The Effects on North America of a Non-Pandemic Columbian Exchange

[Diamond]

This more than likely belongs in ASB, but I think it might get a wider audience here:

Something I've been thinking about for a long long time is this - how would the Americas, specifically North America, have developed if you were to change one factor:

Native Americans were no more vulnerable to Eurasian diseases than Africans were/are.

In other words, keep everything the same, but take away what was most likely Europe's biggest single advantage in colonizing the Americas, that of disease. Would North America today look like Africa, a continent full of massive ex-European colonies that in actuality have a tiny white population compared to that of the natives?

Would discovering two vast continents full of people who aren't dying off any time soon discourage settlement, or re-direct it? Would attention temporarily be diverted to exploring Africa, until sub-Saharan disease starts killing off too many white explorers?

Speaking of Africa, how likely is it that the slave trade would've ballooned like it did OTL, with a big labor pool already in place and not dying off in the Americas? How does Africa develop?

(BTW: None of this is meant to offend anyone.)

 

[Brandonazz]

Im guessing it wouldn't change a WHOLE lot. THe American cultures though would be stronger fighting forces and euro-american type civilization would advance more slowly. for example, the Native north americans wouldn't have becone as sparse and may have formed a country eventually recognized by others somewhere in the central modern U.S. The big difference would be less "atrocities" that the history books tell about European explorers

 

[Nicole]

According to Mayflower, there were over 10 million Native Americans in what is now New England before European diseases took their toll... Now, that figure seems a bit high, but certainly Plymouth Colony would have a problem... (Indeed, Plymouth was built on an old Indian settlement- Patuxet- abandoned due to disease)

 

[HueyLong]

This is really ASB...... Sorry, but there is no plausible way to remove that big problem of contact, not without out completely changi8ng the time and frequency of contact.

 

[Diamond]

This is really ASB...... Sorry, but there is no plausible way to remove that big problem of contact, not without out completely changi8ng the time and frequency of contact.

Yeah. I know. Read the first line of my initial post.

 

[MerryPrankster]

According to Mayflower, there were over 10 million Native Americans in what is now New England before European diseases took their toll... Now, that figure seems a bit high, but certainly Plymouth Colony would have a problem... (Indeed, Plymouth was built on an old Indian settlement- Patuxet- abandoned due to disease)

10 million in New England! I thought the figure was 10 million north of Mexico?

 

[MerryPrankster]

This is really ASB...... Sorry, but there is no plausible way to remove that big problem of contact, not without out completely changi8ng the time and frequency of contact.

Perhaps some Vikings carrying smallpox or fisherman suffering from the Black Death get into present-day Canada or New England.

The disease does the OTL ravaging, but 1-4 centuries earlier. The population has built back up and is more immune (not as immune as Europeans since the resistance genes would have declined over the centuries, but no mega-deaths either) when the current batch of Europeans show up.

 

[At-Bari]

Not only the vikings but maybe the phoenicians, celts, africans and chinese could have brought the diseases to America and thus made them more immune? It's just a big butterfly, not a gigantic space bat.

 

[Smaug]

I can't remember the Chinese Admirals name, (shame on me), who made the journeys into the Indian ocean, but why couldn't he have a counter-part?

The Emperor has decided he will send two fleets, one south and one North. He also decides to send interpreters from as many ethnic groups as possible, in order to improve thier chances at communicating.

This fleet makes it as far as OTL California, bringing back gold, silver,otter skins, and a variety of other goods. Two outposts are left explore and trade. When whats left of the Northern Fleet manages to return the Emperor is not really impressed with what the natives have to offer, and abandons any further attempts explore thier.

Having sent Turks, Mongols, Indo-Chinese, and a wide variety of other on the mission, perhaps some beneficial genes get into the population, and over time make the natives somewhat more resistant.

This certainly wouldn't prevent everything, but its early enough to help. If nothing else some resistance to small pox, and an earlier introduction to alchohol would greatly help Native Americans, IMO.

 

[Doctor What]

Not only the vikings but maybe the phoenicians, celts, africans and chinese could have brought the diseases to America and thus made them more immune? It's just a big butterfly, not a gigantic space bat.

