Fellow POD member Dale Speirs challenged me to come up with a way of getting the effect of
Quarantine
without the aliens. No can do, at least not completely. I can get some of the
effect though. The point of divergence has to come before Cortes sends the
first batch of Aztec gold back to Spain. After that, the New World played a
major role in European finance and politics. At that point, bad luck or storms
wouldn’t deter them.
Up until 1519, the right combination of events might have caused the Spanish
to lose interest in the New World. The Spanish were after wealth in the form of
gold, and/or people who were militarily weak enough that the Spaniards could
control them and live off of their work. The West Indies initially had a
certain amount of gold, and a large population of easily controllable Indians.
By 1519, the Spanish had mined most of the gold, and killed off a very large
part of that Indian population through overwork, starvation, disease, and
brutality. The smallpox epidemic of 1519 hit the survivors hard. Within a few
years of the Conquest of Mexico, the West Indies colonies were poor backwaters,
getting much of their meager living by supplying the richer colonies on the
mainland. The West Indies of the period after 1519 were simply not very
attractive to Spaniards anymore.
We could just delay the discovery of Mexico by a few years. It was
accidental in our time-line, the result of a hurricane, I believe. With the
Indians dying in droves in the West Indies, the Spanish started importing black
slaves from West Africa. That made the plight of the Indians worse. The slaves
apparently brought the first smallpox epidemic with them. They also brought
malaria, which promptly adapted to spread by local mosquitoes and made large
parts of the West Indies extremely unhealthy for both Spaniards and Indians.
If the discovery of Mexico was delayed, the Spanish colonies in the West
Indies would fall into a steep decline as Indian populations went into free
fall. Spaniards were almost as susceptible to malaria as Indians, and would
lose a significant amount of their population to that, or to people who gave up
and went back to Spain rather than staying and dying. Both Smallpox and Malaria
would eventually spread to the Spanish colony in Panama, destroying what was
left of the Indian population there, then gradually working its way up the
coast. The weakened West Indies colonies would be easy prey to raids by Spain’s
European rivals, primarily France. Slaves would take advantage of the weakness
to revolt or run away to parts of the islands that were unhealthy for
Spaniards.
Okay, that eventually makes the West Indies an unimportant, forgettable
backwater. It doesn’t put Spaniards in Aztec country, which is a major part of
my time-line. On the other hand, I suppose that I could have the Panama colony
break up and have part of the survivors wander north in search of more Indians
to live off of. The Spaniards at Panama were sniffing around along the West
Coast, gradually moving north in our time-line. Given a few more years they
could have ended up on the West Coast of Aztec country. I’ve actually toyed
with a scenario where an expedition from Panama arrives on the West Coast of
Mexico before Cortes finishes conquering the Aztecs, and causes all sorts of
complications. In this time-line they could simply play somewhat the same role
Cortes and company did in our time-line, but a few years later. They would be
spreading malaria as they went, and smallpox would jump ahead of them, so they
would find a diminished and destabilized Aztec empire to attempt to conquer.
How do I keep them from getting back in contact with West Indies or Panama
and Spain? Make them rebels fleeing from the tyranny of Panama’s governor? (He
was a real tyrant) Within a decade or so, a malaria belt would form in the
lowlands. (Remember my ‘early malaria’ scenario) That would deter explorers who
weren’t aware of the potential behind that disease-ridden coast. Indian
populations in that malaria belt would become very small and probably regress
to a more primitive state. The Spaniards in highland Mexico might just settle
down and devote themselves to having lots of half-breed kids. What’s left of
the Panama colony is raided by a French force that is looting the remnants of
Spanish settlements around the Gulf of Mexico, and breaks up, with a few
survivors eventually making it to Inca country.
That sort of works and does a lot of what
Quarantine does. I like the
idea of having something relatively familiar like our time-line’s conquest of
Mexico involved though. Can we manage that?
How’s this: In our time-line, the governor of Cuba tried to prevent Cortes
and his people from sailing at the last minute because he became aware that
Cortes would probably try to cut his Cuban partners out of the deal once he got
to Mexico. In our time-line, Cortes managed to sneak away and eventually
conquer Mexico. Let’s say Cortes gets arrested and after a certain amount of
time replaced in Cuba. The expedition to conquer Mexico is delayed a bit and
eventually goes off under a different commander, probably Narvaez, about a year
later in 1520. Or possibly Cortes manages to talk his way back into the good
graces of the governor of Cuba. In any case, as a result the first shipment of
gold from Mexico to Spain is delayed.
