WI America settled by Chinese in 1420s

What on earth are the Chinese doing in America in the first place? You appear to concede that Menzies is full of shit -
EDIT: This man's research is probably faulty and untrue, but it is still a reasonably plausible scenario, and so a good foundation to start an Alternate History.
- and then no, it's not reasonably plausible. The closest that any of the treasure ships ever came to America was when they were in port at Fuzhou. They went south and west, not east. Here is a map of where they went. You will notice that America is not on that map. That is because the naval expeditions of the 1420s never came within three thousand miles of the continent.

zh.PNG
 

King James IX

*sigh*

Menzies is, as you say, full of shit. What I meant by the plausibility of the initial scenario was that it had a possibility of happening. The possible scenario I'm referring to is this: after the inauguration of the Forbidden City, Zhu Di sends out ships with the foreign guests back to their home countries (some from Europe, probably, I don't know) and some of the ships were also asked to do some exploring of uncharted waters, as the emperor thought 'Hey, we've got a pretty decent navy, why not have a look at that big white space beyond the west coast of Europe?' I never said they went east (on the first voyage), they continued west, past Africa, and found South America, and you can see my tl for the rest of the story.

Saying they never went anywhere near America OTL on this forum seems a bit futile in my opinion, seeing as we're not dealing with where they did go, but with where they could have gone.
 