Well--if we restrict it to just the occasional lost ship rather than saying colonies being set up, then it becomes a 'smallish' butterfly

As for population in the Americas pre-contact--for obvious reasons it's almost impossible to come up with accurate numbers so it's mostly just guesswork. Estimates range from a low of 8 million to a high of 145 million people.

The general consensus is in the 40-50 million mark--it's the type of number that half the experts would consider impossibly big, and the other half would consider impossibly low, so it's probably exactly right.

Bear in mind that--with the exception of some cultures in the Ohio Valley, Mexico, Central America and a few places in South America--a big percentage of all the 'tribes' (but not all) were at the hunter/gatherer or early agricultural stage of technology.

 

[CalBear]

No major die off?

Okay, we have already acknowledged this to be as ASB as it comes, so I can just answer the WI.



The British, French, & Dutch will be completely shut out of North America, except as traders and part time visitors (e.g. fisherman drying their catch). No serious colonization would be possible until weapons tech reached the level of 1750-1800 or later. Until then any attempt to create a "European Only" enclave would get wiped out as soon as the first colonist killed a "savage" or raped a "squaw". It is possible that you would need to wait for rifled muskets, or even repeaters to get sufficient technological advantage to impose "White" Rule.

The North American Indians, especially in the Hudson Bay, New England, & Mid-Atlantic coasts had a well established, highly advanced, civilization going before the measles and Small Pox arrived. Had the Indians near Plymouth not have been more or less eliminated the two years before the "Pilgrims" arrived, the Massachusetts Bay colony would never have been established.

Imagine fighting Zulu's, except they have long range AND close combat weapons instead of just stabbing spears, in old growth forest so thick that early explorers claimed that a squirrel could climb a tree along the Atlantic Coast and not touch ground until it got to the Mississippi. Imagine doing it with a matchlock. Now imagine that you and your 30-40 men are outnumbered 50 to 1 and the only reason the odds are that GOOD is because your enemy didn't whistle up the 5,000 allies it has within two-three days travel. Oh, and don't get captured as the natives believe that putting the occasional prisoner into a fire is an honorable way for that enemy prisoner to go since it allows their spirt to speed its way to the stars.

That was what the Atlantic Coast of North America would have been like if disease hadn't wiped out 80-90% of the population in the generation before the Jamestown settlers arrived.

1491 : New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus by Charles C. Mann is an excellent source for some ideas on this POD

 

[Diamond]

Thanks CalBear, especially for the book recommendation (although the last thing I need is another book on my 'to read' pile. ).

Now then, any thoughts on how the rest of the world develops? And I notice you left Spain out of the 'shut-out' equation - do you think they'd still be able to maintain viable colonies in the New World? My own guess would be that the Caribbean would still be a Spanish lake, but they'd have a hell of a time making anything work on the mainland...

 

[Glen]

This more than likely belongs in ASB, but I think it might get a wider audience here:

Something I've been thinking about for a long long time is this - how would the Americas, specifically North America, have developed if you were to change one factor:

Native Americans were no more vulnerable to Eurasian diseases than Africans were/are.

In other words, keep everything the same, but take away what was most likely Europe's biggest single advantage in colonizing the Americas, that of disease. Would North America today look like Africa, a continent full of massive ex-European colonies that in actuality have a tiny white population compared to that of the natives?

Would discovering two vast continents full of people who aren't dying off any time soon discourage settlement, or re-direct it? Would attention temporarily be diverted to exploring Africa, until sub-Saharan disease starts killing off too many white explorers?

Speaking of Africa, how likely is it that the slave trade would've ballooned like it did OTL, with a big labor pool already in place and not dying off in the Americas? How does Africa develop?

(BTW: None of this is meant to offend anyone.)

Most important changes in Central/South America, where significant population sizes made this an important issue. Less so where the population was sparse to begin with.

Definitely more native blood in Mexico...don't know though that that would matter in the long run.

Strangely enough, it might not have made a great deal of difference in the course of human history, though it certainly did for people living in that point in history.

 

[Diamond]

I did have an ulterior motive in starting this thread - I'm working on a story dealing with a kind of Rorke's Drift situation, but with Sioux instead of Zulus.

