so I've heard a lot about Basque and English fishermen fishing off of the Maritimes and Maine before Christopher Columbus got to the New World, if Columbus never makes it do they slowly start to settle North America?
There were Basque whalers operating off New England within thirty years of Columbus’s first voyage. Any settlements by them in the absence of Columbus’s voyage would probably have been in the form of fishing/whaling settlements that developed into centres of trade with the natives rather than major colonisation projects.
so I've heard a lot about Basque and English fishermen fishing off of the Maritimes and Maine before Christopher Columbus got to the New World, if Columbus never makes it do they slowly start to settle North America?
Don Lardo said:You went to the Americas intending to boss natives working in mines, to boss slaves growing sugar, to explore and get in a little "conquistadoring" of your own, to grow tobacco, to trade for furs, or to sell things to the men doing all those things. You went to the Americas planning to stay just long enough to make yourself a pile of money. If you failed, and enough of them did, you ended up staying in the Americas, but you hadn't planned on it. Planning on staying, planning on your kids and grandkids staying, was something that came much later.
And ultimately because you think you might find a shortcut to the Indies, a northwest passage or a short overland transit across North America.
While all the things you mention are certainly factors, that was the primary factor behind the establishment of at least the English colonies that would eventually become the United States.
No. The search for the Northwest passage was not a spur for settlement. It spurred exploration only.
Yes, those explorations did chart regions that were eventually settled, but no one said "I'm founding this settlement in order to search for the Northwest passage".
Instead, first gold, then tobacco, and finally furs lured a limited number English explorers/planters/settlers across the Atlantic to North America. (Sugar had already done the same job in the Caribbean) After that religious issues forced many more settlers across and, once permanent mostly self sustainable communities had developed, the prospect of free land lured even more settlers across.
Not the Northwest Passage, no, but the assumption that North America was much narrower than it is.
So a replenishment station? Something similar to Cape Town, growing extremely slowly until a source of real profit prompts serious growth?
how long would that take? would it at some point just end up getting major power's attention and end up like Plymouth Vis-à-vis Massachusetts Bay?
How long did the Dutch settlement on the Cape last?
Which goes back to my point that things would go slow until some native makes the mistake of wandering in with some gold to trade.
I see, so what happens when they tap into the fur trade, or will that never take off in a North America first TL?
There was no "settlement" in the sense so many people automatically assume. Lots of traders and factory employees went "native", but they live much like the people they traded with rather than like Europeans. They did not farm, set up forges, build permanent villages, or anything of the like. Eventually those things did spring up, but decades and centuries after Europeans had plugged into the trade networks, shaped them to their needs, and followed the networks deeper into the interior.
I get it, I've taken 3 whole college courses on early North America, my question is largely to do with "North American way first" the idea of trading out posts, small numbers of people coming over, maybe a hand full of trading towns.
I would think there simply wouldn't be the numbers for it. They might have a couple of small settlements here and there, but if you're looking for something like an actual colony, you'd need a pretty massive proportion of the Basque Country to set sail for the new world.