What changes are the most likely to significantly delay new world exploration?
- Thread starter 0100010
- Start date
Wasn't the main reasons for exploration to find alternate routes to India and the Spice islands? So maybe have the Mamluks continue to allow Europeans to trade threw their territories? That way there would be no incentive to explore.
Nah, I think big profits coming from the Far East would further encourage Europeans to look for a shortcut in order to get in on the game.
But, what if every educated person was sure, beyond any doubt, that the Earth was indeed spherical and of the estimated size, and that there was thus no point at all in trying to sail across half the world to get to India, and any person who suggested otherwise would be laughed at? The only reason Columbus tried sailing west is because he ignored the educated elites and thought the world was actually egg-shaped.
katchen
Banned
If the Mongols DID conquer Western Europe, the trade routes to India and East Asia would pass through the steppes for three to four hundred years. There would definitely be no need to sail to the New World (except maybe for Basque and Welsh fishermen who weren't telling where their fishing grounds were).
The problem With that suggestion is that contrary to popular belief, the People of the fifteenth Century were well aware that the Earth was round and had a good estimation of its size.
The reason everybody thought Columbus was going to fail was because he used the wrong map and thought the Earth was far smaller then it actually was, which if true would mean that we would all be dead.
Flubber
Banned
Just as Cook seems to have been fated to repeatedly explain Western Australia's 1933 secession vote, I seem to be fated to repeatedly explain the thinking behind Columbus' expedition proposal.
From May of this year:
Sorry, but no. Columbus wasn't a fucking idiot or a liar, no matter what you may have learned in grammar school.
The expedition Columbus shopped around Europe and finally sold to Spain a calculated risk based on a both known facts and estimates from other geographers. He wasn't some con man selling the idea of a doomed expedition someone else would lead. He was selling a calculated risk he himself was going to take. Columbus believed Marco Polo's reports that Japan lay close to the equator. Columbus also agreed with Marinus' classical estimate that Asia reached 230 degrees rather than Ptolemy's 180 degrees (or the actual 130 degrees). Columbus also knew that lands existed west across the Atlantic thanks to the activities of the Basque, records of the Norse, and the unknown vegetation and bodies, both living and dead, that had washed up on European shores for centuries.
Columbus was counting on finding those lands across the Atlantic and then using them as stepping stones to first reach Japan and then the Indies. Columbus was right about lands across the Atlantic, Columbus was wrong, like Polo, concerning Japan's position relative to the equator, and Columbus was wrong, like everyone else, about the length of Asia.
Europe knew Portugal's Africa route would eventually pay off, but Portugal's head start meant no one could could beat them to the Indies via Africa. Besides, if the Portuguese found you along the African coast south of roughly Cap Vert they'd kill you.
Columbus was pitching a way to nullify Portugal's head start. Everyone knew there was land across the Atlantic, Marco Polo said Japan lay near the equator, and Asia could be that large. There was also the volta do mar which would allow to first sail west and then sail back east if he found nothing.
Columbus also wasn't some scholar or antiquarian pitching an idea someone else would follow. He was betting his own life that his idea would work.
By the way, the Earth is an oblate spheroid. Not the wider-at-the-equator egg shape Columbus theorized but not the perfect sphere others proposed either.
So far I only have one useable suggestion, that the Mamluks be more forthcoming with allowing trade.
By own research, I thinks that letting the Byzantine empire survive and/or the Venetian expand, while stopping the Ottoman's from rising, is another way to keep land route trade open and thus potentially delay looking westward.
I'd still like some more ideas though. Talking about the mongol empire doesn't help in this case, I said a POD after 1350 for a reason. I also said delay westward exploration as best as possible not prevent it entirely. It too late to make people not realize their estimates of the size of the earth.
By own research, I thinks that letting the Byzantine empire survive and/or the Venetian expand, while stopping the Ottoman's from rising, is another way to keep land route trade open and thus potentially delay looking westward.
I'd still like some more ideas though. Talking about the mongol empire doesn't help in this case, I said a POD after 1350 for a reason. I also said delay westward exploration as best as possible not prevent it entirely. It too late to make people not realize their estimates of the size of the earth.
How does keeping the Byzantine Empire around matter? The main routes don't really care about who controls Constantinople.
On that note, even if the land route is better than OTL, people are still going to want to find a route that cuts out the middle men.
In what way is trade through the black sea not one of the main routes to Asia prior to westward exploration and Portugal rounding Africa? Trade across Egypt to the Red sea is of course another main route, but which is better out of red sea vs black sea is largely going to be a political question of who controls the area.
