Plausibility Check- Chola colonization of Australia?

Zachariah

Banned
So, I'm planning to start a new TL, using a limited first-person (OC) narrative this time, based upon this premise- in the mid 11th century, a Vellalar prince looking to gain influence and power in the Imperial Chola court funds and organizes a small colonial expedition to search for new unclaimed lands south-east of Java; first establishing a trade post on the island of Sumba in passing, but then pushing onward, bypassing the Savu Sea, and discovering North-Western Australia in the process (making landfall somewhere along the coast of the Joseph Bonaparte Gulf).

And over the course of the next few decades, he subsequently follows the standard modus-operandi employed by the Vellalar across South India and Sri Lanka- in which settlers would move out into virgin land, which had previously been used by hunter gatherer or tribal peoples for slash and burn agriculture or for hunting, and convert it into prime agricultural land (with 'Vellalar' being an honorific title, granted to a select few people who would organize such raids and establish such settlements, with the chiefdoms themselves also known as 'Vel', and the title of 'Vellalar' historically being restricted to the heads of these villages, or the aristocratic lineages of their founding chiefs).

BTW, the first-person narrator isn't going to be the aristocratic leader of the expedition himself, but instead a member of one of the South Indian trade guilds, the Setti-Guttas, who were warriors first and merchants second, and were often hired by traders to ensure protection of itinerant groups and caravans, as well as to ensure the safety of trading settlements. How plausible does the premise of this TL sound to you? And how successful could you envision the Tamil Chola settlement of Northern Australia being ITTL?
 
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I've toyed with that idea, and the main difficulty is how to get them away from the massive desert close to Indonesia and into a more settle-able area of Australia.
 
I've toyed with that idea, and the main difficulty is how to get them away from the massive desert close to Indonesia and into a more settle-able area of Australia.
Another problem-their tropical crops would not do well in more temperate Southeastern Australia.
 
Another problem-their tropical crops would not do well in more temperate Southeastern Australia.

Here, the answer is simpler. Simply have them trade with more temperate parts of India, like Kashmir.

The idea of a Southeastern Australia with chinar trees everywhere is interesting.
 

Zachariah

Banned
I've toyed with that idea, and the main difficulty is how to get them away from the massive desert close to Indonesia and into a more settle-able area of Australia.
But Northern Australia IS the most settle-able area of Australia for Southern Indians. Just take a look at the climate map:

1920px-Koppen_World_Map_Aw.png

The Kimberley, Northern Australia, Arnhem Land and the Cape York Peninsula; they're all in exactly the same climate band as Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh, with the same tropical wet and dry/savanna climate, and have similarly long dry seasons, along with either similar or even higher amounts of annual monsoon rainfall, and similarly high or lower extreme temperatures and humidity.

Just compare the climate charts of Chennai and Darwin. Chennai has a record high temperature of 45°C, an average high of 32.8°C, an average low of 24.6°C, and a record low of 13.9°C, with an average annual rainfall of 1392mm, an average of 59 rainy days a year, an average relative humidity of 70%, and an average of 2762 sunshine hours. In comparison, Darwin has a record high temperature of 40.5°C, an average high of 32.6°C, an average low of 23.2°C, and a record low of 10.4°C, with an average annual rainfall of 1720mm, an average of 113 rainy days a year, an average relative humidity of 53.4%, and an average of 3092 sunshine hours. Not that much difference in it between the two, is there?
 
But Northern Australia IS the most settle-able area of Australia for Southern Indians.

It's not. There's desert there, and India was much more jungle than today up until the 20th century. So while it has similar temperature, most food will need to be imported from elsewhere (like southern Australia).

Compare to the Okanagan Valley. Yes, people live in the temperate semi-desert, but the food needs to come from elsewhere because it can't be grown in the area.
 

Zachariah

Banned
It's not. There's desert there, and India was much more jungle than today up until the 20th century. So while it has similar temperature, most food will need to be imported from elsewhere (like southern Australia).

Compare to the Okanagan Valley. Yes, people live in the temperate semi-desert, but the food needs to come from elsewhere because it can't be grown in the area.
And there isn't desert in southern India? Please. Compare to the Okangan Valley? In British Columbia and Washington State? Seriously? Here's the full world climate map, for reference:
1920px-World_Koppen_Classification_(with_authors).svg.png


So, you're arguing that the Tropical North of Australia can't be compared to Southern India, in spite of possessing the same climate as each other, while also arguing that it should be compared to the Okanagan Valley instead, which has a temperate oceanic climate the same as that of North-Western Europe? Really don't get your logic there. Food doesn't need to come from elsewhere unless you're growing crops which aren't already adapted for that specific climate, which the Southern Indians wouldn't be. There's a reason why you've got big wild forests of imported trees like Eucalyptus and Australian Wattles which have sprung up over in Tamil Nadu, and why you've got plants like mango trees, amla and lychees running wild across Northern Australia.

