I'm depending on them not getting news about the new world, and if they get the news, nothing thinking it's important enough to act on.
So basically Europeans being clueless because this scenario doesn't work without western Europe clutching the idiot ball.
The same reasons that voyages were risked OTL when it was known what this hulking land mass was?Why else risk a trans-oceanic voyage?
The fur trade is worth big bucks, to pick something it would be hard to miss in North America.
"A" Eastward looking, conservative regime in Europe is easy. But you're trying to stifle the area between Barcelona and Hamburg.I don't think it's that difficult to have an Eastward looking, conservative regime in Europe. It makes sense if things have been politically stable for the past five centuries.
In the 15th century? By China, yes. East Asia in general, probably. South Asia I don't know. But not Middle East or Eastern Europe anymore.At what point? In OTL in the 15th century, Western Europe was certainly a backwater. By any metric you care to name, it was eclipsed by Eastern Europe, the Middle East, South Asia, and East Asia. And ITTL, that status quo continues through the twentieth century.
To quote from The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers: "(T)here is no doubt that the development of the long range armed sailing ship heralded a fundamental advance in Europe's place in the world. With these vessels, the naval powers of the West were in a position to control the oceanic trade routes and to overawe all societies vulnerable to the workings of sea power. Even the first great clashes between the Portuguese and their Muslim foes in the Indian ocean made this clear. No doubt they exaggerated in retrospect, but to read the journals and reports of da Gama and Alburquerque, describing how their warships blasted their way through the massed fleets of Arab dhows and other light craft which they encountered off the Malabar coast and in the Ormuz and Malacca roads, is to gain the impression than an extraterrestrial, superhuman force had descended on their unfortunate opponents. Following the new tactic that 'they were by no means to board, but to fight with artillery' the Portuguese crews were virtually invincible at sea."How he did what? You mean that he was governor of a colony in India? I do need to look up more about Asian/European relations in the 15th century, but TTL will have major butterflies there. No gunpowder empires for one thing. Chinese fire lances maybe, but certainly not cannons or guns. I'm not sure whether that gives more of an advantage to the Portuguese or to the Indians.
Which also relates to the issue of how backward Western Europe is.
You're essentially trying to make the region of the world most driven to expand and exploit outside its borders into an area that has no interest in anything except the traditional landbound routes for no reason.
General Greene: Even if the Mongols ravage Germany, that still leaves the Atlantic-bordering states that did what they did OTL - and they're the ones that need to be made into stagnant pits for this to work.
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