Plausibility Check: More settler colonialism worldwide?

I'm imagining a dystopian world where the large-scale mining and burning of coal that typified OTL's industrial era occurred much, much earlier (for non-industrial purposes - not sure what those would be), resulting in slow global warming that started by 500AD so that by 1500 all of Antarctica's icecaps have melted.

Settler colonies in Antarctica!!
 
Maybe if Europe settles the America's/Australia/Southern Africa several centuries before OTL, we could have the America's/Australia/South Africa already full by 1800 and looking for overseas settler colonies themselves? This creates a far larger population surplus to export to places, with increasingly dark outcomes for the locals. Imagine a North American sized Empire with as many people as China desperate to find prestigious colonies to send its surplus population.
 

Deleted member 97083

Maybe if Europe settles the America's/Australia/Southern Africa several centuries before OTL, we could have the America's/Australia/South Africa already full by 1800 and looking for overseas settler colonies themselves? This creates a far larger population surplus to export to places, with increasingly dark outcomes for the locals. Imagine a North American sized Empire with as many people as China desperate to find prestigious colonies to send its surplus population.
Yeah, that would probably happen if New France or New Spain had been colonized to Thirteen Colonies proportions.

Although the North American colonies might just fight each other for land.
 
Kenya and East Africa can be settled more by the British.

I'm not sure to what extent it was actually true, but there was a lot of talk in the 19th century about how suitable for white colonization the Great Lakes region was in general, with the idea that the greater altitude led to a more "temperate" climate that Europeans could enjoy.
 
Parts of Malawi, Tanzania and Katanga in Africa have a suitable climate for Europeans. Angola and Mozambique also have many areas which would also be suitable for having a larger European population. Rwanda and Burundi are suitable too, but have extremely high population density (something like half of German East Africa's population was concentrated in the area corresponding to those two countries).

Other than that, you need to settle at the margins of the world. Mostly isolated islands--Kerguelen is the largest, but there's plenty of others out there. Also bits of Siberia which weren't really colonised, like the Shantar Islands. I also think you could get human inhabitation on the Antarctic Peninsula, maybe as some attempt to assert control over the Drake Passage and stripmine the place while you're at it.

Oh, and Greenland, where the southern coastal regions are very suitable for European settlement. Even with the Little Ice Age. A Greenland which is 50-60% white is easily doable without any deliberate genocide, not that a lot of Inuit wouldn't get killed regardless.

Maybe if Europe settles the America's/Australia/Southern Africa several centuries before OTL, we could have the America's/Australia/South Africa already full by 1800 and looking for overseas settler colonies themselves? This creates a far larger population surplus to export to places, with increasingly dark outcomes for the locals. Imagine a North American sized Empire with as many people as China desperate to find prestigious colonies to send its surplus population.

Nobody wants a nice chunk of desert, rainforest, or tundra?

That said, there's a lot of Northern Canada (mostly south of 60N) which is suitable for farming which instead only has sparse settlement (mining and First Nations). Same goes with Alaska, at least in the parts where there's basically only indigenous communities. Yes, there's settler colonialism there OTL, but not "large-scale" as it says in the OP.

I'm not sure to what extent it was actually true, but there was a lot of talk in the 19th century about how suitable for white colonization the Great Lakes region was in general, with the idea that the greater altitude led to a more "temperate" climate that Europeans could enjoy.

Seems to have been good enough, since apparently most of the issues involving white settlement in Kenya were political. Hence "The White Highlands".
 
Some of these have been said already, but:

China, Japan, Korea, Central Asia.
Eastern African highlands (Kenya, Ethiopia, Tanzania, Malawi).
Nepal, Bhutan, Sikkim, Kashmir, Arunachal Pradesh.
Central Madagascar (Antananarivo).
Northern Canada.
Middle East, Turkey, Persia, Caucusus.
Egypt, Maghreb.
 
The Mongols under Ogedei planned to depopulate northern China and resettle it with Mongols as a giant pastureland and recruiting ground, although they decided against it.

If the Spanish followed the Las Casas peasant colonization scheme, then they could have sent significant numbers of Castilian peasants to the New World while organizing native tribes into self-governing vassal states. This would make most of the Spanish Empire into a big settler colony, except for enclaves of heavily urbanized native states, which would remain tributary colonies.

Actually, the Portuguese followed the Las Casas in the Old world colonies a bit - Portuguese East Indies and Portuguese Africa since the native states remained existing and became vassals..

so miguel da paz surviving is a better scenario..
 
