WI: Columbus never reached the New World

Not to get all political but that's some blatant whitewashing.

The Europeans of that period explicitly viewed the Natives as "others" inferior to yes other Europeans.
They also viewed other Europeans as inferior to their specific breed of European. Look at the wars in Europe at the time, conqured populations were treated just as badly.The troops used in the exploration of the new world were mercenaries ,their behavior in the new world was consistent with their behavior in Europe.As long as the church got their 1/3 they didn't care. The racism just arose as a convenient excuse given by the church to justify being a greedy power hungry monster and get their 1/3 of the spoils.
But the racism took on a life of its own,and we're still living with the consequences.
 
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Vasco De Gama's route around Cape of Good Hope takes one down the very middle of the Atlantic, it's easier than one may think to be pushed West and hit South America. Most calculations of the Earths size were fairly close to correct, much more so than the ones Columbus used, so the navigators on board should be fairly confident they haven't landed in Asia.

One must wonder what would've happened if a character like Albuquerque found himself in the New World. I imagine he would have greater difficulty in using his political cunning, finding it harder to even talk to the Americans, but the man was clever, meticulous in leadership and was among the most willing to part with mediaeval traditions in favour of what worked (he pushed the use of Swiss tactics and a policy of mixed-marriages in India, for example).
 
Not to get all political but that's some blatant whitewashing.

The Europeans of that period explicitly viewed the Natives as "others" inferior to yes other Europeans.
I think this is incorrect, history is the story of more powerful people subjugating weaker ones, quite frankly the term "whitewashing" is offensive. You are turning a skin color into a pejorative.
 
I think this is incorrect, history is the story of more powerful people subjugating weaker ones, quite frankly the term "whitewashing" is offensive. You are turning a skin color into a pejorative.

??? Uhh, the terms wikipedia page gives its origins as being from a type of white paint in the late 16th Century, used to give a clean appearance to surfaces quickly and cheaply. It first gets used politically in the 1800 US Presidential Election.

As for European attitudes to people of other continents compared to themselves, well, I've recently been reading a book about the entrance of Portugal into the Indian Ocean, and phrases like 'naked black savages' and wholesale killing of entire communities of Muslims appear quite often. Their behavior in Europe was almost always far more tame than that, it's not wise to wipe out communities of people that you or the man who's hiring you may one day be ruling and taxing. It's only after the Reformation beginning in 1517 that brutalities in Europe begin to equal colonial atrocities and I'd hesitate to label even the worst of the Thirty Years War as being equivalent to chattel slavery.
 
Here lies the stupidity post in the History of alternativehistory.com

If anybody has a printout of it,please send it to Venezuela to help alleviate their chronic toilet paper shortage.
 
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Check out the Irish slave trade,so much of the Irish population was sold into slavery that Europe had to turn to Africa for slaves.
King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella were conducting ethnic cleansing in Spain in the late 1400s.

What kind of alternative history is this? Large scale Atlantic African slavery started due to the fact that the natives which were enslaved from the get-go were both dying too rapidly from disease as well as harder to keep from escaping. Not because there was a lack of Irish to enslave.

Africans as well were better suited physically to the tropical conditions of the Caribbean than European indentured servants would.
 
The biggest butterfiles would have to do with the Protestant Reformation. No New World means greater competition in the east. Heck, you could reasonably get a copy of an Eastern bible into an alt-Reformer's hands, which could make things very interesting indeed.
 
They tried it with the Irish first,it didn't work out to well,so they started using Africans even though they had to go through a middle man and make less money.The first slaves were brought over to North America were Irish.The British had been using Ireland a source of slave labor for centuries.

The Spanish sent the first African slaves to the Americas in 1502. You're saying that they brought Irish slaves over before that?
 
The New World would have been discovered eventually within 25 tears .
The same leaders that screwed over the native Americans are still in power in Europe. Europe still has guns,germs and steel and a tradition of conquest ,treating their subjects like garbage,and treating conqured populations brutally.To get any meaningful change your going to need another set of rulers on the thrones of Europe.
 
I seemed to be getting off topic.I was just trying to point out that the rulers of Europe were more like mafia Dons than rulers as we know them today.Conquest will happen greed plus a weakened native population pretty much demands it..
But the conquest will be delayed,the new leadership of the Aztecs and the Incas couldn't be any worse.
Europeans will set up settlements for trade purposes at first but at the first wiff of gold people will go full on conquistador.The conquests will be slower but still happen.
The treasurer flow to Europe will be altered so Phill might not be able to send an Armada against Lizzy.
North America is going to be split between England and France,still heavly English favored.The majority of South America is going to Spain.Spain just completed the reconquest of the Iberian peninsula and are in the middle of the Spanish Inquisition,so they've seized enough wealth to persuade the Pope to side with them over Portugal.
 
I don't see the Aztecs lasting too much longer than in OTL. They're still hated by the rest of the Mesoamericans,do warfare different from contemporary Europeans and do not come across as stable. Any would-be conqueror of the Aztecs will have several native allies. Likewise with the Incas. They're stabler,but had bitter enemies in the Andes who're more than willing to ally with outside forces. Plus the lush pelts of North American mammals will be highly desired bu Europeans,so you still have a Fur Trade. More than likely different colonists or rather a bigger variety and not so much domination by a select few. African Slave Trade is probably affected,but more than likely not butterflied.
 

CalBear

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Check out the Irish slave trade,so much of the Irish population was sold into slavery that Europe had to turn to Africa for slaves.
King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella were conducting ethnic cleansing in Spain in the late 1400s.
Seriously?

That you would use this thoroughly debunked BS is bad enough, especially in the context of this thread, but it is also pushing a REALLY dumb conspiracy and more than mildly racist distortion of history.

