Would you colonize Europe

Inuit pls go. Kruger shall awake from his slumber.

I'm calling it right now, it's gonna be Texas. Mostly because their love of nukes is apparently at Ghandi-levels (which makes sense when you think about it). Regardless,

I'd say there's a big difference between types anyhow, but it depends on definitions.

Colonisation in America was marked by a nearly wholesale replacement of native culture, rapidly in each area in turn (NAmerica/Australia) or slowly over larger areas (Mexico/Peru). In Africa and Asia, I feel the term Imperialism fits better, for a thin upper crust of bureaucrats/merchants/generals overlaying the masses that didn't really change that much (of course there's exceptions).

And what most others did in Europe was Imperialism, not so much colonization (Al-Andalus, some pieces of Steppe+Hungary, and maybe some Ottoman Balkan, excepted).

And therin lies exactly what I'm saying: Europe would be subject to Imperialism, but not really colonization. I find it unlikely there would be many settler colonies, especially considering how miserable European weather would seem to would be colonists.
 
And therin lies exactly what I'm saying: Europe would be subject to Imperialism, but not really colonization. I find it unlikely there would be many settler colonies, especially considering how miserable European weather would seem to would be colonists.

Well, to someone from Japan, Korea, or northern China, northern Europe probably wouldn't seem too bad (except maybe far northern Europe). Likewise, people from more tropical areas like India or southeast Asia or North Africa wouldn't find much of southern Europe to be too cold.

The biggest problem with getting Europe colonized from other parts of the world is that other parts of the world have to have a motive to come to Europe in large enough numbers to start major colonies, even though Europe would be relatively backward in the alternate timeline. Since we seem to be talking about a POD that goes back some 2000 years, this should be doable.

One problem that Europe has is that it doesn't have much in the way of natural resources that would make good luxury goods in pre-industrial times. As far as I know, it has only relatively small deposits of precious metals like gold or silver, few native plants that make good spices, and only the southernmost parts would have areas suitable for plantation growing of cash crops like sugar or cotton. This would make a backwards Europe less attractive to people from other areas of the world than many other parts of the world were attractive to Europeans in OTL.

If Europe is either conquered or outright colonized, it will probably be from the areas that are closest to it - western Asia and North Africa. One possibility is that a backwards Europe of feuding tribes and chiefdoms could become a major source of slaves for cultures in North Africa and the Middle East - heck, this happened to some extent in OTL during parts of the medieval and even into the early modern period, but it could happen to a greater degree if Europe was more backward. Middle Eastern/North African traders might set up trading posts around the coasts of Europe the way Europeans did in OTL in parts of Africa and Asia. These trading posts may actually have an advantage over OTLs European trading posts - fewer diseases, since they aren't in the tropics.

If the trading posts thrive, they could become the nucleus of either settlement colonies that drive out the European natives, or "conquest colonies" where a smaller number of colonists conquers and rules over a larger native/mixed population. You would need a reason why significant numbers of people want to migrate from North Africa or west Asia into Europe, but there are several possibilities for this, ranging from desire to flee religious persecution to avoiding conquest by another group to a large poverty-ridden underclass willing to try almost anything to improve their condition.

This is only one possibility for colonization of Europe by non-Europeans. Another might be a major invasion from the steppes that brings in enough people to not just conquer but actually displace large numbers of natives and settle in at least part of Europe. As far as I know, this actually happened in Hungary. In a more backwards Europe, it might happen over a much wider area.
 
It's the equivalent of our 15th-16th century. Most societies of what we know as "Europe" resemble the Germanic and Celtic tribes the Romans encountered on their expansion OTL. Mighty civilisations like Rome and Ancient Greece existed in this timeline, but by 1492, they or their heirs have either perished or stagnated and isolated themselves. Population densities are fairly low, perhaps because outside explorers have brought devastating plagues to the peninsula to which native europeans had no immunities.

Consider a set of potential colonial powers. They could be an especially prosperous and adventurous Japanese or Korean Empire or Native American Nations that somehow produced mighty fleets like Spain or Britain OTL, perhaps driven to technological heights through fierce competition with other powerful North American nations. They are exploring the world, and among the places they're "discovering", there's "Europe". Possibly while they were looking for the west coast of China, or something.

Presuming that the colonizing forces somehow operate on a similar logic as European powers OTL, do you think it is likely Europe would be chosen as a place for settlement colonies? If that's the case, would the peninsula ultimately end up as one settler nation or split up among several different ones? And how many people would live there by the 21st century? Would there be any major population centres north of the Alps? If there's a "European capital", where would it be?

There goes the scenario:
- the POD is the Great Universal Khan of the World Mongol Empire has better resistance to alcohol, like Winston Churchill. And he lives 10 years more or so.
So the Grand Army of Batu Khan and Subuday gets regular reinforcements and properly devastates Europe and make the conquest permanent according to the later Iran/China scenario.

In China the Mongols settled in the non-steppe regions, the same might have happened in Europe. Why not?

I remember in OTL when Mongke Khan sent a large Mongol detachment to stay as protection between Iran and India, the Mongol general (most politely) asked: "How long will we stay in that region?" The curt reply of the Khan was: "Forever." The situation was so urgent that these Mongols were not allowed to take their families with them and had to marry the local Indian and Iranian women (which was against Mongol marriage customs) and that was why their descendants were called "mongrels" for a long time.

I mean colonization of that type might have happened in Europe...
 
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