What if all first nations peoples reacted like the Sentinelese?

The Sentinelese are almost certainly hostile because first, the British kidnapped five of their people in the 1800s and possibly started an epidemic on the island, and second, because they probably have/had contact with other peoples in the Andaman Islands and are aware how much contact devastated their neighbors.

These factors do not exist with first contact.
 
Sub-Saharan Africa is the hardest since they'd been dealing with Arabs for centuries. The slave trade was a time-proven way of economic benefit, and it didn't matter who was doing it. Europeans had useful things to sell in any case, like tools, weapons, alcohol, etc., and all they asked was ivory, other tropical goods, and slaves. And you're just selling criminals, the dirt poor, and people captured in war to these people, and since you're getting rid of the worst people in society, why should you be hostile to the white man?

The Native Americans also have no reason to act like the Sentinelese. After all, there's people selling some nice, incredibly useful stuff at low prices. Why should they be hostile? And if they don't take advantage of it, others will, and that's not very good.

Now, I think it's plausible for people to get all anxious about European influence corrupting traditional society much sooner than OTL, but Europeans will still gain influence in the first place. I don't see a way of preventing them from gaining that foothold, since if the Europeans are rebuffed at one point along the East Coast, they can just try again at some other point. There's no way everyone is going to hostile against the white man.
 
The Sentinelese are almost certainly hostile because first, the British kidnapped five of their people in the 1800s and possibly started an epidemic on the island, and second, because they probably have/had contact with other peoples in the Andaman Islands and are aware how much contact devastated their neighbors.

These factors do not exist with first contact.
I heard they had been like this for century, like from the Portuguese and Magellan

Do you have any source? I've always found this interesting
 
The problem is that the Andamans have very little that colonial powers wanted.

If any locals sitting on arable land or ore bodies or whatever tried that tactic, they would have been genocided (killed, captured and sold into slavery, etc.). Exact details would vary depending on the circumstance and the occupying power, but...
 
Top