Poxless 1492 April 7, 2015
Author: Beach Combing | in : Modern , trackback
A counterfactual that has long fascinated Beach. In 1492 Columbus reaches the Caribbean and within a century Europeans have mapped and visited all coastal regions in the New World. So far so normal. But add a slight adjustment into the mix. The viruses that killed tens of millions of Amerindians have practically no effect: maybe this is because there has been surprising levels of leakage between the hemispheres and so immunity has been established in the Americas; maybe without knowing it the Vikings set off a tb/smallpox catastrophe when they arrived in the tenth century and the tens of millions died then. The point is that though Europeans arrives in the Americas as arrogant conquerors cross in one hand, musket in the other they cannot be guaranteed that 70% of the population will die after meeting them. The Amerindians, meanwhile, might not like the smell of gunpowder, or, at the beginning, the taste of whisky: but they are not distracted by the appalling and surprising mortality of most of their families. Now history tweaked, a simple question: would Europe still be able to settle the Americas and if so what parts? drbeachcombing AT yahoo DOT com
A simple example. The Spanish Conquest of the Aztecs was a very close run thing. About twelve hundred Europeans and their thousands of Tlaxcala allies brought down an Empire in 1519-1521. However, they did so with the help of smallpox that killed, possibly hundreds of thousands of the enemy. If there had not been smallpox Cortez would have become a smudge of mosquito on the window of history.
For what it is worth Beach’s bet is that the entire Americas would have been conquered by Europeans save for two areas. Mexico and Peru were the most organized regions by European standards. These areas would have shrugged off European attacks up until the later 1600s and the question of whether they were up to resisting by the seventeenth century would come down to the simple matter of whether they and their populations had learnt to use European weapons in the meantime, in the way that, say the Plains Indians had by the 1800s. They would have presumably ‘medised’ and converted to Christianity (or would they?) but they would have been two areas where European colonization would not have taken root. For a parallel look at the case of some of the African kingdoms which came into contact with Europe in the late 1490s and the 1500s. Europeans would have loved nothing more to invader and annihilate, but without the help of viruses they were simply not able to. Colonisation of Africa, save the Atlantic islands and coastal forts, begins really only in the nineteenth century.
30 April 2015: sorry so late with these. Some brilliant comments here.
Stephen D writes: I’m not sure that the African kingdoms which, as you correctly say, resisted European conquest until the nineteenth century are really a parallel case. I would say, rather, an antiparallel case: for what protected so much of Africa was not the immunity of Africans to European diseases, but the great vulnerability of Europeans to African diseases. “The white man’s grave”, remember? Or as the old rhyme had it, “Beware, beware the Bight of Benin Where one comes out though twenty went in”. Wasn’t the later invasion of Africa substantially due to improved nineteenth-century medicine? For a more relevant parallel case, you might perhaps consider the Asian kingdoms and empires that came into contact with Europeans after the 1490s: no microbiological advantage for the Europeans, if anything the other way round, but the list of unconquered Asians is quite short, and includes places with a much higher level of development than Mexico or Peru. Worth speculating about, maybe: evidence is that pre-Columbian Amazonian regions were not at all pristine jungle, but elaborately farmed regions where the population crashed on encountering European diseases and the jungle then took over. In your scenario?
Nathaniel writes: My guess: if European diseases hadn’t killed off Native Americans, North America might eventually have been conquered in the same sense that India and Africa were, but there wouldn’t have been the mass settlement of Europeans and others that replaced the Native American population in actual history. Native American societies would have survived somewhat intact. Eventually Europe’s civil wars (aka WW 1 and 2) and Native American adoption of European technology would allow the latter to regain their independence and take a place in the larger world, just as India (and to a sadly lesser degree Africa) are doing now.
BT writes On the subject of the pox and 1492. The first Spanish entrada into the S.E. United States was by Ponce de Leon in 1513, if not earlier by slavers on the Florida coast. The Southeastern tribes weren’t fully subdued until the Battle of Horseshoe Bend in 1819. When the Spanish first entered the region it was dominated by the large, complex, multi-ethnic chiefdoms of the Late Mississippian Culture. The region was heavily populated due to the fertility of the soils and long growing seasons. These people lived in large towns, (some small proto-cities), villages, and hamlets. The relations between the chiefdoms were intricate in both trade and war. Cacao residue has been found in cups at the central Mississippian metropolis of Cahokia, opposite of today’s St. Louis, the closest place it’s found is in central Veracruz in Mexico. That says something about the power and influence of these chiefly centers. When De Soto made his march across the Southeast in 1540-42, he found many chiefly centers abandoned, victims of disease due to contact with the Spanish earlier in the 16th century. De Soto quickly found himself in a world of trouble as he encountered the larger polities of the interior. De Soto was died as did most of his men in an aimless march across the Southeast. When later expeditions penetrated the region in the late 16th through the 17th century, they found that with the exception of the Natchez, the chiefdoms described by earlier visitors had disappeared. Had the Natives immunity to Old World diseases, the Southeast would likely be heavily Native, if not ruled by their descendants in certain regions. As a side note, De Soto was a principal figure in the conquest of Peru. He used his fortune made there to finance the expedition to American Southeast. He was much better prepared than Pizarro or Cortez when he set out for Florida. The people’s of the Southeast did something the Mexica and Inka couldn’t do, defeat the Spanish.
Louis K writes: There were more lands that resisted, even in this (poxed) timeline: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arauco_War Arguably the Mapuche were never part of the Spanish Vice-Royalties, and were only conquered by Chile and Argentina with the help of repeater rifles, and gatlin guns….
Christy writes: I’m a long time reader of your blog and your Poxless 1492 brought to mind a wonderful speculative fiction book called Years of Rice and Salt by Kim Stanley Robinson. The underlying premise is that the plagues of the fourteenth century took out a much larger percentage of the European population and what that would have done to the course of human history including the effects on the cultures of the new world.
Chris S: Another interesting tack for a counterfactual North America is when the Europeans arrive, it’s during the heyday of the Mississippian cultures, while the Mesoamericans are at the top of their game. Throw in vaccinations, and Europeans would be whittled away every night ’til they cried uncle. If I had the opportunity, I’d totally go back in time to inoculate all native americans and warn them of the white devil. Especially with Pizarro hopelessly outnumbered.
31 May 2015: Bruce T sends in this nice email.
On smallpox; in the Southeast, some of those people were never conquered. The Seminoles and the Miccosukee, broke away from the Creek Confederacy after the Battle of Horseshoe Bend, fought a long war in the swamps of Florida against the US Army. When the war with Mexico broke out, the Army left Florida. What was left of the two peoples formed their own culture in the Everglades. Both of those tribes are descended directly from the people of the Mississippian chiefdoms.
I guess you can say they won in Southern Florida. Both tribes have large gambling interests and are thriving. They milk the tourists that flock to south Florida dry. Very apropo, from my point of view.
I’ve got a book written by a National Geographic photographer on the Bou Jeloud/ Master Musicians of Jajouka expedition, somewhere in this ruin of a house. He witnessed the thing on assignment in the late ’60’s, and was one of the first outsiders to record the musicians.He returned several times for festival.
The book covers the period between roughly 1967 to 1985. The author’s main mistake was relying on the artist Brion Gysin for advice and guidance. Gysin’s lover came from Jajouka, and was a member of the clan that produced the musicians. Gysin promoted the story and his pet Pan theory to the rising counterculture of the 60’s. It still pays the bills in the village.
