WI: Asian slaves in 16th century America

Wouldn't Poleynesia, Melanesia, and Micronesia make more sense to get slaves from seeing as how their closer to the Americas and tribal societies?
 
Wouldn't Poleynesia, Melanesia, and Micronesia make more sense to get slaves from seeing as how their closer to the Americas and tribal societies?

In the ATL, the populations of the Pacific Islands, called Milislhas (alternate name for the titular islands. Etymology is thousand islands in Spanish and Portuguese, in reference to the varied and multiple islands) crashed after the introduction of chickenpox, bubonic plague, leprosy and pertussis which decimated about 92% of the population. The outbreaks was so severe, that many island populations vanished.
 

Kaze

Banned
You mean other than the IRL Asian slaves that was used by the UP / CP to build the Railroads across America? Then once built, they decide to embargo their importation - banning Chinese and Japanese immigration for decades.

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But let us say the 16th cent = where in Asia would they come from? It is not like there is a nation in the far east that has disposable labor forces, most of them were used in country for that purpose. It is far easier to use them in country to make spices, silks, etc - then transport them over a thousand leagues. But a little other problem is there is not much inter-cine warfare in the far east - one of the lesser known and sundry origins of the African slaves is that their own countrymen would defeat their tribe and instead of killing them in the usual genocide, they decide to make a little profit by selling them to some stupid foreigners for gold and iron weapons... thus a lot of Africans ended up in North America - refugees sold into slavery by their victorious enemies. As for the far east - there is not much of intercine warfare. The South East Asia was basically at peace (except for the black-birding trade and the occasional piracy), Japan was at peace (once they decided on a shogun), China was at peace (once the Ming - Qing transition was over-with). So where would these Asians come from?
 
DISCLAIMER: I do not condone the slave trade and I do not advocate mass-murder of ethnic groups. I do not hold bigoted nor hateful opinions about other people.

Inspired by a question on Quora: How would the USA look if there wasn’t black slavery but instead, Asian slaves?

What if the European colonists used slaves from Asia instead of Africa? What would the effects be like in the altered timeline?

The Point of Divergence (PoD) begins when the Valladolid debate (1550-1551) hosted by de las Casas extended to African slaves. Due to the success of the debate, Spain and Portugal passes the alternate New Laws, banning the practice of enslaving American Indians and Africans and restricts the power of the encomienda system.

The ban on slavery and the restrictions of the encomienda system causes a shortage of labor in the Spanish and Portuguese colonies in America. A economic depression occurs as the colonists are forced to free their slaves and the production of sugarcane and the mining of gold and silver grinds into a halt.

However, Magellan's landing on the Philippines (1521), Portuguese conquest of Malacca (1511) and the European expeditions into Indonesia, the opening of the Nanban trade (1543), Dutch Spice Trade, Portueguese Macau ( and the European outposts in India opens up opportunities for slave labor in the American colonies.

Exploiting a loophole in the alternate New Laws which says slavery of Africans and Native Americans are banned but does not say Asians can be enslaved - the colonists open up the earliest alternate companies for the sole purpose of trafficking and smuggling slaves originating from Asia into the American colonies.

What could be the possible implications of Asian slaves in 16th century America?

The first slaves will therefore be Malagasy Highlanders, from there it'll be Asian Indians and Southeast Asians.

An old reference I believe from the 17th century is instruction by English to Spanish slavers to get the more Bantu looking people than that more asian looking slaves.

From my own research into my Malagasy heritage this was due to certain distastes for non-black slaves in the 17th century

https://books.google.com/books?id=l...gAhUzoFsKHRQ0BqsQ6AEIJjAA#v=onepage&q&f=false

Later however it was a prestige sort of thing to have a "tawny" Malagasy slave esp after the international slave trade ended (it was like "yeah I got one, don't ask where I got it though" bragging)
 
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