Sparsely populated territories which could have much more people?

Which sparsely populated territories (as of 2018 in our TL) could have much more people with a sufficiently realistic PoD no later than 1850?

I was inspired to create this thread by the extremely rapid population growth that the U.S. territories west of the Proclamation Line of 1763 experienced after American independence.
Sibiria, the Russian East in general, Greenland, Lybia.
 
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Had the Scots not taken them, the Shetland and Orkney Islands would have probably boasted a similar population each to the Faroes: ~45 000-50 000 people versus today's population of ~22 000 for each.
 
I've got two good ones:

No Quebec Act means Canada goes with America in the revolution. Rupert's Land is purchased and Newfoundland declares independence and petitions for statehood in the late 1800s after considerable Yankee immigration takes over the government. The US, being more Catholic from the start and needing more southern states to balance out the Senate, annexes Mexico down to Hidalgo, Veracruz, and Michoacán. The civil war is sparked partially by increased Catholic immigration in the South and the banning of Catholic immigrants. An amendment is passed by Congress during the civil war banning regulation of immigrants by nationality or religion. This causes the Chinese Exclusion Act and other laws like it from being passed, or they are passed and deemed unconstitutional. The population of the US explodes with millions of Russians, Indians, Chinese, and Japanese flooding into the country and with the new immigrants becoming citizens and voting, they prevent a majority large enough to pass an amendment revoking the immigration amendment. By 2018, the USA has a population of 600 million and is the undisputed hyperpower of the world, stretching from Greenland to Puerto Vallarta.




Russia in the 1800s is a dangerous place, full of nihilists, self-interested bureaucrats, nationalist agitators, and even worse... liberals. With the Tsar's first son killed in childhood by disease and second son Nicholas is killed in Japan by a rogue assassin, when Alexander the Third dies in 1894, his milquetoast, sickly son George takes the throne. He dies in 2 short years thanks to the stress of the position. His successor, the young Michael is assassinated by an anarchist before he is even coronated. This has left Alexander's militarily-inclined brother Vladimir as Tsar. And he is in no mood to be assassinated like his father and two separate nephews. He integrates the Imperial Guard with the Okhrana and expands the power of the Okhrana drastically, making it the primary mechanism of the Emperor's power and the head answering directly to the Emperor.

He conducts a great purge to try to rid Russia of all its subversive elements and it appears he is successful, dismantling the Social Democratic Party and executing its members, such as a man by the name of Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov. It also completely disorganizes the Polish nationalist movement and purges the military and bureaucracy of corruption. Hailed as a great reformer, Vladimir moves Russia into the 20th century as a prosperous and growing, if autocratic, country.

When the war between Italy and Austria-Hungary breaks out in 1910, Vladimir, the military man, is chomping at the bit. He has prepared his whole life for this. His purges and reforms to the military pay off amazingly, with the Russian army crushing the Austro-Hungarian army and even holding its own on the defensive against Germany. Although it was a long three years, and almost bankrupted the country, Russia made it through the war as a victor, even claiming the provinces of East Prussia and Galicia-Lodomeria as its own. In 1913, Russia was the master of the continent, eclipsing even the power of France and Germany.

But Vladimir made a lot of promises to a lot of people during the war and he would have to pay up. He made sure to form a Duma and write a constitution, he even gave universal male suffrage. But when the election results come in, he is shocked! The Social Democrats, who he had long ago dismantled, had 20% of the seats in the Duma! In the position to play kingmaker between the liberals and conservatives, these socialist traitors have vowed to do horrible things, like take land from aristocrats and even... God forbid, the Crown! Obviously, Vladimir had to shut it down. He dissolved the Duma and arrested the Social Democrat delegates, hanging them one by one in Petrograd for everyone to see the wages of socialism.

The reaction isn't pleasant. Vladimir has overplayed his hand, not realizing that when you give millions of men rifles and combat training, betraying your promises to those men isn't smart. These men have been forming soviets to organize local government, and when the soviets sent their delegates, they were slaughtered. The Okhrana is in every town, but it seems more and more towns have Okhrana agents hanging from the trees in the middle of town and even the Okhrana are scared of attempting to dissolve soviets that express sedition. Eventually Vladimir calls for the dissolution of the soviets and the formation of military governments in every province. To restore order to these places where tax receipts have suddenly turned to zero and the Okhrana has stopped sending monthly reports from.

