Was starting in the Caribbean needed for fast exploration/colonization of America?

Would initial landfall outside the Caribbean have led to slower exploration?


  • Total voters
    27

raharris1973

Gone Fishin'
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Here's the question, poll attached.

In OTL within 50 years of Columbus first landfall in the Bahamas, all of the American coasts had been explored from the St. Lawrence to the Rio de la Plata, the outline of South America was known, and the only major geographic segment undiscovered by Europeans was the northwest half of North America from Oregon to northern Quebec.

The Caribbean did not have to be the location of first landfall. It was mainly because Columbus thought important parts of East Asia were at that latitude.

This happened to be in the same latitude band as Mesoamerica.

The most likely alternate points for the first early modern European landfall in the Americas however are far to the north or south of this area however.

Newfoundland is the closest part of the Americas to Europe, and Brazil is the closest part of South America to Africa. These were far more likely to be accidentally discovered and described by returning mariners than the Caribbean.

If Europeans of 1490 or later did their first round trip voyages to the Americas landing at Newfoundland or Brazil first, rather than the Caribbean, is a majority of both the continents likely to be explored by follow-on explorers in the first 50 years after landfall? Or could exploration of the continents from starting points in Newfoundland or Brazil have been a slower process taking 75 or 100 or 150 or 200 years instead of OTL's 50 years between Columbus and Coronado?

Why or why not?
 
I wouldn't say necessary, but it was awfully handy, and good practice. So I voted yes for the poll's sake.

Brazil might work, Newfoundland is less likely to have something obviously worth looking more - Columbus did find some gold.
 
Why or why not?

While first it depends on the nation. Englishmen in the disease striken parts of the Caribbean would be worse off then it Spaniards who were at least used to the temperature. I mean colonization is just a bunch of variables. Sure it would have been slower to colonize the Gulf without the Caribbean, but then you have Argentina, Brazil, the European leftovers (Suriname etc.), and then you have the Atlantic seaboard. All in all it just depends on one thing or another. Who, what, why, where, etc.

In conclusion I think your asking the right question, but you need to ask more.
 
I wouldn't say necessary, but it was awfully handy, and good practice. So I voted yes for the poll's sake.

Brazil might work, Newfoundland is less likely to have something obviously worth looking more - Columbus did find some gold.

I don't agree, Cod was its own form of gold and the Grand Banks were the richest fishing grounds at that time. There are even rumors that the English and the Basques were fishing the Grand Banks prior to 1492 but they kept it a secret.

You could easily develop a POD where an English fishing ship returns in say 1488 full of Cod, a few of its sailors run their mouths in port, a few other captains get curious, and the result is colonization of North America by the English in order to exploit the rich fishing grounds there.
 
I don't agree, Cod was its own form of gold and the Grand Banks were the richest fishing grounds at that time. There are even rumors that the English and the Basques were fishing the Grand Banks prior to 1492 but they kept it a secret.

You could easily develop a POD where an English fishing ship returns in say 1488 full of Cod, a few of its sailors run their mouths in port, a few other captains get curious, and the result is colonization of North America by the English in order to exploit the rich fishing grounds there.

Look Gold attracts people like Flies to shit. Are people going to flood to a land full of hostile natives for Fish! FISH!
 

Anaxagoras

Banned
Landfall in the far north would have led to a belief among many in Europe that there was nothing but a bunch of ice-covered islands of no value across the Atlantic and that there wasn't much worth exploring. Greater attention would then have been given to the route to India around Africa.
 
I don't agree, Cod was its own form of gold and the Grand Banks were the richest fishing grounds at that time. There are even rumors that the English and the Basques were fishing the Grand Banks prior to 1492 but they kept it a secret.

You could easily develop a POD where an English fishing ship returns in say 1488 full of Cod, a few of its sailors run their mouths in port, a few other captains get curious, and the result is colonization of North America by the English in order to exploit the rich fishing grounds there.

Fishing the Grand Banks is a long ways off from colonizing North America.

It's a valuable trade, but it's not going to get kings subsiding you and the new found land (whether OTL Newfoundland or not) doesn't produce much that is worth colonizing it for.
 
Fishing the Grand Banks is a long ways off from colonizing North America.

It's a valuable trade, but it's not going to get kings subsiding you and the new found land (whether OTL Newfoundland or not) doesn't produce much that is worth colonizing it for.

Beavers

The fishermen are going to eventually run into Quebec and fur ranks up there with gold as a quick way to get rich.
Of course the fur trade requires less people and usually means slightly better relations with the natives at least initially.
 
Newfoundland is the closest part of the Americas to Europe, and Brazil is the closest part of South America to Africa. These were far more likely to be accidentally discovered and described by returning mariners than the Caribbean.

If you look at the currents of the Atlantic Ocean, a sailor headed west from Iberia would find the easiest currents westward to be the Northern Equatorial Current, which pushes straight towards the Caribbean. The North Atlantic Ocean around the Azores and north of them pushes mostly northeast with the Gulf Stream (you know, the reason England's warmer than Quebec or Russia), and passing the equator requires going through the Doldrums, which is just terrible.

So the shortest paths across the Atlantic aren't necessarily the easiest, nor are they the most likely for a random discovery. (Although the first random discovery by Europeans was, indeed, Newfoundland.)
 
Fishing the Grand Banks is a long ways off from colonizing North America.

It's a valuable trade, but it's not going to get kings subsiding you and the new found land (whether OTL Newfoundland or not) doesn't produce much that is worth colonizing it for.

Indeed. At the end of a century of fishing the Grand Banks there were not much more than some glorified fishing camps in the region. Hudsons exploratory forays along the north American coast came a full century after the discovery, and those were sent to find a way around the place, not to find valuables in it. The first colonies in Virginia, Delaware, or the Hudson valley were aimed at establisihing bases for gold hunting, or the aberrant group of lost religious fanatics in Massachusetts.
 
Beavers

The fishermen are going to eventually run into Quebec and fur ranks up there with gold as a quick way to get rich.
Of course the fur trade requires less people and usually means slightly better relations with the natives at least initially.

Fur is "things we don't need to go here to do" in the 15th century.

There are more convenient supplies closer to home.

I'm not saying you couldn't at some point see something develop - "more convenient supplies closer to home" won't last, but if the question is "as fast or faster than OTL", I don't see any reason why this would do the trick.
 
THe greatest value of the Caribbean lay in the fact that the Spanish already knew what to do with the islands once they had conquered them (sugar plantations, like they had on the Canaries and Cape Verde Islands before). A handy template for making a colony profitable helped enormously. By contrast, other areas that were contacted, even regularly so, were spared conquest because - what was the point? You could fish off the Grand Banks or trade for fur on the Hudson and St Lawrence without needing to invade anyone. Without the Caribbean as a ready and profitable target for military conquest, it's likely the idea would have taken much longer to mature - perhaps long enough for the Aztec and Inca to be ready to defend themselves. That could nix the trope of 'riches for the taking' for the foreseeable future, and produce a completely different pattern of colonisation.
 

raharris1973

Gone Fishin'
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What about Brazil. Would mariners discovering it accidentally while trying to round Africa find gold there as they did in the Bahamas, and enough interesting reports of gold further afield to attract them to run west into Incas or north to the Caribbean and then Mesoamerica.

Or would Brazil be grassland or jungle area as devoid of riches (except brazil wood dye) as northern North America?

As to this point on navigational hazards:
and passing the equator requires going through the Doldrums, which is just terrible.

Doldrums or not, sailors trying to reach the east by rounding Africa would continually have a *good reason* to keep sailing south of the equator over and over.
 
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