What if...

[magid]

... there were as many virulent diseases that affected European immigrants in the to-be United States as they brought with them? Would there have been a U.S.? Or more of a patchwork of smaller political entities, perhaps with a confederated region of different tribes through much of the western plains?

And why was the situation so unbalanced, anyway? Was it because the Europeans were coming from cities, which encouraged disease, so the Natives were comparatively disease-free?

Comments

[sethcohen.livejournal.com]

Have you been reading Guns, Germs, and Steel?

[cnoocy]

That's what I was going to say!

[magid.livejournal.com]

Actually, no, though I should read it sometime.

I've been working on some social studies product, noticing just how large the brushstrokes are in some textbooks.

[hissilliness.livejournal.com]

Spoiler alert:

Diamond says--to oversimplify greatly--that it's because Eurasia is landscape-format, whereas, the Americas are portrait-format, which allowed beasties of all sizes to interact across vast distances in the same climatic stratum.

[sethg]

I got about 1200 words into a novel set in an alternate universe where (for a handwavy reason I won't go into here) there was more Native resistance to European pathogens; I imagined that the Americas would end up partitioned among various countries in the spheres of influence of various European powers, except that the Inca Empire would be a power in its own right. So the predominant langauges in the Midwest, for example, would be Mohawk and French, and the Pacific Northwest would be a People's Republic where everyone learned Russian as a second language, and New England would be the ass-end of the British Empire.

IIRC from reading 1491 and such-like, the main contributing factors were (a) Europeans lived in close proximity to their domestic animals, so they had evolved more resistance to various kick-ass pathogens, especially smallpox, that leaped from animals to humans; (b) there was less genetic diversity and therefore less immune-system diversity among Natives; (c) there are two kinds of mojo (I don't remember the technical term) in the immune system, one that helps you against bacteria/viruses and the other that helps you against parasites, and Natives had more of the parasite mojo.

[sethg]

s/British Empire/British Commonwealth/

Cf. the Wabanaki Confederacy.

[magid.livejournal.com]

I haven't read 1491 yet, either. Obviously, I'm missing out on some excellent books.

Interesting alt-history you've suggested. If you ever write more and want editorial eyes on it, I'd be happy to look it over.

And in some ways, it makes a lot more sense that a place as large and diverse as the current US would be smaller countries. I have to admit, it would be great if more citizens saw the utility of understanding another culture, other languages, and so on.

[sethg]

The novel got stalled once I realized that I would have to give myself more of a crash course on Northeast Woodland cultures than I could get from Google; even a simple question like "what do I name this character" is hard to answer because contemporary Wampanoag Indians have been using English names for the past century or so, and I'm not sure that would be true in an alt-history where they hadn't been nearly wiped out and then partially assimilated. And the Indian angle isn't even the real McGuffin of the story, just a consequence of it....

So at least for the time being I am working on something Completely Different.

[magid.livejournal.com]

*nod*

That makes sense. And I appreciate someone who does their research (or knows that they need research :-).

[megmuck.livejournal.com]

1491 is a great book. It really drives home the fact that most of the early interactions white folks had with Native Americans in the U.S. were with a society that was already devastated, where most of the people had already died. What on earth was it like for Squanto to return to his home and find it in such a state?

That, and the fact that Amazon rainforest technology was far more sophisticated than anyone ever taught me.

m.

[megmuck.livejournal.com]

Sorry - I failed to mention that the first epidemics were brought by fishermen, traders, and other random Europeans who wandered up and down the coast before the Pilgrims did (and captured Squanto among other people). That's why the society was devastated -- and why there was so much rich open land for Europeans to colonize.

[magid.livejournal.com]

I tend to forget the 'advance crew' of fisherfolk, traders, et al.

It makes me wonder what the society was like before the devastation. And yes, I should read the book, but I always wonder how much is fact, and how much likely reconstruction, using logic that may or may not hold for people in other times/places.
(Ah, for a time machine :-)

[cnoocy]

Hm. If there were actually a smallpox equivalent in the New World, and it made it back to Europe, the result would be a second Black Death in Europe and possibly the rest of the world. (There were civilizations in the Americas that were destroyed by smallpox before any Europeans set foot on their land.) So we're talking about a health crisis that would prevent any kind of colonization, followed by massive turmoil a generation or so later as the survivors try to establish their places in a world with weakened institutions. I would see that not as a cause of huge divergence here in the Americas, but possibly as a factor in completely redrawing the map of Europe, depending on what countries did best against the pandemic.

[magid.livejournal.com]

I wonder whether the decrease in population would also mean that industry/technology would start rising much later (too many who would have been inventors died, or those who were left needed to be clever to make up for less people power?).

If I'm remembering correctly, it wasn't just that the plague killed a huge percentage of the population; it was also that there were then not enough people to bring in the harvest, for instance, and many died of hunger.

If technology weren't affected, and we started thinking more globally, but with a much lower population, I suspect we would not have gotten ourselves as horribly close as we have to global warming and similar issues.