Reverse colonization: Reasons to colonize Europe?

You know you've hit rock bottom when you're dropping cherry picked pictures as markers of racial and ethnic identity to argue for or against new age definitions of colonialism. Quick, somebody post a picture of blonde Kazakhs or red-haired Uighurs.
 
@metalinvader665

Do you think Middle Eastern and North African bodies of water are prone to drought because of recent news or historically? Historically, water in those areas was very carefully managed and, although not having as much rivers as Europe, still had plenty. Hydroelectric power in this circumstance would be feasible.

Feasible, yes, but ideal, well, you'd want to get something more reliable. And drought has indeed been a common factor in the region, not just recently. Hydropower will be competing against the food needed to sustain the large population, as well as the local landowners who are making money off that land. Irrigation dams in the Middle East are almost as old as civilisation, and water wheels in the region predate Roman rule, but there's presumably a much more limited capacity for how far you can take hydropower in the Middle East compared to Europe.

But that's a good driver for colonialism in Europe. You want to use more of your dams to produce power and less to irrigate land, meaning you need a new source of food. You import it from Europe at the best price possible. You intervene more and more in Europe to ensure the grain supply is stable. Your demand for hydropower still gets greater and greater, and you turn to coal to fuel your expanding needs. You then discover that parts of Europe are utterly rich in coal compared to your lands, and start seeking imports of coal.

Yes, that's pushing it: none of the realistic Islamic powers had necessary numbers (and quite a few other things) for colonization of the whole Europe.

If the 10.9 million people of Great Britain in 1801 could maintain their huge empire, it doesn't seem so unlikely a comparable Islamic power might do the same. Oman managed to rule Zanzibar and a large swathe of the African coast despite having a small population.
 
5. If you look at actual possible PoDs, you would need Europe at its absolute nadir, say AD 900. Then have the Muslim world undergo rapidly the industrial, scientific, agricultural revolutions. But then the problem would be to get the Muslims to totally displace and exterminate the Europeans (and taking the arable land for Muslim ME settlers) as opposed to just ruling them. So we need a virulent strain of radical Islam that kills everyone who refuses to convert being the de fact ideology in ME in conjunction with industrial/scientific/agricultural revolutions, plus a Europe that is more hard-core Christian than they were in AD900, refusing to convert, and then the Muslims feeling justified to kill tens of millions.

If you want the Christians to oppose Islam: Would alcohol and pork be enough of a reason?
 
If you want the Christians to oppose Islam: Would alcohol and pork be enough of a reason?

Pork would be the main problem, since pigs were a major source of protein in Northern Europe. It would be hard to convince the Northern Europeans to abandon pork. Alcohol isn't so much of a problem, since Muslims broke the rules all the time and a certain view on Islamic law can permit intoxicants not made from grapes or dates, so common European drinks like beer, mead, etc. would nominally be permitted.
 
@alexmilman

I was implying an Islamic conquest of the Byzantine Empire. If the Rashiduns eventually dissolve and the Balkans are sufficiently Islamic, we could see an Islamic successor state in the Balkans. This successor state would colonize Western Europe. We can also a sufficiently advanced and powerful North African successor state conquer parts of Southern Europe. If Al-Andalus survives we could also see the colonization of Europe as well (although whether or not it would be colonization and not conquest remains unclear). A strong Arabian successor state such as Oman or Yemen could also make a forte into Northern Europe quite easily.
 
This is the perfect quote to describe colonialism.

On the topic of European colonization. It is ASB unless Europe is Africa levels of advancement.

Or unless you are talking about "colonization" as settlement in a new areas in which case there were few examples of Asian and African "colonization" of the European territories. Even leaving the questionable cases like the Khazars aside, we have the Arabs and Berbers settling in Spain (and Sicily), the Mongols settling in the Volga - Don - North Caucasus region, and some Ottomans settling in the Balkans and along the Black Sea coast (Ismail, Ochakov, Kerch, Azov, etc.).

