Sparsely populated territories which could have much more people?

If Paraguay didn't start a suicidal war that killed 90% of it's male population it'd be doing a bit better in the population department.

The American west is pretty undersettled, although there's actually been depopulation of the great plains in recent years.

The Canadian west wasn't settled until the 1880s/90s for the most part.

If the US and Canada never blocked chinese immigration you'd likely have much larger populations in the western portions of both countries. Idaho was a third chinese at one point. Most chinese likely would settle in the mountain-west and canadian prairies after experiencing xenophobia on the coast I think.

Patagonia could take more people.

Africa is pretty low population density on the whole. Might the British have ever considered opening up their colonies to mass indian immigration?

Central Asia and Siberia could potentially host more people.
 

The Avenger

Banned
If Paraguay didn't start a suicidal war that killed 90% of it's male population it'd be doing a bit better in the population department.

Yep.

The American west is pretty undersettled, although there's actually been depopulation of the great plains in recent years.

The Canadian west wasn't settled until the 1880s/90s for the most part.

More immigration could help settle both of these territories in the future.

If the US and Canada never blocked chinese immigration you'd likely have much larger populations in the western portions of both countries. Idaho was a third chinese at one point. Most chinese likely would settle in the mountain-west and canadian prairies after experiencing xenophobia on the coast I think.

Is it realistic to prevent Chinese exclusion in the late 19th century, though?

Patagonia could take more people.

Yep.

Africa is pretty low population density on the whole.

That will change throughout the 21st century. I am sure of it.

Might the British have ever considered opening up their colonies to mass indian immigration?

Why Indian?

Central Asia and Siberia could potentially host more people.

OK.

Also, could Central Asia be a part of Russia's Sun Belt in a TL without Bolshevism?
 
Will the Indian settlers in Britain's colonies have the same demographics as India has?

They didn't OTL, so there's no reason why they would here. Gujaratis were/are disproportionately represented amongst Indians in Africa. Sikhs and Parsis (such as Freddy Mercury's ancestors) also formed large communities in Africa.
 
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.

Hmmm... interesting concept. Quilombos or Cafuso bandeirantes with government backing?

But where is the rice coming from?
Another culture that is good here is beans, they help fix nitrogen in the soil and do great with crop rotation. I wonder how they could address the soil acidity...

If Paraguay didn't start a suicidal war that killed 90% of it's male population it'd be doing a bit better in the population department.

Not just war, but also scorched earth tactics.

Currently the consensus is that the old estimates were hugely overblow, not just that of Paraguayan population, but casualties too. The "Paraguayan Holocaust" is exagerated, its more like a Lolocaust than a real one.

Still sucked.
 
Hmmm... interesting concept. Quilombos or Cafuso bandeirantes with government backing?

But where is the rice coming from?
Another culture that is good here is beans, they help fix nitrogen in the soil and do great with crop rotation. I wonder how they could address the soil acidity...

‘With Grains in Her Hair’: Rice in Colonial Brazil by Judith Carney is a free PDF that answers the earliest history of African Rice in the lusophone world.

Alluvial soils don't need legumes, the washing of soils from the highlands that water the rivers provide annual fertility.
 
An old post of mine:

***
There is no reason in theory why the Kerguelen Islands could not support a population of, say, 10,000. As a friend of mine once observed, "The islands support sheep, rabbits and reindeer, the climate will allow the growth of root vegetables and cabbages, the sea around it teems with fish, and there are even some modest coal deposits. And if you reach modern times, there may be no place on earth richer in electrical power potential; hydro, wind, geothermal, take your pick." On the minus side, of course, nobody wants to live there, the islands being cold, bleak, windy, far from anywhere else, etc.

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.

Or for a post-1900 POD: The French People's Republic under Comrade Thorez, completely rejecting the old imperialist French state's exiling criminals to a tropical hell, instead decides to rehabilitate them through Socially Useful Labor in a bracing climate...

https://www.alternatehistory.com/fo...kerguelen-islands.389860/page-2#post-12499564

If France had grabbed Western Australia (as they might have in the early 19th century or before), then Kerguelen becomes a lot more important since it's a good stopover point for ships using the Clipper Route. The British likely would've found a use for the islands--the situation is similar to the Falklands, minus that one neighbour who really really wants those islands.

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.

I wonder how you'd get New Caledonia more populated? It's underpopulated at 14/km2 (in part due to colonial disease and blackbirding of the natives) compared to its Melanesian neighbours of Vanuatu (22/km2) and the Solomon Islands (23/km2).

I was thinking a scenario of someone else aside from the British colonising Eastern Australia, then the British grabbing New Caledonia and running it as a penal colony. With luck, it might end up like Queensland and end up with 400-600K people. Although I don't see why France couldn't have done the same thing OTL.
 
I think not, Aedes is the main vector for Dengue and Yellow Fever, and later Zika and Chikungonia. Its a hell-spawned creature better sent to its father, the devil. Its also ridiculously adaptable and has become dangerous with the years gone by.

The Amazon didn't used to be such a disease-infested land until that damn mosquito got here.



Perhaps a softer collapse or no collapse of the Amazonian Chiefdoms that existed in the region before the Europeans came? Disease killed them.
Terra Preta was a mystery until recently. Perhaps if things didn't collapse as fast, maybe the colonists would have retained that knowledge, allowing people to make Terra Preta and do more agriculture in the amazonic region.

Ganges valley had a reputation for tropical diseases for 18th century Europeans. English in Calcutta used to celebrate each autumn survival of summer rainy season diseases. The Persians and Afghans disliked the climate, too.

Yet the Ganges valley had a huge sedentary native population, civilized at that.
How to make 18th century Amazon Valley, Atlantic to Andes, as densely settled as 18th century Ganges Valley was, Bay of Bengal to Himalayas, and over a larger area?
 
I read somewhere that Australia can support a population between 100-150 million. If Populate or Perish wins out over White Australia in terms of immigration policy and the government is willing to invest some of the country's not inconsiderable wealth into developing the infrastructure then Australia cloud have a considerably larger population
 
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