When the order is sent out, the Petrograd Soviet somehow hears about it before it even leaves the palace grounds. When the Imperial Guard arrives at their headquarters, the streets are already barricaded. When the Guard settles in for a seige, they hear news that the Guard's armory has been overrun by an angry mob. They turn around in panic, to march to the armory, but a deafening buzz rings out as the Soviet headquarters opens fire with a machine gun on the Guard. The rest, as they say, is history.

The Soviet revolution succeeds fairly quickly, with both Petrograd and Moscow taken within a few days. The army, wracked with mutinies, is unable to take control of anything outside of areas within walking distance of a railroad, and even then only in the west. The Emperor disappeared in the first week, said to have drowned when trying to escape Petrograd by ship, and his family taken captive by the Soviet government. But government is a strong word. When the Petrograd Soviet and Moscow Soviets proclaimed the Republic of Soviets and asked each soviet in Russia to send a delegate to Moscow for their Assembly of Soviets, they drastically underestimated the number of soviets in the country. Over ten thousand delegates swarmed Moscow in 1915, ready to negotiate their Constitution.

The Constitution took over two years to negotiate, as the war against the White Army and Tsarist Pretenders often took precedence, and delegates could not often afford to stay long, but it was negotiated. The Republic of Soviets was established as a series of exactly one thousand(1000) soviets with varying territorial and demographic jurisdiction. The Russian Orthodox Church and Catholic Church even had soviets, non-territorial, but representing the power of the church, that clergy and church employees voted on. The central government was weak, but still had the power of calling up the militias that every soviet was supposed to support and also the responsibility of supplying the militias with arms. It also was the mediator of disputes between soviets and between the Republic and foreign powers. Each soviet had its own criminal code(though most shared a common code agreed upon at The Assembly) and managed its own economic affairs. The Bureau of Economic Planning was the most powerful central government organ, and largely just negotiated agreements between soviets, with little authority to enforce a central plan. In a way, these soviets implemented Tolstoy's dream and to this day, the Christian Socialist Party that usually maintains majority in the Assembly explicitly cites him as their ideological founder.

The Republic of Soviets largely avoided the Second World War, giving back most of East Prussia to Germany in the interwar period and maintaining trade relations with both the Arbeiter Republik and the French State. It declared war on Japan near the end, invading Mongolia and Sinkiang and annexing them into the Republic before the Republic of China could get to them and ethnically cleanse them like they were doing to Tibet.

In 2018, the Republic is still largely an agrarian and rural society, partially industrialized but lacking the property rights protections to invite foreign investment and the central government to implement planned industrialization. The population growth of Russia has not slowed down significantly since its founding, and chugging along at a solid 1.5% annual growth for a century has left the population of the Republic of Soviets at 842,000,000 and making it the third most populous country, after Hindustan and China. People have called the Soviet Republic the next great superpower since its founding, but a lack of economic growth and an inability to project power beyond its borders have left it a regional player, albeit an intractable one.
 
Wouldn't people be worried about resource depletion and overcrowding as well as the cost that it would take to accommodate all the extra people? ( housing, schools, and other forms of infrastructure) Look at California, there's lots of people, but there's lots of traffic, housing is expensive, and too much water is being used up in a place that naturally doesn't have that much water.
 

The Avenger

Banned
The region between Russia and Central Europe suffered even harder, for obvious reasons, as it was the buffer on which many of the region's worst wars were fought.

Though obviously Russia suffered a lot too.
Yeah, Russia suffered a lot because even though a lot of its people didn't live in areas which were occupied, its people from unoccupied areas were still drafted into the Russian Army--with a lot of them either dying in combat or in captivity (for instance, as a result of Nazi mistreatment of Soviet POWs).

In addition to avoiding the demographic losses of the 20th century, could Eastern Europe get more people as a result of immigration?

Would it be more open to immigration if it wasn't for a legacy of Communism?
 
Eastern Europe suffers from demographic impact of emmigration. If they weren’t so far behind of Western Europe economically they would have more young people living in their home countries today.
 
