WI: Dutch Colonised Western Australia

samcster94

Banned
If you had an even stronger Dutch presence at the Cape and in the Indies, and maybe even South America too, then maybe you have even more use of the Brouwer Route than OTL. What happens is somehow, the Dutch take the risk to put a supply station somewhere in Southwest Australia, where you can grow food for passing ships and also the Indies. If they find sandalwood, which is further north and in a place where agriculture is more difficult, the colony can grow food and produce beer/wine for the labourers to the north. These labourers will mostly be Indonesians and probably some Africans too. It would be very interesting to see the culture of Western Australia given a few centuries. It would have all sorts of Chinese, Indonesian, African, European, and Aboriginal influence, and probably at least a few mixed-race individuals who are a mixture of all those races.

And also, Haemodorum spicatum is an interesting plant the Dutch might exploit. According to this, it was traditionally used for medicinal purposes (allegedly helps toothaches, mouth sores, and even dysentery), and also because it can be used to produce a red dye, hence the common name "bloodroot". Even more interesting, it can be used as a spice comparable to chili, and it's allegedly very spicy. Known by the Aboriginals, could this end up a trade good of any note?



Why slaughter? Why would the Dutch be any worse than the British who shot the locals for fun when they weren't killing them for other reasons? We have the Khoikhoi as an example of how the Dutch and VOC might deal with the locals and it's not really any worse than typical colonialism. I'm not sure of the density of Khoi peoples compared to Aboriginals (Southwest Australia was relatively densely populated for Aboriginal Australia), but you'd probably still have a decent amount of mixed-race people since the Dutch and Indonesian people in Australia will largely be single men (or otherwise away from their wives).
So, basically the status quo, but a much more racially mixed pop?
 
So, basically the status quo, but a much more racially mixed pop?

Racially mixed, yes, but a large number of "mixed-race" people would identity as white, given the example of the Afrikaners where quite a few of them have at least one African ancestor in the past few centuries yet don't identity as mixed-race nor are considered mixed-race.
 

samcster94

Banned
Racially mixed, yes, but a large number of "mixed-race" people would identity as white, given the example of the Afrikaners where quite a few of them have at least one African ancestor in the past few centuries yet don't identity as mixed-race nor are considered mixed-race.
Indeed. The lighter the skin, the more likely to do so.
 
Racially mixed, yes, but a large number of "mixed-race" people would identity as white, given the example of the Afrikaners where quite a few of them have at least one African ancestor in the past few centuries yet don't identity as mixed-race nor are considered mixed-race.
During the early years of South Africa, there was an abundance of white men compared to white women. This combined with less taboo against mixing, made inter ethnic marriages more common. Most of these inter ethnic marriages were between white men and indiginous and slave women. Todays afrikaners have mostly european paternal lineages(y-dna). While approximatly 12% of the maternal lineages can be traced to non european women(x-dna).

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/gnxp/2010/04/the-ancestry-of-one-afrikaner/#.WpwZUuHkTIU
https://www.gnxp.com/WordPress/2017/09/22/the-non-european-ancestry-of-afrikaners/
http://www.geocities.ws/kempcountrymen/afrikaner1.htm
https://afrikanersociety.org/Home/Afrikaners
https://www.geni.com/projects/South-Africa-Founders-Effect/18512

Some people include all groups that were formed in the cape colonys and it descendants as afrikaners. If we go with that definition the afrikaner population is much bigger and diverse. I read that the first time the word afrikaner was used was to differenciate people born in the cape colony from those born in europe.
 

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