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Some of these have been said already, but:

China, Japan, Korea, Central Asia.
Eastern African highlands (Kenya, Ethiopia, Tanzania, Malawi).
Nepal, Bhutan, Sikkim, Kashmir, Arunachal Pradesh.
Central Madagascar (Antananarivo).
Northern Canada.
Middle East, Turkey, Persia, Caucusus.
Egypt, Maghreb.
LOL, so everything that´s not Europe?

China and India just can´t be settle by Europeans, even genocide is super unlikely.
If annexed earlier by European powers, the Maghreb might have a larger settler population.
I´d say if you annex it quite early(1500), the difference between settlers and locals wouldn´t exist and the religious difference would be the main factor, thus making the colony not a settler one.
 
China and India just can´t be settle by Europeans, even genocide is super unlikely.

Not so much super unlikely as just infeasible to carry out. I don't see how a premodern society could ethnically cleanse enough of China or India or even many other states mentioned to make a European majority. It's more likely (since ethnic cleansing and genocide is expensive and difficult) that just they'd set themselves up as the leaders and use the locals as poorly paid (if paid at all) labour. And I just don't see any European power doing that sort of ethnic cleansing/genocide in that era when they could just as easily send those people to the Americas, Australia, or anywhere where they don't have to remove/kill thousands of people.
 
LOL, so everything that´s not Europe?

China and India just can´t be settle by Europeans, even genocide is super unlikely.

No, not everything that's not Europe. Only the parts of not-Europe that are habitable for Europeans. Note that I excluded the East Indies, Southeast Asia, almost all of India, West Africa, etc.

The parts of India that I mentioned are highland regions which have a climate that's habitable for Europeans. I expect you could colonize that highland strip of India by having a British India-like situation, but the colonizing power decides to start settler colonization.

As for China, it's certainly habitable, the problem is that China is a powerful country. You'd have to have an earlier PoD that results in a perpetually divided China, so that it's easier for a European colonizer to gain control. And then end up with a South-Africa type situation where there are a lot of European settlers controlling a larger Chinese native population.
 

CaliGuy

Banned
The continent was relatively depopulated compared to any other area in the world, less by genocides itself than by economic stagnation and low growth.


I think you could have Namibia, more of South Africa, Maghreb and maybe the Mauretania region. The rest is going to be mostly insular, I guess you could find some place in Gabon, but it´s unlikely.
What about non-European settler colonialism, though?
 

CaliGuy

Banned
The whole point of the state-territory system was to send white settlers in until there was a large enough population for statehood. That is pretty much the definition of a settler colony.
Bingo! Indeed, the U.S. certainly significantly altered the demographics of much of its territory in favor of Whites--just like Russia did with Siberia (in regards to ethnic Russians) and China did with Inner Manchuria (in regards to ethnic Han Chinese).
 
What about by the Chinese, though?

More the Indians, since they seem to have settled in East Africa in even larger numbers than the British did, since many were labourers on the colonial railroad projects. Idi Amin did a nasty purge against them.

Chinese migration to the Philippines doesn't seem too much a stretch.

They were there and could be there in greater numbers (maybe 10% of the present Filipino population at most).

OK; also, though, what about more distant Chinese settler colonialism--such as in East Africa?

The Americas--in the Middle Ages. And not just China, but Japan too. Some believe the ancestors of the Ainu helped contribute to the gene pool of the American Indians. In any case, the route from the North Pacific has been well-travelled since the Neolithic. Either nation could establish settlement in the New World. I think Japan, maybe with a successful Kenmu Restoration or a political evolution which generally avoids military rule and thus an "eternal Heian era" (so to speak) might be the most likely to do so. Any East Asian colonialism is hard, but contrary to popular opinion, if any East Asian colonialism in the Americas is to occur, the Japanese are at least as likely as the Chinese.

But for East Africa, if the British (or Germans, or whoever) want to import Chinese labourers (I believe they did to some extent) instead of Indians, they sure could. And like with the Indians, certain individuals will rise into the middle class in the colonies.
 

Magical123

Banned
No, not everything that's not Europe. Only the parts of not-Europe that are habitable for Europeans. Note that I excluded the East Indies, Southeast Asia, almost all of India, West Africa, etc.

The parts of India that I mentioned are highland regions which have a climate that's habitable for Europeans. I expect you could colonize that highland strip of India by having a British India-like situation, but the colonizing power decides to start settler colonization.

As for China, it's certainly habitable, the problem is that China is a powerful country. You'd have to have an earlier PoD that results in a perpetually divided China, so that it's easier for a European colonizer to gain control. And then end up with a South-Africa type situation where there are a lot of European settlers controlling a larger Chinese native population.
You ever heard of the unparalled invasion? Its a plausible Europeans conquer China scenario
 
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