Tropical Agricultural Revolution: Portuguese Terra Preta?

It's gradually becoming more and more clear that the Amazon basin was more densely inhabited than previously imagined, and that such populations were much more settled and agrarian than the scattered survivors of the post-Columbian exchange.

To be fair though, believing jungle agriculture could not support such populations was perfectly reasonable given the typical soils in those places. They're low in nutrients (and thus easily exhausted), and the rains help wash out much of what does accumulate. Slash-and-burn operations have to keep moving to new areas precisely in order to sustain productivity with new fields. Given how hard it can be even with modern technology, crops, and animals, it didn't appear possible to feed a population efficiently enough with pre-modern tools and techniques to sustain a high population density.

And all that is still absolutely true. Over time however, archeologists have managed to show that you can change the available soil into something intensely fertile that both sustains its nutrients and regenerates itself once established. This soil the pre-Columbian inhabitants created was called Terra Preta, and was an oddity given how when Europeans first discovered it, disease had already wiped out the communities that produced it, and the jungle easily swallowed those fields back up in the intervening time.

Hopefully that's enough background for this POD. Let's say that during the early years of Portuguese exploration of Brazil, the techniques and knowledge of how to make such tropical soils fertile is acquired from a native community or set of communities that lives long enough to pass it on. Perhaps could imagine a shipwrecked crew or otherwise stuck expedition living alongside or with such a native community, bringing the techniques and crops to Portuguese attention at large after they're rescued with native wives possibly coming along with them. This POD can't save the Amazonian communities from the deadly impact of European disease, but if the secrets to their agricultural base aren't lost, then they might well be able to gradually bounce back over time.

Portugal now effectively could establish and sustain profitable plantation agriculture throughout Brazil, and don't have to concentrate themselves in the south. Even there and in the Brazilian grasslands, the use of Terra Preta could be of value though. More than that of course, these methods of soil enrichment could be combined with tropical crops from Africa and Asia to create a potentially very valuable agricultural package throughout the wetter tropical areas of the Portuguese Empire. I don't know how it'd compare to South and Southeast Asian agricultural techniques on their home soil mind you, but being able to enrich poor tropical soils, and for them to stay that way could probably be combined with their use of night soil and other methods of fertilization.

The Portuguese though would be the main vector of this new contribution to the Columbian exchange, probably first to their African holdings, where it could spread further among Africans--some of whom had similar agricultural techniques. Just as important, Amazonia can actually be valuable to Portugal for cash crops. The disease environment is still bad, but there's a transport network in place linking vast tracts of land to the sea and thus world markets.

Other effects, people? Potential interactions I've missed?
 
It's gradually becoming more and more clear that the Amazon basin was more densely inhabited than previously imagined, and that such populations were much more settled and agrarian than the scattered survivors of the post-Columbian exchange.

To be fair though, believing jungle agriculture could not support such populations was perfectly reasonable given the typical soils in those places. They're low in nutrients (and thus easily exhausted), and the rains help wash out much of what does accumulate. Slash-and-burn operations have to keep moving to new areas precisely in order to sustain productivity with new fields. Given how hard it can be even with modern technology, crops, and animals, it didn't appear possible to feed a population efficiently enough with pre-modern tools and techniques to sustain a high population density.

And all that is still absolutely true. Over time however, archeologists have managed to show that you can change the available soil into something intensely fertile that both sustains its nutrients and regenerates itself once established. This soil the pre-Columbian inhabitants created was called Terra Preta, and was an oddity given how when Europeans first discovered it, disease had already wiped out the communities that produced it, and the jungle easily swallowed those fields back up in the intervening time.

Hopefully that's enough background for this POD. Let's say that during the early years of Portuguese exploration of Brazil, the techniques and knowledge of how to make such tropical soils fertile is acquired from a native community or set of communities that lives long enough to pass it on. Perhaps could imagine a shipwrecked crew or otherwise stuck expedition living alongside or with such a native community, bringing the techniques and crops to Portuguese attention at large after they're rescued with native wives possibly coming along with them. This POD can't save the Amazonian communities from the deadly impact of European disease, but if the secrets to their agricultural base aren't lost, then they might well be able to gradually bounce back over time.

Portugal now effectively could establish and sustain profitable plantation agriculture throughout Brazil, and don't have to concentrate themselves in the south. Even there and in the Brazilian grasslands, the use of Terra Preta could be of value though. More than that of course, these methods of soil enrichment could be combined with tropical crops from Africa and Asia to create a potentially very valuable agricultural package throughout the wetter tropical areas of the Portuguese Empire. I don't know how it'd compare to South and Southeast Asian agricultural techniques on their home soil mind you, but being able to enrich poor tropical soils, and for them to stay that way could probably be combined with their use of night soil and other methods of fertilization.

The Portuguese though would be the main vector of this new contribution to the Columbian exchange, probably first to their African holdings, where it could spread further among Africans--some of whom had similar agricultural techniques. Just as important, Amazonia can actually be valuable to Portugal for cash crops. The disease environment is still bad, but there's a transport network in place linking vast tracts of land to the sea and thus world markets.