Of course, none of these cases was European-style "colonialism". ;)
 
If the 10.9 million people of Great Britain in 1801 could maintain their huge empire, it doesn't seem so unlikely a comparable Islamic power might do the same. Oman managed to rule Zanzibar and a large swathe of the African coast despite having a small population.

Analogies with the modern colonialism are questionable at best and can not be convincingly used.

Population in the areas you mentioned was not too big and territory was nothing comparing to the whole Europe. Even the Arab raids into France failed and at best they could hold most of the Peninsula. Of course, it would be interesting to speculate on the scenario when the initial Arab conquests are concentrated strictly in the Western direction ignoring Persia, etc. Of course, the downside would be the lesser resources of the invaders but at that time they did have certain advantages over the Western counterparts, for example a reasonably "heavy" cavalry with the stirrups. Not that this helped too much in OTL against the steady Frankish infantry.
 
@alexmilman

I was implying an Islamic conquest of the Byzantine Empire. If the Rashiduns eventually dissolve and the Balkans are sufficiently Islamic, we could see an Islamic successor state in the Balkans.

OK, we can assume that this is possible with some caveats.

This successor state would colonize Western Europe.

No Balkan state could colonize the Western Europe. Too big too populous too many points of resistance, etc.

We can also a sufficiently advanced and powerful North African successor state conquer parts of Southern Europe.

Of course, at some points the Northern African conquerors had some military advantages. For example, Almoravids had a decent infantry while their Spanish opponents did not (as a result, only El Cid managed to win the battles) but these advantages were not big enough for a major conquest. Of course, the Arabs did conquer the parts of the Southern Europe: Spain, Sicily and even some parts of Provence. But the successor states started falling apart soon enough leaving only Spain when their territories had been steadily shrinking.


If Al-Andalus survives we could also see the colonization of Europe as well (although whether or not it would be colonization and not conquest remains unclear). A strong Arabian successor state such as Oman or Yemen could also make a forte into Northern Europe quite easily.

Al Andalus had been losing territory and political independence before invasion of Almoravids and in less than 2 centuries the tide of conquest had been decisively turned 180 degrees at Las Novas de Tolosa.
 
You mean full of states, empires, confederations, complex economies, and an active set of participants in the global econony- just like Europe was?
Don't forget The nomad pastorialist population that lived in the fringes of the agricultural complex, like The Finns,Tartars,cossacks and other
 
You know you've hit rock bottom when you're dropping cherry picked pictures as markers of racial and ethnic identity to argue for or against new age definitions of colonialism. Quick, somebody post a picture of blonde Kazakhs or red-haired Uighurs.
Here a blond Green eyed mongol girl
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Okay, how do You define The Cossacks before The XVII Century and The Finns before The XIV century if not as nomad people ?

As settled farmers and pastoralists neighbouring actual nomads (sami and nogays/bashkirs/kalmycks respectively)?

I wouldn't define even 16th c. Tatars as nomadic.
 
Okay, how do You define The Cossacks before The XVII Century and The Finns before The XIV century if not as nomad people ?

The initial Cossaks (not to be confused with the "Kazakhs" who are a CA nation and initially nomadic) were the military settlers who lived along the Polish/Lithuanian and Russian borders. While they were routinely engaged in the raids against pretty much all their neighbors, they were not nomads who travel from place to place to find fresh pasture for their livestock: their agriculture was quite conventional.

The Finns never were nomads.
 
As settled farmers and pastoralists neighbouring actual nomads (sami and nogays/bashkirs/kalmycks respectively)?

I wouldn't define even 16th c. Tatars as nomadic.

Well, they were a "mixture": some of them lived in the cities or were engaged in a sedentary types of the agriculture while others still had been tending to the livestock in the steppes. The model well predates XVI century: construction of the 1st big city of the GH took place during the reign of Batu.
 
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