What's The Successful Recipe For Early European Settlement of the Americas?

One thing I've picked up on in the past year here is this: given the means, there are several possible scenarios concerning alternate settlers of the New World at or before OTL's point in time (the Romans, Vikings, the Irish even). However, the consensus here seems to be that they wouldn't leave much of an impression on the local scene, if any at all.

My question is, WHY? What exactly made the 1492 "discovery" of the New World so special as to spur a sudden interest in westward settlement and colonization, compared to earlier farings like the Vinland/Markland efforts? It can't be just the Spaniards finally kicking the Mohammedans out of Europe around the same time frame. And was the fall of the Byzantines really that crucial to looking westward for shipment of goods? Especially given that it IMHO would not be beyond the pale of possibility for word of lands across the seas westward to spread farther than it did IOTL. And surely it's not merely a technological issue, given that ship design was already progressing toward something capable of crossing the Atlantic and its rough sea-state.

So help me out here, is there a special reason (or combination of reasons) why the Americas finally figured in the interests of European peoples and governments when they did? And why can't those reasons be replicated at any point at all at, say, 500 years before the 15th-16th. centuries?
 
Simple development. Europe in 1492 is well ahead of what it was earlier, in ships and commerce and and surplus population and all the other factors necessary.
 
Simple development. Europe in 1492 is well ahead of what it was earlier, in ships and commerce and and surplus population and all the other factors necessary.


Especially ships. Note that they first rounded the Cape of Good Hope at about the same time.
 
Simple development. Europe in 1492 is well ahead of what it was earlier, in ships and commerce and and surplus population and all the other factors necessary.

Not really - China was still a mighty thing, but there was serious problems against this.
 
Well, the first thing is they're going to need to be able to navigate there, so everyone but the Vikings are SOL until they manage to get their hands on a compass. Secondly, they need an inherent desire to be there badly enough to suffer the hardships inherent in traveling there. Thirdly, they're going to need some reason to believe that there's anything but open ocean over the horizon.
 
The compass is relatively unimportant for those kinds of voyages as long as you have decent stellar navigation. What you must have is either a local seafaring tradition that reliably and consistently reaches that far - which even the Vikings barely had - or an understanding of trade wind sailing, which will get you there over the open ocean. We don't know exactly when Western Europeans figured out trade winds, but it was most likely sometime in the late fourteenth or early fifteenth century, not much earlier. Without being able to use those, your contact with the Americas will be either sporadic or perilous.

Another aspect in navigation, I suppose, is the ability to use scientifically developed methods. through much of the middle ages, scholars understood stellar navigation, but sailors used time-honoured methods that worked very well locally, but did not translate (you can sail the entire Baltic with a leadline and some knowledge of local landmarks and water qualities, but in the North Sea, that method's worth jack). In oceanic sailing, knowing what your latitude is actually helps you, so it was worthwhile teaching it to sailors. That didn't used to happen before the Renaissance, either.

But I think the biggest single issue is what we call 'development'. In the high middle ages, Europe as a continent largely reached the state of development in population, land use, and social technology that allowed it to maintain the kind of societies that could practice oceanic voyages, develop a colonial infrastructure over long distances, and that could export a significant population surplus. Not sure where I'd place the turning point, maybe around 1200, Before, a discovery is liable to go underutilised because there is no need for a frontier and no appreciation of the possibilities.

That is not to say a successful European settlement of the Americas isn't doable before, you'll just have to significantly revise your definition of "successful". If the Romans, the Carthaginians, Vikings or medieval English had wanted to, they could have set up shop on the American coast. They wou8ld have had to come to an accommodation with the locals, but the technology gap would have made them interesting allies and trading partners, so they'd likely have found protectors. And that would pretty much be that. They would lack the numbers, the support and the social glue to take over the continent even if they got a virgin-soil epidemic to help them.
 
My question is, WHY? What exactly made the 1492 "discovery" of the New World so special as to spur a sudden interest in westward settlement and colonization, compared to earlier farings like the Vinland/Markland efforts? ...
So help me out here, is there a special reason (or combination of reasons) why the Americas finally figured in the interests of European peoples and governments when they did? And why can't those reasons be replicated at any point at all at, say, 500 years before the 15th-16th. centuries?

Well, Colombus was highly motivated to find gold. And by highly motivated I mean he had an appreciable chance of something medieval happening to him if he returned not having found any gold.

