cultivate outside of the Amhara highlands.
Oh dear! I've often thought it would make for an interesting timeline where Australia and NZ ended up with more Mediterranean immigrants and thus had a lot more opportunity for non Northern European crop and animals to be established. Non British migration wasn't really a thing until after the War.
Lots of Andalusian, Sicilians, Greeks or Lebanese (they'd at least have to be Christian in the 19th century)
That could be interesting. But Teff is a really really tough call.
Interesting. My initial reaction is that, at least initially, importing skunks for furs is one of those ideas which just won't get taken up. Australia's too warm for much in the way of fur-breeding, and skunks do have rather a reputation.
Not to say that it won't happen at all, but it probably won't be very quick. Too many barriers, not enough motivation.
Coffee can certainly be grown in Australia - and, in fact, it currently is, in two widely separated parts of the east coast (far north Queensland, and northern New South Wales - see here and also here.). The barriers in OTL were labour costs, until machine harvesting came along recently, and the lower altitude than is usual for coffee cultivation elsewhere. In many cases it may require substantial fertilisers - most foreign crops grown in Australia need that - although I don't have specific information about how much is needed in all cases.
So short version, yes it is possible. Whether it will happen in practice will depend on someone getting the idea, the viability of coffee transportation over those distances, and whether it's cost-competitive when compared to other producers. It would be cheaper to ship coffee from the Caribbean or North Africa to Europe, when compared to shipping from halfway around the world.
Also - and this is perhaps the biggest barrier - the same lands which could be used to grow coffee are also equally-suited, perhaps even better suited, for growing sugar. And sugar is a sure-fire winner for the Nuttana during this period (1670s-1740s). So the scale of coffee production, if any, would probably be low when compared to sugar.
Oddly enough I'd never actually lived in Oz until after I lived in New Zealand. While there, I mostly lived in the City of Sails.
Civets are a very, very niche application for coffee processing. (Whether the climate is suitable for civets either, I'm not sure, though it's probably possible). I'm not sure that it would be attractive during this period.
Interestingly enough, I've found some passing references to teff growing wild in parts of Queensland and New South Wales. (See here.) Irritatingly, I haven't found much in the way of confirmation of that, or in the areas where it is actually grown. But it's believable; according to here, the old British Royal Botanical Gardens distributed teff seed to Australia (among other places) during the mid-nineteenth century. I also found a passing reference here to teff being grown in Australia (and South Africa) as a forage crop.
The current cultivation efforts focus on Tasmania, which is less insane than it sounds; the climate in coastal Tasmania isn't too far off that of the Ethiopian highlands. Although different day lengths may pose a problem.
Given that Sicily has a surplus of population earlier ITTL thanks to the Sicilian Agricultural Revolution, it's possible that there may be more Sicilians ending up in Aururia, too.
Please pretty please Jared...
May we have an Abo-Mafia?
That would be an Abo-mination.
I don't want to come across as overly politically correct or anything, but I just want to point out that the word "Abo" when used to refer to Aboriginal Australians is considered an ethnic slur, so please try to avoid just throwing it around.
Please pretty please Jared...
May we have an Abo-Mafia?
As CyberPhoenix noted, the term "Abo" is usually considered extremely offensive in Australia; I'd generally recommend avoiding it.
That said, for the question itself, it's a complex one. The history of the Cosa Nostra is hard to get reliable information on, for obvious reasons. However, it seems to have begun as a largely nineteenth century phenomenon, due to the breakdown in law enforcement and the circumstances leading up to Italian unification (absentee landlords, etc). The particular circumstances that arose in OTL are unlikely to be duplicated; the formation of an independent Sicilian state by the mid-eighteenth century will encourage centralised administration and active law enforcement. If the antecedents of the Cosa Nostra existed circa 1750 - which they may well have done - then the first couple of native Sicilian monarchs will make a very determined, thorough effort to stamp them out.
This does not bode well for the Cosa Nostra in Sicily itself, of course. Perhaps some of them may emigrate to other places to escape the pressure.
Alternatively, even if there's no actual Cosa Nostra active around the world, the circumstances which led up to their creation have some parallels in post-Houtmanian Aururia. Breakdown in social order, immense disruption to existing law enforcement and power structures, a pressing need for protection from bandits, and in many cases neglect by new (often European) rulers. That's the sort of circumstance which is crying out for the formation of new power structures...