Other effects, people? Potential interactions I've missed?

if this sticks, by, say, 1850 you'd have far richer agricultural packages in Tropical areas almost everywhere.
On one side, that would give Portugal a way larger agricultural base for her Empire with mixed effects. It would be coveted more intensely by colonial competitors like Spain, France, England and the United Provinces, and it would be stronger and larger overall. On the other side, it would give Brazil an earlier and clearer prominence. Allowing no European remarkable butterflies before 1750 or so, Brazilian independence could happen earlier, or anyway be different; or even, Brazil becomes the center of an intercontinental empire that, maybe, STILL includes Portugal.
Also, such techniques would spread in Africa and Tropical Asia, offering some local societies better ways to resist the Europeans (except, at the beginning at least, the Portuguese themselves, or more likely the Brazilians). Dutch Indonesia and Belgian Congo suddenly become far more costly endeavors.
In any case, Portugal is a greater power than OTL.
 

BlondieBC

Banned
Yellow Fever is what did in the Amazonians, so i will doom the whites who adopt the technique too. So we know of a better way, but it will fall into disuse until around when we get the ability to begin to control the mosquitoes. From memory, it was about 1650 when the Amazonian collapsed due to yellow fever, so we have a 250 year gap in usage. I have trouble seeing this technique being used in Africa or Asia since it basically takes a tropical rain forest. You have to have a lot of spare wood to burn.

The technique was used very deep in the Amazon much nearer to Peru than the Atlantic, so it is more likely the Spanish bring back the knowledge. Since we have accounts of the cities, it would have only taken a minor POD to make it be recorded and "known", probably just a literate farmer with the Spanish travelers.

But then, why would they use it? There is plenty of empty land closer to what the Europeans like to use (Med climate) and the last open parts were still being settled in 1850 in California. The technique works, but not as well as traditional farming in Med type zones, and when exported, whatever white man that does it will likely die of various tropical diseases in Africa or Asia. It was also based largely on trees not annual crops, so it takes a while to setup. Lots of down sides as long as open traditional farm land exists.

The first impact I potentially see is in the Colonial rush in Africa. For a power that lacks better land and who had stumble on this 350 year old document and who had believed it, they might try to make it work. So maybe it is tried in a German Colony or maybe in Liberia if some Black American finds the document. I can also see it possibly used in the Congo after the rubber bust to try to find new export crops to replace the rubber monopoly that effectively existed for while. Or just some random catholic missionary of a random nation, since it would likely be a catholic priest that wrote the technique down, so the original document could be in the Vatican archives or some orders archive. Possibly with documents on how it was used in some terribly remote location for 50+ years before 1650.

Now by the 1950's, yes it might change how a place like Brazil or the Congo tried to develop. And it would be in wide spread use in Africa today with 50 to 100 years of modern practice to firmly establish the techique.
 
I think in the long run the United Kingdom of Portugal-Brazil not only survives it becomes a world power in it's own right with perhaps more of Africa on its side. Maybe it even later unifies with Spain. Scary right?
 
Yellow Fever is what did in the Amazonians, so i will doom the whites who adopt the technique too. So we know of a better way, but it will fall into disuse until around when we get the ability to begin to control the mosquitoes. From memory, it was about 1650 when the Amazonian collapsed due to yellow fever, so we have a 250 year gap in usage. I have trouble seeing this technique being used in Africa or Asia since it basically takes a tropical rain forest. You have to have a lot of spare wood to burn.

Out of curiosity, how did south and southeast Asians handle mosquito-borne diseases in this era?
 

BlondieBC

Banned
Out of curiosity, how did south and southeast Asians handle mosquito-borne diseases in this era?

Accepting higher death rates, greater genetic immunity than whites and avoiding the worst areas. Malaria means "bad air" and refers to the rotting smell from swamps. If there was no open land to settle, then yes, the Portuguese might have tried this solution, but between 1550 and 1900, there are plenty of non-malarial/yellow-fever areas to plant. For example, in WW1, the death rates among healthy whites forced to fight in the malaria zones was over 20% per year.

Now I was reading about one unit that was devastated by disease in German East Africa, and the doctor writing the book discussed why the blacks were able to cope. The blacks stayed on hill tops and other areas where there were no/few mosquito or other disease insect vectors. The white soldiers went through the swamp. The natives lived and the white soldiers died. The cost to the natives was they were unable to use most of the land, and due to higher death rates due to being partially in a disease zone, their population was never high enough to force them into the swamps on a regular basis.

There are some solutions that can also be used in rice patties that will not work in the wilder swamps such as mosquito eating fish. If you eliminate the predators of these fishes, then the fish population can get quite high.

The pattern of settlement is clear, first the higher productivity land with less disease is settled. Only after there is no more of this land do people look at sending surplus and expendable population on this type of operation.
 
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