So I wouldn't say Europe does not completely care about who controls Constantinople. They want someone who is open to favorable trade, and preferable Christian. The Byzantines fit that bill, the Pope even tried to raise a crusade to save them, it doesn't have to be them though. The Ottomans weren't and were less open to trade.
Of course people are still going to want to find a route the cuts out the middle men. That's why I am only looking for a delay rather than a prevention of westward exploration.
By 1350, "who controls the area" is largely Muslim powers (the Black Sea route being via the lands of the Golden Horde), and then the Italians - Byzantium has only slightly more influence on the trade routes to the east as it has political control of Anatolia.
The Pope trying to raise a crusade to save them is not related to this at all, so what does that have to do with the price of pepper?
And what makes you say the Ottomans were less open to trade?
My point is, it doesn't matter what religion the people who control Constantinople and Egypt are, they're still middle men.
How about hitting Europe a couple more times with the Black Plague stick, say around 1400 to 1450, than in OTL?
The rich survivors would get richer from inheriting all the dead relatives property ensuring that they get busy consolidating their new positions of wealth and power.
The peasants left living would be better off in a new Europe with chronic labor shortages that increase the value of their labor. There might even be a revolt or two to knock off a local rich bastard that wants to keep the old ways going.
That should soak up any excess population to wants to go adventuring for fun and profit for quite some time.
In China, the administration stays pro-Treasure Fleet, and Zheng He or his successor(s) surprise the living snot out of the Portugese coming 'round the corner of South Africa.
The Europeans are too flabbergasted dealing with and kneeling before Zod to recover their otl trajectory across the Atlantic.
Spoiler Alert viz Stephen Baxter "Send The Dove West!" Navigator stuff, as Baxter noted in his book, presumably some folks would make it across the Atlantic anyhow, but they wouldn't be as Conquistador as Columbus and the Aztecs might feel encouraged to very quickly learn navigation and sail east to deliver some very ugly surprises across the Atlantic.
The Europeans are too flabbergasted dealing with and kneeling before Zod to recover their otl trajectory across the Atlantic.
Spoiler Alert viz Stephen Baxter "Send The Dove West!" Navigator stuff, as Baxter noted in his book, presumably some folks would make it across the Atlantic anyhow, but they wouldn't be as Conquistador as Columbus and the Aztecs might feel encouraged to very quickly learn navigation and sail east to deliver some very ugly surprises across the Atlantic.
The Byzatines though small by then, still controls the western side. Hence why I said preventing the rise of the Ottomans, it leaves the eastern side at least potentially open for meddling. (how successful that might be is is still open question but its at least plausible)
It doesn't have anything to do with the price of pepper, but you said no one cares about who controls Constantinople. I was countering that statement.
The rise of the Ottomans led to the Fall of Constantinople.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_Discovery#Medieval_travel_.281241.E2.80.931438.29
http://militaryhistory.about.com/od...ntine-Ottoman-Wars-Fall-Of-Constantinople.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fall_of_Constantinople
"Venetian merchants distributed then the goods through Europe until the rise of the Ottoman Empire, that eventually led to the fall of Constantinople in 1453, barring Europeans from important combined-land-sea routes."
"The loss of Constantinople also severed European trade links with Asia leading many to begin seeking routes east by sea and keying the age of exploration."
"The fall of Constantinople and general encroachment of the Turks in that region also severed the main overland trade link between Europe and Asia, and as a result more Europeans began to seriously consider the possibility of reaching Asia by sea."
I know Constantinople fell in 1453, but by then it was inevitable. To stop it, means stopping the rise of the Ottomans, which means pushing a POD to a earlier point where it is possible, hence 1350.
However, a POD does not have to be on 1350, just some point after it.
Again I never said they weren't or would not be middlemen. My point about religion was again in countering your statement that the Europeans don't care who controls Constantinople. They do care, and they have their preferences. I agree that most would care more about trade access than religion, but if all other things being equal, they could choose between open trade and christian, vs. open trade and non-christian, they would choose the former.
A possible reason I gave for delaying westward expansion was that eastward trade is more open, easier to accomplish, and less expensive, for whatever reasons. One of the causes I proposed was more secure trade via the black sea by keeping the Byzantines (and thus Constantinople) around and preventing the rise of powers that could take it.
It sounds to me like either you don't think that is a viable means to delaying westward exploration, or you just want to nitpick the details. Which is it?
Regardless of whether or not you agree with the above, do you have any alternate suggestions for ways in which westward exploration might be delayed by some measure of decades via a POD sometime after 1350?
katchen
Banned
Columbus may have been Jewish but he wasn't an idiot
Actually, tectonically the Americas truly are an extension of Asia, thanks to Beringia and the Panama Isthmus. Check out http://www.cristobalcolondeibiza.com/eng/eng04.htm . Apparently, Columbus's 1492 voyage may not have been his first voyage to "Terranova" as he called it. Columbus apparently sailed in 1477 on a Danish expedition from Trondheim to Iceland, Greenland and from there to "Terranova", where he saw natives who looked like Asians.
