What would a Polynesian Australia look like

[bernardz]

So what? What bearing does that have at all on the topic of Aboriginal resistance to invasion?

The point here which I think you are changing the context is that Aboriginals and for that matter, Polynesian society was one of continuous low-intensity fighting caused not by war but crimes.

 

[Dominic]

The point here which I think you are changing the context is that Aboriginals and for that matter, Polynesian society was one of continuous low-intensity fighting caused not by war but crimes.

You need to look up the difference between war and crime, and some actual Aboriginal history.

 

[Bassarion Korax]

@bernardz

Please check your grammar. I understand your arguments and I agree with them entirely, but some of your sentences don’t make any sense, and it’s annoying.

@Dominic

Please cut out the pretentious virtue-signaling. Your entire argument seems to amount to saying, “Wow, just wow bro.” What Bernardz is saying is that the conflicts between Whites and Aborigines were generally very sporadic and unorganized, and that they probably would play out very similarly between Polynesians and Aborigines. He isn’t saying that they are incapable of more complicated social organization but that, given their lifestyle and how they interacted with invaders IOTL, prolonged mass organized resistance of the kind that would present a credible threat to Maori settlement is unlikely. The reason I think he drew an analogy to crime is because of the likely scale of the conflicts in question. He also quite obviously didn’t mean to make women into objects by stating that conflicts between Aborigines and Maori would involve things like stealing and kidnapping, and I think just about everyone else reading this thread understands that.

 

[Ricardolindo]

In terms of military technology, which is what matters for potential conquest - not particularly. Especially not in 1300, which is the timeframe for potential colonisation.

Many of the Maori weapons of war that were familiar to Europeans developed later. In terms of what they had in 1300 - various stone spears, clubs and other melee weapons, and short-ranged thrown weapons. They didn't use bows and arrows.

The main weapons the Aborigines used at the time were spears (wooden or stone-tipped), spear throwers, clubs, shields, and war boomerangs. These were broadly comparable to what the Maori had in 1300.

If you're positing that the Maori technology would evolve significantly after 1300, that's certainly possible. But given that the Aborigines would be in constant contact with the Maori ITTL, their military technology would have time to evolve in parallel too.

In terms of other technology, the Maori were ahead in some areas, although not universally. In shipbuilding and navigation, they were obviously far ahead. Ditto agriculture, although that's less clear-cut of an advantage in Australia, given that their crop package wasn't the best-suited for Australian soils, and the Aborigines were very good at managing the land to obtain food.

In some areas, eg hunting, I'd rank the Aborigines as ahead of the Maori.

Read https://www.alternatehistory.com/fo...re-settled-by-the-māori.449296/#post-17420875, the Maori developed a warrior culture.

 

[Jared]

Read https://www.alternatehistory.com/forum/threads/how-would-the-colonisation-of-australia-be-different-if-it-were-settled-by-the-māori.449296/#post-17420875, the Maori developed a warrior culture.

... Yes, by 1800. I hate to have to keep repeating myself, but I’m describing the situation around 1300. The Maori conquest of the Moriori referenced in the post you linked to is a good example: the Moriori of the Chathams were conquered in the 1800s, but in 1300 the Moriori were the same people as the Maori, and were not those kind of warriors.

 

[Admiral Brown]

The Maori apparently had lost all domesticated animals by the time they got to NZ.
They'd still have sweet potato, taro and yam. But I suspect the neighbouring tribes would pick up those crops, too, so the Maori aren't going to expand THAT much. IMO.

I read somewhere that the Maori's ancestors had chickens when they arrive to New Zealand, but they abandoned them and let them die since there was a lot of easy accesible food (Moa and such).

If this theory was true, and they had discovered Australia soon after colonizing New Zealand, they could have taken chickens with them to Australia.

 

[twovultures]

If you really want to see Australia transformed, IMO you'd have to have pre-Polynesian contact, i.e. a Lapita colony being established, most likely some lost (*very* lost) voyagers from the islands off Eastern New Guinea sailing past the Great Barrier reef, exploring, returning safely home, and then returning safely to the new home. This would be some time between 1500-1000 BC.

The Lapita would not have the numbers to displace the Aborigines, any more than they had the numbers to displace the Melanesians but they do have one military advantage that the Maori actually lacked, the bow and arrow (though its possible the ancient Aborigines had that too, and merely discarded it later just as the Polynesians did). They could establish an outpost on a seasonally-visited island, and use the advantage of bows and arrows to drive away the Aborigines and so establish their little colony. Great Palm Island, Magnetic Island are potential outposts. Hell, even Lizard Island has IIRC at least one source of fresh water and is larger than the smallest islands on which Lapita archaeology has been discovered, so it's also a candidate.

As with Melanesia, the Lapita culture would largely be absorbed by the Aborigines over the centuries with a few coastal or island places maintaining an Austronesian language, though the Aborigines could pick up innovations from the Lapita such as agriculture. Going by the map provided by the Australian Sugar Milling Council and assuming that bananas and yams can be grown at subsistence-allowing levels where sugarcane can be grown industrially, it looks like the southernmost limit of the Lapita agricultural complex would be roughly OTL's town of Harwood in New South Wales, and stretching northward up Queensland's Pacific Coast and upland on the eastern slopes of the Great Dividing Range.