So what little he found, he exaggergated and trumpethed, creating the impression of massive amounts of gold before any of his peers had even set foot on the mainland.

Also, by landing in the West Indies, the Europeans gained the advantage of island bases, where the local population could be wiped out, and the European mastery of sailing meant the natives had little chance of a comeback. Or projecting power against the Europeans.

In addition, the Europeans had a population pressure that could be vented onto the Americas. The Vikings primary problem was that they were at the end of a very long supply chain where each link drastically reduced the population available, Norway to Iceland to Greenland.

Incidentally, here is something that I find a bit dizzying: The Norse were in Greenland for almost as long as the time we've had since Colombus.
 
strengthen the Viking supply train (a likely way would be to conquer or get vassalage from Scotland, and have a secondary supply train going from Danelaw->Scotland->Orkney->Faroe->Iceland->Greenland) and letting them find Iron (Bog iron works) in Newfoundland, which is one of the supply strains, so they could supply Greenland and Iceland with Iron from that direction, and you'd have much more likely for a Viking settlement to establish and be willing to fight for it.
 
strengthen the Viking supply train (a likely way would be to conquer or get vassalage from Scotland, and have a secondary supply train going from Danelaw->Scotland->Orkney->Faroe->Iceland->Greenland) and letting them find Iron (Bog iron works) in Newfoundland, which is one of the supply strains, so they could supply Greenland and Iceland with Iron from that direction, and you'd have much more likely for a Viking settlement to establish and be willing to fight for it.

A victory for Harald Hardrada in the battle of control of England could definitely work here. If England, with its relatively substantial agricultural potential, was considered more part of the "Nordic" sphere, then England's grain could be used to feed a growing Norse population, which inevitably would grow too big (Malthusian crisis). All of a sudden, as a Norse peasant, staking your future on a wave of travel to "Markland" doesn't seem like such a bad thing...
 
Hm, I wonder if I should incorporate that into Swords of the Iroquois? The problem is that I've already established that the Vikings are still using bog iron, and I'm fairly certain that the English had far superior mining methods that would have been transferred to their conquerors if that happened. (Well, assuming they leave the English in any way intact.)
 
@Azander

Cnut the Great not dying at the time he did or not spilting his crowns between his 3 sons would be a reasonable start as well

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Bog Iron is probably the best bet untill, 1. Vikings have been established and 2. they gain the knowlegde to get purer Iron

English knowhow would help with knowlegde, but bog iron would still be a needed thing early on since its simpler to use.
 
strengthen the Viking supply train (a likely way would be to conquer or get vassalage from Scotland, and have a secondary supply train going from Danelaw->Scotland->Orkney->Faroe->Iceland->Greenland) and letting them find Iron (Bog iron works) in Newfoundland, which is one of the supply strains, so they could supply Greenland and Iceland with Iron from that direction, and you'd have much more likely for a Viking settlement to establish and be willing to fight for it.
:confused:iceland produced all the iron it needed, and the settlement at lanse aaux meadows smelted its own iron, so they had bog iron in vinland iotl.
 
A victory for Harald Hardrada in the battle of control of England could definitely work here. If England, with its relatively substantial agricultural potential, was considered more part of the "Nordic" sphere, then England's grain could be used to feed a growing Norse population, which inevitably would grow too big (Malthusian crisis). All of a sudden, as a Norse peasant, staking your future on a wave of travel to "Markland" doesn't seem like such a bad thing...

How is England's grain going to feed the Norse more in TTL than OTL?

And there are nearer places - Denmark-Norway is going to deal with the Baltic coast long before Markland, which remains unpromising.
 
In a very "if y therefore x" sense an earlier loss of Constantinople, and other cutoffs between east and west would cause a much greater need for trying to go west. After all there were many examples of early exploration, and though the caravel helped, I imagine that they could travel at least as far as the Polynesians.
 
So help me out here, is there a special reason (or combination of reasons) why the Americas finally figured in the interests of European peoples and governments when they did? And why can't those reasons be replicated at any point at all at, say, 500 years before the 15th-16th. centuries?

As has already been pointed out, the advancement of technology made sailing the Atlantic much easier in the 15-16th centuries, which made settlement much more feasible.

In addition, the population in Europe was higher at this time. There was more pressure to emigrate, and the higher populations sustained epidemic diseases more easily, which meant that they could be transmitted to the Native Americans and remove them as a threat to the early colonists.
 
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