And the Ibizia letter to the King of Aragon and to Luis de Santangel also seems to show that Columbuis was a Catalan crypto-Jew seeking crypto-Jewish financing for his voyages to what he thought was to Asia.
And geologically, Christobal de Colon was not wrong. He simply had no way of knowing that the extension of Asia that he knew was there extended all the way to 54 degrees south and east to within 1500 miles of Africa!
Too right Flubber!Just as Cook seems to have been fated to repeatedly explain Western Australia's 1933 secession vote, I seem to be fated to repeatedly explain the thinking behind Columbus' expedition proposal.
From May of this year:
Sorry, but no. Columbus wasn't a fucking idiot or a liar, no matter what you may have learned in grammar school.
Columbus believed Marco Polo's reports that Japan lay close to the equator. Columbus also agreed with Marinus' classical estimate that Asia reached 230 degrees rather than Ptolemy's 180 degrees (or the actual 130 degrees). Columbus also knew that lands existed west across the Atlantic thanks to the activities of the Basque, records of the Norse, and the unknown vegetation and bodies, both living and dead, that had washed up on European shores for centuries.
Columbus was counting on finding those lands across the Atlantic and then using them as stepping stones to first reach Japan and then the Indies. Columbus was right about lands across the Atlantic, Columbus was wrong, like Polo, concerning Japan's position relative to the equator, and Columbus was wrong, like everyone else, about the length of Asia.
Europe knew Portugal's Africa route would eventually pay off, but Portugal's head start meant no one could could beat them to the Indies via Africa. Besides, if the Portuguese found you along the African coast south of roughly Cap Vert they'd kill you.
Columbus was pitching a way to nullify Portugal's head start. Everyone knew there was land across the Atlantic, Marco Polo said Japan lay near the equator, and Asia could be that large. There was also the volta do mar which would allow to first sail west and then sail back east if he found nothing.
Columbus also wasn't some scholar or antiquarian pitching an idea someone else would follow. He was betting his own life that his idea would work.
By the way, the Earth is an oblate spheroid. Not the wider-at-the-equator egg shape Columbus theorized but not the perfect sphere others proposed either.
Actually, tectonically the Americas truly are an extension of Asia, thanks to Beringia and the Panama Isthmus. Check out http://www.cristobalcolondeibiza.com/eng/eng04.htm . Apparently, Columbus's 1492 voyage may not have been his first voyage to "Terranova" as he called it. Columbus apparently sailed in 1477 on a Danish expedition from Trondheim to Iceland, Greenland and from there to "Terranova", where he saw natives who looked like Asians.
And the Ibizia letter to the King of Aragon and to Luis de Santangel also seems to show that Columbuis was a Catalan crypto-Jew seeking crypto-Jewish financing for his voyages to what he thought was to Asia.
And geologically, Christobal de Colon was not wrong. He simply had no way of knowing that the extension of Asia that he knew was there extended all the way to 54 degrees south and east to within 1500 miles of Africa!
And them controlling the Western side doesn't even matter to the issue of custom duties, let alone influencing trade.
And do we have any actual historians backing that up, or just "anyone can write anything on wikipedia"?
Which is why they barely lifted a finger to help the Byzantines. They cared so much that they couldn't stop caring long enough to help.
The amount of effort the West put into that was pitiful.
Except that trade is still secure that way.
I want to point out that you're doing nothing to change the situation in terms of what inspired western exploration?
So #1.
Hm. Something where the Mamelukes - who did pursue policies unfriendly to European (or any other, really) traders - act differently would help. And getting rid of Columbus or someone like him - at some point its going to happen I think, but I think he was part of some ATL's "make it happen earlier".
katchen
Banned
Not exactly. If you call islands "Indies" then their inhabitants get called "Ind-i-ans" I learned that one reading Nordhoff and Hall's "Mutiny on the Bounty" as a child and seeing Tahiti (called Otaheite) referred to as an "Indie" and the Tahitians as Indians by the 18th Century British.
The country of India had nothing at all to do with it.
Flubber
Banned
Sorry, but no. It wasn't Ottoman control of trade routes which sparked westward exploration. It was the looming prospect of Portuguese success to the south that sparked westward exploration.
And the Portuguese began their efforts to round Africa more than a generation before Constantinople fell.
Just who the middlemen were, Byzantine, Ottoman, Mameluk, or Portuguese, didn't matter one bit. The idea behind sailing westward to the Indies was predicated on the desire to cut out all middlemen.