Northern Australia has extremely infertile soils-even today agriculture is very problematic there.
So crops like rice are probably going to have a very hard time of it. But there are still plenty of other crops which should be able to cope with the conditions that could be adopted as fall-back options. Such as black gram, one of the most extensively used crops in Tamil cuisine, and the crop which gets rotated with rice in the paddies of Southern India, used both as an equally important food crop and to enrich the soils in the process through its nitrogen-fixing. Legumes, such as peanuts, pigeon peas and tamarinds, along other types of lentils, are also integral parts of the Tamil crop package, and their ability to grow in extremely poor and infertile soils should come in handy in Northern Australia. And there are plenty of indigenous Australian varieties of other crops which were already domesticated and cultivated in southern India, such as pandans, turmeric, wattles, candlenuts, sandalwood (Santulum, incl. desert Quandongs), rudraksha trees (Eleaocarpus, which were sacred to the Shaivite Cholas, which also include all non-santalum Quandong species), jambuls (Syzygium plants) and even blue star water lilies, all of which would be instantly identifiable to Tamils as varieties of plants which they already grew and ate.
 
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And there isn't desert in southern India?

At the time, there was far less of it. And, of course, even today, most South Indians live in the parts of South India that are still fertile

Again, the relationship between the climates of India vs. Northern Australia is much more comparable to the climates of Toronto vs. the Okanagan Valley. Sure, people will find the temperature similar to other, more fertile, regions, but they will have to import food from elsewhere, which will naturally restrict growth. It's much easier for South Indians to live in southern Australia, where many more crops can be grown.
 

Zachariah

Banned
At the time, there was far less of it. And, of course, even today, most South Indians live in the parts of South India that are still fertile

Again, the relationship between the climates of India vs. Northern Australia is much more comparable to the climates of Toronto vs. the Okanagan Valley. Sure, people will find the temperature similar to other, more fertile, regions, but they will have to import food from elsewhere, which will naturally restrict growth. It's much easier for South Indians to live in southern Australia, where many more crops can be grown.
But it's a completely different climate, and relatively few of their own Indian crops would grow down there. It isn't comparable to the climates of Toronto vs the Okanagan Valley at all, because Toronto's climate zone (Dfb) is completely different to that of the Okanagan Valley (that tiny inland pocket of Cfb); the climates of South-East Coastal India vs. Northern Coastal Australia would be far more comparable to Toronto vs. Warsaw, or the Okanagan Valley vs. the Loire Valley (or South Esk River Valley, in Tasmania) Not to mention that it's on the other side of the continent, which you'd have to either go all the way around or cross the burning desert of Central Australia to get to.
 
But it's a completely different climate, and relatively few of their own Indian crops would grow down there. It isn't comparable to the climates of Toronto vs the Okanagan Valley at all, because Toronto's climate zone (Dfb) is completely different to that of the Okanagan Valley (that tiny inland pocket of Cfb); the climates of South-East Coastal India vs. Northern Coastal Australia would be far more comparable to Toronto vs. Warsaw, or the Okanagan Valley vs. the Loire Valley (or South Esk River Valley, in Tasmania) Not to mention that it's on the other side of the continent, which you'd have to either go all the way around or cross the burning desert of Central Australia to get to.

My point is, where are the people of Northern Australia going to get the food from? Logically, they'll get it from Southern Australia. Very loosely speaking, this relationship is similar to that between the arrangement between Russian Alaska and the HBC, and like in this case, I suspect Southern Australia will earn more settlers due to its nicer climate and the fact that more crops can be grown there.
 

Zachariah

Banned
My point is, where are the people of Northern Australia going to get the food from? Logically, they'll get it from Southern Australia. Very loosely speaking, this relationship is similar to that between the arrangement between Russia and the HBC, and like in this case, I suspect Southern Australia will earn more settlers due to its nicer climate and the fact that more crops can be grown there.

We're talking about colonial settlements in the mid 11th century here. Logically, they'll have to either grow it themselves in Northern Australia, or trade for it with the Indians back home for the cash crops and other riches which they can grow and mine in Northern Australia, or they'll starve. And with several of their food crops, they very well could grow enough to support themselves, albeit with a few changes to their diet. As for the assertions about Southern Australia having a nicer climate, and being able to grow more crops there- which specific Indian crops do you feel would grow better there? Seems like a somewhat Eurocentric viewpoint to me. More temperate, and more similar to Western Europe, doesn't automatically equal better, nicer or 'more habitable'. Especially when there aren't any European settlers involved.