I was just fishing here, seeing what the consensus would be on how the Americas would develop if their colonization proceeded more like Africa's rather than OTL America's.

 

[Glen]

I did have an ulterior motive in starting this thread - I'm working on a story dealing with a kind of Rorke's Drift situation, but with Sioux instead of Zulus.

I was just fishing here, seeing what the consensus would be on how the Americas would develop if their colonization proceeded more like Africa's rather than OTL America's.

You need a change in the climate/geography rather than the megafauna.

Also, some really nasty diseases for Europeans to catch wouldn't hurt.

 

[CalBear]

Thanks CalBear, especially for the book recommendation (although the last thing I need is another book on my 'to read' pile. ).

Now then, any thoughts on how the rest of the world develops? And I notice you left Spain out of the 'shut-out' equation - do you think they'd still be able to maintain viable colonies in the New World? My own guess would be that the Caribbean would still be a Spanish lake, but they'd have a hell of a time making anything work on the mainland...

I didn't mention the Spanish because you specified North America. But, as you would expect, I have a theory on that too.

Spain gets the islands off the Americas, the populations there are too small to oppose effectively even without the die-off. They get stuffed on the mainland, even if the Aztec's still go through the whole "god" thing, they have ten times the warriors available. Same goes for the Inka. Europe has a real problem getting anywhere north of Brazil. South of there, there isn't any major organized state on the Atlantic Coast to oppose the Europeans, but the local tribes may still be able to out man them without the disease factor.

Over all, without the allies of European illnesses, the New World would be a very tough nut to crack before the 19th Century.

 

[Glen]

I didn't mention the Spanish because you specified North America. But, as you would expect, I have a theory on that too.

Spain gets the islands off the Americas, the populations there are too small to oppose effectively even without the die-off. They get stuffed on the mainland, even if the Aztec's still go through the whole "god" thing, they have ten times the warriors available. Same goes for the Inka. Europe has a real problem getting anywhere north of Brazil. South of there, there isn't any major organized state on the Atlantic Coast to oppose the Europeans, but the local tribes may still be able to out man them without the disease factor.

Over all, without the allies of European illnesses, the New World would be a very tough nut to crack before the 19th Century.

I don't think they would be tough to crack, more tough to hold.

 

[eschaton]

I think there's been a bit of over-estimation here of Native American prowess due to an expanded population base alone.

Certain areas (Mainly California and Argentina) will still be good targets for settlement by Europe. Both regions would be bonanzas for Western crops and only had hunter-gatherers in OTL. Without the effect of the plague populations would undoubtedly be higher, but they likely were affected comparably little by the plauges to begin with due to low population density. Someone is going to discover the Rio De La Plata area and settle it. Going with OTL, I'm guessing Spain ends up here, and we have a large, mainly caucasian, Spanish-speaking nation in the Southern Cone region.

My guess is California will be reached first by the Russians, as the Spaniards won't have a clear base to cross Panama. Cross-Pacific trade will be far more lucrative with the Northwest Coast holding large and wealthy chiefdoms. Russia historically dealt fairly peacefully with the siberians they discovered as they went across Eurasia. My guess is by the present while the Pacific Northwest is still Native American, California would be Russian-speaking, with Russian Settlements perhaps reaching as far into the interior as Utah and the great plains.

For the most part though, the Native Americans would remain the predominant ethnic group throughout the Americas wherever they had agriculture and/or a large population base. Probably the groups along the coastlines will be very acculturated to European norms...most will likely be Christian, some groups will probably lose their original languages, and substantial ethnic mixing would happen along the coasts regardless. The situation would never be comparable to Africa because it's still a climate which is beneficial to European crops and to Europeans living in.

Geyond the Appalachians I think would be almost inpenetrable Native American cultures. European agriculture and metalworking would filter into the area well before any actual European power did, meaning these nations will likely only be subdued during the "second age of imperialism" around 1900 or so.

 

[Diamond]

Good points. Now it's just a matter of doing some heavy-duty reading...

 

[WhatIsAUserName]

If use of technology spreads enough, would we get something like OTL's China on a larger basis? The Inca or Aztecs would be forced to make enormous concessions, get spheres of influence carved out of them, etc, but would they still remain nominally independent?