Population wise the one area that alarms me is Myanmar and Bangladesh. Very peculiar situation. Myanmar is sparsely populated by regional standards. It only has 50 million people with nearly 5 times the land mass and comparable water resources to Bangladesh, a country with 160 million and on the frontlines of rising sea levels. The two populations are completely distinct in race and culture. Tensions are only going to get from bad to worse.
 
Had the Scots not taken them, the Shetland and Orkney Islands would have probably boasted a similar population each to the Faroes: ~45 000-50 000 people versus today's population of ~22 000 for each.

It's my understanding that both the Shetland and Orkney islands actually had considerable more people than the Faroes back in the day. As such I don't think it is unreasonable to expect that number to be significant higher.

@Jürgen knows more about this than me, but from my understanding if these islands had been under the rule of Denmark 75.000-100.000 might not be impossible.
 
The Bahamas and Turks and Caicos (Lucayan Archipelago) could easily have over a million people if it were an American state. The islands have a population density of 24.6/km2, which is less than the US or Brazil. Andros Island, the largest island, has an area of almost 6,000 km2 (fifth largest in the Caribbean) yet has a population of little over 7,000--less densely populated than Mongolia. The second largest island, Great Inagua, has a population density of about 0.54 km/2, slightly more than Alaska. The Caicos Islands are also pretty big, but similarly sparsely populated.

If the US owned these islands--and the US easily could, since the islands were captured by their allies in the Revolution--then they'd follow a trajectory similar to South Florida (although Bahamas + T&C would be a state since day one as they were their own colony). Although they'd lack rail access to the rest of the country for obvious reasons, they'd eventually attract a ton of tourism and housing developments. I think a population of 1-2 million is easily feasible. The cost of living would be higher than Florida since it's an archipelago, which would be the main factor in limiting development, but it would draw off significant amounts of people from Florida (and possibly Hawaii too).
 

The Avenger

Banned
The Bahamas and Turks and Caicos (Lucayan Archipelago) could easily have over a million people if it were an American state. The islands have a population density of 24.6/km2, which is less than the US or Brazil. Andros Island, the largest island, has an area of almost 6,000 km2 (fifth largest in the Caribbean) yet has a population of little over 7,000--less densely populated than Mongolia. The second largest island, Great Inagua, has a population density of about 0.54 km/2, slightly more than Alaska. The Caicos Islands are also pretty big, but similarly sparsely populated.

If the US owned these islands--and the US easily could, since the islands were captured by their allies in the Revolution--then they'd follow a trajectory similar to South Florida (although Bahamas + T&C would be a state since day one as they were their own colony). Although they'd lack rail access to the rest of the country for obvious reasons, they'd eventually attract a ton of tourism and housing developments. I think a population of 1-2 million is easily feasible. The cost of living would be higher than Florida since it's an archipelago, which would be the main factor in limiting development, but it would draw off significant amounts of people from Florida (and possibly Hawaii too).
Interesting suggestion!

Also, what about Cuba?
 

The Avenger

Banned
Assuming greater urban population growth ( either due to immigration or internal birth rates AIUI) you could get above 20 million. Probably not as a Spanish colony or Communist state though.
Can the US realistically take Cuba before 1898, though, and if so, when?
 
The Amazon might have had more people if the Aedis Aegypti had been extinguished in Brazil and never returned.

Another possibility is that the use of Terra Preta is preserved, and continues being used after colonization, which leads to better agriculture in the region.

Rice growing cafuso banderirantes with diseases resistance.

It's OTL to some extent, just expand on Cafuso dominance over indigenous tribes like Garifuna and Miskitu Zambu in the Central and Caribbean Americas.
 
Can the US realistically take Cuba before 1898, though, and if so, when?

There's a slim chance in the 1850s perhaps, but I was mostly thinking of either a pre-1700 conquest from Spain by France or England, OR an Aranda-plan Spanish Commonwealth leading to butterflies rather than a U.S. invasion.
 
Maybe the Kerguelens become France's penal colony instead of Devil's Island? Something like 80,000 prisoners passed through Devil's Island, but the survival ratio in the tropics was bad. Presumably in the Kerguelens more would survive and become permanent settlers.

New Caledonia was an alternate penal colony OTL.

Incidentally, it also is sparsely populated, with only about 275 000 people in a land of over 18 000 km2.
 
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