1430
February:
- The Chinese-Mixtec religion abolishes sacrifice outright. True, not much of it had been happening until then, indeed sacrifice wasn't practiced regularly throughout the empire, but this new custom shocks the Mixtec empire.
- Some more Chinese-populated Mixtec cities think of taking up the anti-sacrifice policy, and it gradually spreads across much of the Empire.
May:
- The last sacrifice in the Mixtec empire is made, in Mitla, and then a law is passed, forbidding it. This causes unrest in some of the immigrant population, particularly around Lake Chapala (much of the population there is Tarascan by now.)

~~~~

For fear of making more and more errors, I'll stop there for now.
I can understand why the Buddhists would ban sacrifice, but really, the rest of the Mixtecs too? Why? Nobody's putting a gun up to their heads and telling them to. And why would they just give it up three months after the Buddhists ban it?
 

King James IX

I can understand why the Buddhists would ban sacrifice, but really, the rest of the Mixtecs too? Why? Nobody's putting a gun up to their heads and telling them to. And why would they just give it up three months after the Buddhists ban it?

Yeah, alright.
 

Hendryk

Banned
I can understand why the Buddhists would ban sacrifice, but really, the rest of the Mixtecs too? Why? Nobody's putting a gun up to their heads and telling them to. And why would they just give it up three months after the Buddhists ban it?
Quite, it's bound to take longer. Interestingly, the Chinese did practice human sacrifice at an earlier point in their history, and the custom slowly fell out of favor between the end of the second millennium and the beginning of the first millennium BCE.
 
Quite, it's bound to take longer. Interestingly, the Chinese did practice human sacrifice at an earlier point in their history, and the custom slowly fell out of favor between the end of the second millennium and the beginning of the first millennium BCE.
Yeah, wasn't it big in the Shang dynasty. I've always been interested in them. In any case, I'm not completely sure on how often or for what reasons the Mixtec practiced their sacrifices. I think it's safe to say they were not like the Mexica, and as far as I know they were just like the Zapotec when it came to sacrifice. At least they borrowed the gladiatoral ritual sacrifice from them. They also sometimes strapped people to a scaffold and shot them with arrows, a common Mesoamerican tradition, but in the context which I've heard of it taking place in sounds more like an execution, which a lot of sacrifices really are, just ritualized executions.
 

King James IX

The State of affairs in 1431

In 1431, the Mixtec Empire had practically doubled in influence and size from seven years ago, and some of the political leaders were considering adopting a more organized social structure, as a change from the wildly different policies throughout the empire.

In the south, cities were more organized and structured, influenced strongly by the Chinese there, who encouraged order and development. The cities along the Pacific coast had a strong fishing industry, and fish was one of the staple foods in the empire. The houses along the coast were built with screen walls and doors facing towards the sea, and all the statues (of Buddha and the other native gods) faced the sea.

On the other coast, there was only one major city, Ñujeeyukúantayga, which was primarily a trade port, and whose population was made up 50% of Mayan, Totonac and Nahua immigrants, 40% of Mixtec fisherman, merchants and farmers, and 10% of Chinese living with their Mixtec wives and mixed-race children. The houses there had thatched roofs, and frequently adjoined expansive fields or gardens. Popular crops grown were maize, rice, squash, beans, chili peppers and pumpkins, which were then sold in the market or at the docks.

Up north of Sān shì, there was yet more distinctive areas of the Empire. There were the cities around Lake Chapala, and the Desert Cities, the largest of which was Ñumoku.
Lake Chapala was a popular cultural area, as the lake was frequently warm and was used in celebrations (fireworks set off on boats in the lake) or ceremonies (a common custom of newlyweds in Yucu Luucuta was to take a swim together, their first swim as a married couple.) Yucu Luucuta and Ñuukúká on the northern shore were popular locations for national (for lack of a better word) celebrations, and the Chinese population would often throw great parties for the Chinese New Year.

Ñumoku, in the desert, was a technological center of the Empire. It had been founded under the thought "how can we make this dead land habitable?" It has since seen the development of revolutionary farming techniques, aqueducts and new crops, specifically bred for the harsh conditions. Chichimec nomads are sometimes enslaved and forced to work in the box-farms. The houses there are built with low roofs to retain heat during the cold desert nights.

While there is no dissent among any of these regions, it is felt rather strongly by some political leaders in Mitla that more evident unification could be useful to reinforce the empire's semblance of power towards other cities and civilizations.
 
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King James IX

A New Challenger Appeared!

(You're all gonna hate me for another seemingly impossible voyage, but it'll help to know that it isn't a government-funded project and the King has no idea what they're up to.)

India - 1424:

While the seemingly endless stream of wars in the subcontinent continue, with the Vijayangar-Reddy alliance fighting against the northern Bahmani sultanate, the news of the Chinese discovery was hitting ports across the world. Tired of the endless and (to them) futile territorial struggles in the Indian subcontinent, a group of heavily religious Hinduists begin organizing an expedition to the New World, to get away from the useless wars. By December, they've amassed 100 ships ranging from fishing boats to AWOL war ships, containing farmers, fishermen, sailors, women, children, cows, soldiers, workers and slaves (who've run away from their masters and are told that they will be granted freedom in the New World.) In total, the number of people there is around 2,500.

(A map of their voyage this time :p)
29cru41.png

(See? Not totally impossible.)

Of course, with a voyage going that far south, into uncharted waters, there were some difficulties. Many of the children on board, for example, came down with a cold, and ended up freezing to death. One fishing boat, mostly containing high-ranking soldiers and worried mothers with their children demanded to head back, and were lost among the waters.

They reached South America in August 1426, landing on the shores of OTL Northern Chile (ignore the map, I didn't show accurately where they landed.) At first, they land and unload the boats, gazing in wonder at the high mountains in the distance and strange surroundings, but soon got to setting up a shelter. They had soon erected a couple huts atop a nearby hill, and when night fell, there were enough to house a quarter of the people. The others slept on the ships.

In the morning, the religious among them prayed, while the workers and soldiers started construction of a wall around the hill on which their huts stood. They set down a foundation of wood and crates brought on the boats, and then split into two groups, the one to finish the habitations, the other to begin carving stone bricks out of the hills and cliffs around them. This work continued, and by the end of 1426, they'd finished one half of the wall surrounding their thatch-roofed huts.

It was in May of 1427, when they'd just finished the wall and were having a celebration in the middle of their ramshackle town that a small group of twenty or so men appeared in the distance. They didn't speak any recognizable language, and had a strange appearance, but it was clear that they were as shocked as the Indians to find there were people there. They confusedly exchanged gifts, seeds (of maize) from the Aymarans (for that's who they were) in exchange for a cow from the Indians. The Aymarans went away shocked while the Indians were shaken by the revelation of another group of people nearby.

June of 1427: a baby is born to an Indian woman. She dies in childbirth and the baby dies soon from undernourishment and an exotic disease.

By 1428, they'd engaged in communication with the Aymaran natives, who came from a city just up the coast from their settlement, and soon established a rudimentary form of communication. They had traded some more livestock for native plants and native animals, and had also given the Aymarans gunpowder weapons and iron blades, in exchange for help in building stone houses and another wall around the hill. With the Aymaran help (which was great, given the rush to see the newcomers from the civilization), the Indian hill-city was completed, with 50 houses, a mandir, and gates in both walls, was completed finally in January 1429.

By this time, not only had the Aymarans developed a healthy relationship with the Indians, several other groups including the Chimu, Chiribaya and some merchants from the Kingdom of Cuzco had come to visit and trade with them. Some Indians took wives of Aymaran or Chimu women, and they went and lived in the City.

Healthy trade and good relations continued among the Indians and the Natives for many years.
 

pike

Banned
King James IX great tl and everything.

You seem to have missed placed the land mine first used by the Chinese to fight the Mongols in 1277 in some of your battles against the native amricans.

I doubt the indians would beable to reach the new world they are not exactly known for there sailing skills its seems more likely they would make it africa and go no further.
 
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King James IX

I doubt the indians would beable to reach the new world they are not exactly known for there sailing skills its seems more likely they would make it africa and go no further.

These Indians weren't sent by the king in search of new lands or whatever, they had heard about a new land to the east, and deliberately wanted to get there, to be free of the ridiculous wars in India. They wouldn't have stopped at Africa because they were determined to reach America, and didn't really go near there anyways (if you look at my map.) It is a possible voyage, but (I agree) very unlikely, however for the sake of my tl, let's say they managed it.

The reason they were able to get to America is because they desperately wanted to, and had nothing to gain through going back.
 

pike

Banned
These Indians weren't sent by the king in search of new lands or whatever, they had heard about a new land to the east, and deliberately wanted to get there, to be free of the ridiculous wars in India. They wouldn't have stopped at Africa because they were determined to reach America, and didn't really go near there anyways (if you look at my map.) It is a possible voyage, but (I agree) very unlikely, however for the sake of my tl, let's say they managed it.

The reason they were able to get to America is because they desperately wanted to, and had nothing to gain through going back.

Well okay i guess i would accept your logic Indian might make it to Amricans unless they mistake Australia for the New World which by the look of that map is a definite possiblity.

No comment on the land mines?
 

King James IX

Well okay i guess i would accept your logic Indian might make it to Amricans unless they mistake Australia for the New World which by the look of that map is a definite possiblity.

No comment on the land mines?


Yeah, I did think that. Might have to address that...

Thanks for pointing that out. I did have them use proto-grenades, though. Might use landmines in later battles/wars.
 

pike

Banned
Yeah, I did think that. Might have to address that...

Thanks for pointing that out. I did have them use proto-grenades, though. Might use landmines in later battles/wars.

No worries it would be good to see indian having ago at settleing Australia and the land mines lets say the disructive possiblities are endless.;)
 

King James IX

Alright, I've got it:

Before arriving in South America, in the middle of the year 1425, they spot some land rising up north of them. They land and have a look around. Some believe that this isn't the land discovered by the Chinese, and prepare their boats to continue eastward. Even if it is the New World, they say, it's too dry and deserted for them, and the worst that could happen from them continuing east is that they might end up in Europe or Africa. Of the 100 ships that set out, 20 decide to stay in this land. It is, though they don't know it, Australia.

(I have absolutely no knowledge about Australia at this time, so I'll do a little research then post something more.)
 

King James IX

Well, it would seem that not much was going on in Australia at that time, so I can continue pretty freely.