I recommend you take some time, maybe 128 hours, to look up the difference between chattel slavery and indentured servitude. Pay particular attention to the part about slavery being permanent and multi generational.

Kicked for a week.
 

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Seriously?

That you would use this thoroughly debunked BS is bad enough, especially in the context of this thread, but it is also pushing a REALLY dumb conspiracy and more than mildly racist distortion of history.

I recommend you take some time, maybe 128 hours, to look up the difference between chattel slavery and indentured servitude. Pay particular attention to the part about slavery being permanent and multi generational.

Kicked for a week.

Well Snopes tends to debunk the Irish slaves in North America angle whilst accepting many were sent as indentured Servants (along with many poor English). Indentured Service was no were near as bad as chattel slavery - not for life, not hereditary, you still had rights etc

The Arabs conducted slave raids against Europe for hundreds of years but mainly in the Mediterranean or against fishermen etc (Pepps talks about concerns for the Cornish fishing fleet in his diary). Cornwall, Devon and Ireland were raided and thousands taken into slavery but not the millions taken from Africa.

Wiki implies it would be well over 1 Million Europeans taken but gives little detail on how many would be Irish or English etc.

That does not really compare with over 15 Million taken from Africa by Europeans and some 17 Million by Arabs slavers (Figures from Wiki)
 
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Based upon the responses on the first page, for the second page went off on a wild tangent, IMO; for me, the obvious question becomes if not Columbus, then does who (nations) does "discover" the Americas and in what order? How does this reflect the composition of the difference colonies and European influence in the Americas?
 

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Well Snopes tends to debunk the Irish slaves in North America angle whilst accepting many were sent as indentured Servants (along with many poor English). Indentured Service was no were near as bad as chattel slavery - not for life, not hereditary, you still had rights etc

The Arabs conducted slave raids against Europe for hundreds of years but mainly in the Mediterranean or against fishermen etc (Pepps talks about concerns for the Cornish fishing fleet in his diary). Cornwall, Devon and Ireland were raided and thousands taken into slavery but not the millions taken from Africa.

Wiki implies it would be well over 1 Million Europeans taken but gives little detail on how many would be Irish or English etc.

That does not really compare with over 15 Million taken from Africa by Europeans and some 17 Million by Arabs slavers (Figures from Wiki)
There were plenty of relatively lousy practices back in the day including becoming an apprentice (which basically tied you to the Master Craftsman for the seemingly standard seven year or longer) or the taking of the "King's (Queen's) Shilling" which, after the required pause before swearing in, enlisted you for at least 21 years.

As far as raid on Ireland or Britain go, the Norse collected more than a couple slaves themselves, but the "Irish Slavery" myth is, as noted, bunk.
 

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As far as raid on Ireland or Britain go, the Norse collected more than a couple slaves themselves, but the "Irish Slavery" myth is, as noted, bunk.

And the Irish are not without their own 'slavers'. St Patrick was not Irish but a Romano-Brit captured by Irish raiders and held there as a slave before escaping.

According to the Confessio of Patrick, when he was about 16, he was captured by Irish pirates from his home in Britain and taken as a slave to Ireland, looking after animals; he lived there for six years before escaping and returning to his family.

Its hard to find any ethnic group that has not oppressed somebody at some time.
 
And the Irish are not without their own 'slavers'. St Patrick was not Irish but a Romano-Brit captured by Irish raiders and held there as a slave before escaping
And in fact the whole reason he was appointed to administer to the Irish was because of this as a form of "if you can't forgive your trespassers you're not a real Christian priest".
 
I posted this in a different thread a couple of days ago.

When Colombus landed in the Americas, he had promised Isabella and Ferdinand riches. If he didn't deliver, things did not look good for him. So Colombus vastly exaggerated the wealth he found, and heavily publicized his exaggerations. A very large number of copies were made, some still extant. And they got spread around Europe pretty quickly, creating an -at that point- totally unwarranted impression of the Americas as full of riches (and next to China). Colombus later lucked out again in that there was actually loads of gold.

If the first contact had been someone who didn't have two warrior-monarchs breathing down their necks and tapping their feet, going "Well?" (figuratively), Europe's first impression of the Americas would have been as a much less interesting place.

Also, Columbus and Iberia was not a good place to be discovered from, geographically. It meant that the Europeans established themselves on the islands of the Caribbean, where they could easily reach the large native polities, but could not be touched in return. They cold sail straight to Mesoamerica, and the plagues hit the heartland of the Americas first. A different discovery would probably have seen Europeans initially working their way up from Brazil and down from Newfoundland. While the Amazonian nations would still have been toast, the Incas and Mesoamericans would not get the plagues and the conquistadors at the exact same time, but with some years between them.

Of course, things would still have been terrible for the Americas, but at least they would have had plagues and invasions separately and not at the same time.
 
I apologize for offending anyone with one of the stupidest posted in the History of alternative History.com.
I could give a list of excuses how I allow that post to go up,but I won't.I made the mistake I own it.
Again I am sorry for offending anyone and I apologize.
 
Now to try to reserect this thread.
A delayed discovery of the New World would delay contact with the Aztecs.
The first push against them would fail.The second push against them would fail,but their religious practices would be revealed.If the third push against them fails ,not to likely but then Sombody is calling the Pope for a crusade.
Those were the butterflies,that shadow blotting out the sun is Mothra.
A full scale war against the Aztecs will result in wounded soldgers using a local pain reliever"coca leaves",and they will take their addiction along with a supply of the leaves back to Europe.
Coca becoming popular in Europe has major implacations on European finance and the Reformation.It would find its way to the court of Henery VIII.
North America would get off a little easier as everyone would be concentrating on upper South America to secure the coca production areas.
 
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