BTW,this could also be useful- here are a few maps of various soil types, in Australia:

127441-004-ECFFCB80.jpg

Asia:
127440-004-28A6DD17.jpg

North America:
127443-004-3BB0F421.jpg

And last but not least, Europe:
127442-004-51D79C0A.jpg

So yeah, most of Northern Australia's soils aren't that great; predominantly piss-poor Arenosols. But you've got the same shallow, nutrient-impoverished Leptosols along much of Coastal Andhra Pradesh as well, and they manage to cope with it, just like the Portuguese and Baja Californians do. Regosols aren't the richest soils either, and neither are Durisols, but they can both be worked with. And you've also got a fair few patches of fertile soils there as well; nutrient-abundant Acrisols, iron-rich Ferralsols, a decent bit of Planosols, as well as patches of the Vertisols, Lixisols, Fluvisols which compromise the most fertile swathes of land back in Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu. And Nitisols are predominantly created artificially, through human activity and the use of nitrogen-fixing plants to enrich the soils. There's no reason why these couldn't be created in Northern Australia using the same methods used to create them in India.
 
Zachariah, I think you've got a great idea here and I look forward to reading your TL.

I think Indicus is just overgeneralizing th climate of 'most' of Northern Australia to 'all' of Northern Australia. The colony doesn't have need of huge tracts of fertile land, just a few small patches large enough to creat self-sustaining settlements.

I can see this colony starting in the Kimberley Penninsula, then expanding to Arnhem Land, then Cape York, and from there down the coast of Eastern Australia. As they move down the coast, they will fimd the need for more and more temperate crops as they go, but these can be imported from Northern India (after all, they probably won't reach this point till a century or two after the initial colonization)
 
At the time, there was far less of it. And, of course, even today, most South Indians live in the parts of South India that are still fertile

Again, the relationship between the climates of India vs. Northern Australia is much more comparable to the climates of Toronto vs. the Okanagan Valley. Sure, people will find the temperature similar to other, more fertile, regions, but they will have to import food from elsewhere, which will naturally restrict growth. It's much easier for South Indians to live in southern Australia, where many more crops can be grown.

I'm from British Columbia and I can tell you that the Okanagan (which is between mountain ranges and so is not like the temperate rainforests of the west coast) is not what you make it out to be... It's a fruit and wine producing region. Its climate is nearly Mediterranean. But your point about possiblw climatic variation is still quite astute.

I think the biggest difference between northwest Australia and southern India is how the monsoons affect the respective regions. I think the rain is more concentrated in a small time frame from the monsoons in northern Australia, but I may be wrong there...
 
We're talking about colonial settlements in the mid 11th century here

Come on, are we really getting held up by the metaphor again here?

As for the assertions about Southern Australia having a nicer climate, and being able to grow more crops there- which specific Indian crops do you feel would grow better there?

Rice, for one.

The great issue here is that what accounts for Indian crops in the eleventh century is very different from today, so it could perhaps be true that the crops grown in India today are immensely different than those grown in the nineteenth century. Nevertheless, Bengal was, if memory strikes me right, a vassal of the Chola (damn, they were massive), and its crops may be what are exported to Australia.

As for the bit about me having a Eurocentric view, that's not true at all. I'm talking about how difficult it is to live in a desert, especially for members of the Chola Empire, which was really based upon rivers and water.

That said, the northern rivers strike me as reasonable locations for colonies, but the real jackpot for colonization, and the one that's going to drive people to the colonies is the Swan River, the area with plenty of freshwater and arable land. Now that, and the other parts of southern Australia, will be what makes Australia a populous part of the world.
 
As for the assertions about Southern Australia having a nicer climate, and being able to grow more crops there- which specific Indian crops do you feel would grow better there? Seems like a somewhat Eurocentric viewpoint to me. More temperate, and more similar to Western Europe, doesn't automatically equal better, nicer or 'more habitable'. Especially when there aren't any European settlers involved.

So yeah, most of Northern Australia's soils aren't that great; predominantly piss-poor Arenosols. But you've got the same shallow, nutrient-impoverished Leptosols along much of Coastal Andhra Pradesh as well, and they manage to cope with it, just like the Portuguese and Baja Californians do. Regosols aren't the richest soils either, and neither are Durisols, but they can both be worked with. And you've also got a fair few patches of fertile soils there as well; nutrient-abundant Acrisols, iron-rich Ferralsols, a decent bit of Planosols, as well as patches of the Vertisols, Lixisols, Fluvisols which compromise the most fertile swathes of land back in Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu. And Nitisols are predominantly created artificially, through human activity and the use of nitrogen-fixing plants to enrich the soils. There's no reason why these couldn't be created in Northern Australia using the same methods used to create them in India.

I agree with you that how people usually examine Australia they usually do it with a Eurocentric lens. I remember another post a while back that compared the Kimberly to Rajasthan. With Indian irrigation and well making technology, even the driest parts of the world (eastern Iran, coasts of Peru) hosted large agrarian population centres.
 
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