~~~~

Those seafarers that stayed in Australia had landed at OTL Canberra, and began making shelters with what little supplies they had on their boats. This group of Indians was much less religious than the others, and they decided that if anything was going to be done here, they'd need some order. One of them was elected as leader, his name was Vineet Lochan Lokajit, and he had been a soldier before the voyage. Lokajit had become infatuated with a girl that was on his ship, and he soon married her. Her name was Thirunarayan Saanjh Hasna, and she had been a servant girl before they'd departed. Lokajit's first order as leader of the group was to find resources they could use to build. They had much wood on their ships, and tools for building, and soon they found some trees and hills which they managed to carve bricks from.

In October 1425, a group of cows is lost and runs into the desert.

In May 1426, Hasna has a baby, who is named Narbaupaghaa Lokajit Fateh (Narbaupaghaa being the name of their ramshackle settlement.) By December 1427, they've completed a wall of nearby granite rock dug out of a hillside.
 
Poul Anerson wrote a hidden history version in his Guardians of Time in which a Chinese discovery of Western North America is averted. Menzies has been rather discredited to the extent that he is described as being on par with Graham Hancock and he hasn't helped matters by recently having a book published on Atlantis. There is another theory that the legendary Island of the Seven Cities was a Chinese steelement on the North American coast.

However the question as the author of this thread acknoweldges is What if? A settlement for the West Coast is probably more likely whilst the European came from the East. Possibly little contact if Spanish settlement was restricted to South and Central America until settlement expanded westwards and northwards. Maybe Drake or Cook would have run into them. However China had gunpowder and horses and the outcome of any war would be in the balance maybe the Indian nations would have achieved a better deal by offering their conditional support to either side as they did in the French American wars
 

King James IX

Redirection

I decided that having the name of this thread start with WI might give the wrong impression, as it really is a TL more than a WI.

Here is the new thread: A Rather Asian America
 
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