Now in 1519, Spain was in an unstable condition. The new king, Charles, had
been raised in the Habsburgs’ Flemish territories, didn’t speak Spanish well,
and brought a pack of Flemish advisers with him when he became king. The
Spanish nobility was so unimpressed that they took up arms in the Communeros
revolt against him. In our time-line the revolt was a serious threat to Charles
for a while, then fizzled when the lower classes got too enthusiastic about it
and the nobility got scared and switched sides.
The gold Cortes sent did actually play at least a minor role in the
Comuneros revolt in our time-line. If things played out just right, Narvaez (or
Cortez) might have found out about the chaos in Spain and decided that it was
time to become independent of both Cuba and Spain, or at least keep the king’s
fifth of the gold until things settled down. Cortez and company appear to have
thought about doing that, but didn’t. In that case, the gold stays in Mexico
and a Spain in civil war doesn’t have time to worry about Mexico and rumors of
fabulous riches. I haven’t found a detailed account of the Comuneros revolt
yet, but the huge amounts of gold Cortes sent had to have had some impact on
it’s course in our time-line. It is perfectly possible that the absence of the
gold causes the revolt to go on longer.
France jumped into the Communeros revolt in our time-line It probably would
have also in both of these time-lines. If the revolt had gone on a bit longer,
or the colonies had appeared a bit weaker, France might have decided to attack
the Spanish colonies in the West Indies, and go after Spanish shipping in a big
way. They actually did do both of those things in later wars against Spain. In
one year in the 1550’s they were so effective that only 3 ships made it from
Spain to the New World.
So France attacks the colonies of a weakened Spain, and makes communication
between those colonies and Spain difficult. In both time-lines, the smallpox
epidemic then kills off a large number of the remaining Indians of the West
Indies islands. In both time-lines, the Indians of Cuba revolt, but in this
time-line that revolt comes in conjunction with a French attack. The West
Indies colonies are thrown upon their own resources. Those resources are
meager. Even before smallpox and malaria, as I pointed out earlier, the Spanish
had worked to death or simply killed the majority of the Indians of the West
Indies. After the smallpox and the French raids, the Spanish find themselves
with no help from home, most of what they had built destroyed, and few Indians
left to work for them. Given Spanish weakness, black slaves could take the
opportunity to revolt, adding to the woes of the surviving Spaniards.
Historically, France and Spain were at war off-and-on for most of the period
between 1500 and 1559. France was larger and economically stronger, but
generally not as effective militarily. In our time-line, Mexican and Peruvian
gold allowed Spain to maintain an army large enough to continue challenging
France until both sides went bankrupt in 1559. Without the gold, and devastated
by a longer civil war, Spain would have found that much more difficult.
So Spain emerges from the Communeros revolt/war against France devastated
and bankrupt after six or seven years of wars fought on its territory. By that
time, the surviving Spaniards in the West Indies would have been forced to
revert to something approaching savagery. They would be very poor. The small
amounts of gold in the islands had already been mined. The large number of
Indians that initially attracted Spaniards would be mostly gone. Without gold,
and without many Indians to rule, the islands would have little attraction to
Spaniards. Most survivors would return to Spain if they got a chance. Rumors of
fabulous kingdoms filled with gold would circulate, but would be met with
skepticism in a nearly bankrupt Spain which had heard it all before about the
West Indies.
Spain becomes preoccupied with continuing the Reconquista in North Africa
once it gets back on its feet, assuming that it does. France has seen the West
Indies and is unimpressed. England has been acting as an ally of Spain, which
they did in our time-line until the French wars of religion temporarily removed
France from the European great power equation. Now France and England go at it,
occupying the energies of both nations. Portugal respects the Papal Division of
the world and doesn’t go into the portion allotted to Spain in a major way.
<Shrug> How’s that? I could see a fairly long delay before the
continents come into major contact again-- maybe 50 or 100 years. I can’t see
the hiatus lasting longer than that, but who knows? Maybe the Turks conquer
Central Europe and/or Italy without a united Hapsburg empire to counter them.
Maybe the devastating disease (probably a killer flu) that hit Spain and killed
2 million or so Spaniards in the late 1500’s spreads Europe-wide and triggers a
major decades-long depression. Maybe without the many new crops from the
Americas and the outlet for surplus population, Europe becomes stuck in a
Malthusian world. Maybe the Hapsburgs use the Turkish threat to consolidate the
Holy Roman Empire into a real empire, then start expanding it into a European
Universal Empire, which then stagnates ala China.
The New World of 50 to 100 years later would be somewhat less desirable to
Europeans than the one Columbus found. Malaria would be endemic along most of
the coastlines of the Gulf of Mexico by then. Indian populations would be
considerably smaller, but militarily tougher and probably considerably more
advanced technologically. This wouldn’t be the world of Quarantine, but
it comes reasonably close without invoking aliens.
I may explore this a bit more in later issues.
