The Holy Crusade for America

[jgack]

I was having a thought the other day and was wondering what everyone might think of this, what if Europeans had tried colonising earlier, say during the Middle Ages, when they didn't have a technological advantage, or much of one anyway?) How do you think they would have fared and how do you think the world would look today?

 

[david3565]

Steel, plate armor, saddles, horses, metal weapons, ballista, and the phalanx formation are all technological advantages. The Native Americans can close that gap a lot with their well developed guerilla tactics, but Europeans can leverage thousands of hardened professional troops trained to the hilt in the art of warfare. And these explorers aren't going to make ANY attempts at negotiation, so don't expect to take there time conquering. They probably also have better wilderness skills than OTL settlers, so surviving isn't going to divert their energy enough from being able to mount an ample defense to any attacks. Combine that with the same diseases being carried by your explorers as OTL and the Native Americans are still screwed. Just not as soon. However, the larger and more organized tribes might be able to meet them toe to toe and once the Native Americans get a handle on horses, the Europeans are going to suffer big time.

 

[Melvin Loh]

|Hey guys, WI you had some sorta unprofessional foulup along the lines of the 1096 People's Crusade, when the 20,000+undisciplined, poorly armed and equipped western European peasants were ambushed and butchered by the Saracens in the Holy Land ? Couldn't the same happen in this hypothetical medieval European conquest of the Americas ? And wouldn't the columns of heavily-armoured knights and men-at-arms still be at a great disadvantage in North American locales like the forested areas of New England so's that the local tribes could still pick 'em off as happened in the Holy Land at the hands of lightly-armoured Muslim cavalry ?

Then again, I read while undertaking research on Euro colonisation of the Americas 1500-1700, that the 1st white invaders, whether Spanish in New Spain or English in New England and Virginia, virtually were medieval conquerors in terms of their ideology and technology which underpinned their subjugation of the native ppls.

 

[NapoleonXIV]

Wouldn't it really depend on how many people the Europeans could get here in a short time? The Native Americans were still a factor and a force in the settlement of North America right up until the end of the Frontier in 1890. Even the Eastern tribes didn't disappear entirely until the 1820's/30's, which saw the first big waves of immigration into America.

Indigeonous America was "conquered" more by disease and displacement than by soldiers, although what military action did take place was particularly oppressive and brutal.

 

[Straha]

you leave out the effects of the muslims being able to be involved and possible islamicize the maya. We sould see a situation where we have the Sulatanate of Maiyya,a still pagan inca empire and several other native states survive to 2004.

 

[LordKalvan]

Wouldn't it really depend on how many people the Europeans could get here in a short time? The Native Americans were still a factor and a force in the settlement of North America right up until the end of the Frontier in 1890. Even the Eastern tribes didn't disappear entirely until the 1820's/30's, which saw the first big waves of immigration into America.

Indigeonous America was "conquered" more by disease and displacement than by soldiers, although what military action did take place was particularly oppressive and brutal.

and by railways, never forget the railways.
Leaving aside for a moment the effects of the diseases, the history of Central Asia shows quite clearly that a nomadic people, capable of living off the land and utilizing much less resources than a settled population, can always enjoy a tactical advantages. Untill the settled population factors in the rifles, and the railways

 

[Straha]

without the railroads, it will take far logner to settle the great plains possibly centuries...

 

[NapoleonXIV]

Jefferson estimated that it would take a thousand years.

The comparison of the mongol/turkic peoples to the Amerinds is a good one but I do think the relative Asian numbers were larger by at least an order of magnitude.

Still, the fact remains that the Viking settlements were probably deterred at least in part by native resistance.

 

[Condottiero]

I don't think it would have been more different than it was in OTL. In fact the spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire did not rely as much in gun powder and muskets as in horses and tactics.

The spanish were used to rude frontier tactics of their war with the andalusian muslims. In that war trying to capture the enemy's leader through tricks was totally admissible.

 

[carlton_bach]

I'm pretty sure the Europeans would eventually win, not so much because they had the better technology (Sub-Saharan africa had iron, guns, and organised militaries, and the only thing that kept them safe was diseases) but because they had the more aggressive and flexible society. Writing is one invaluable asset, as is the integrative power of a religion that uses the concept of conversion and missionary work. Contract law, the idea of state and bindingly declared war and peace also help.

I think, though, that it would take an awfully long time, and most of the native population that survives the first wave of epidemics would be accomodated and integrated rather than exterminated or displaced. After all, in military termsthey aren't going to be quite as negligible. Sure, a large military force of heavy cavalry, armored infantry and archers could break almost every tribe, but most medieval militaries were small and temporary, and you still had to live alongside the Mandan or Cherokee after the heribannum expires and the knights and mercenaries all go home. Whatever tribal groups are politically dominant at the point of first contact stand a good chance of surviving as entities, though their nature will eventually change quite fundamentally (the last pagan Great Prince of Lithuania, already as feudal grandee more than a tribal warlord, married a Polish princess and converted to Christianity IIRC in 1386, founding the Jagiellon dynasty and Eastern Europe's Catholic superpower. You could well imagine a Cherokee chief or Iroquios or Mound Builder council leader playing a similar role)

And once they figure out how a horse works, the Great Plains tribes are going to make waykewl turcopoles...

(Actually I think I have the abandoned husk of a timeline with a similar premise lying around somewhere. I'll try dig it up.)