What if Europeans/Christians disappeared worldwide in 1630 AD?

[raharris1973]

What if Europeans/Christians disappeared worldwide in 1630 AD?

What if, by power and caprice invested in ASB, all Christians around the globe disappeared in 1630AD. To avoid a gratuitously “mass death” scenario or cruelty for the sake of cruelty, be assured they go to a “happy place” that I will explicitly define later.

I realize by eliminating largely (but not) exclusively, “westerners” this set-up resembles “The Years of Salt”. I’ve never read that actually, but read the dust jacket and read the gist of the idea of its elimination of Europe’s population multiple times. Don’t know if I’d have ever envisioned this scenario without it, but this is a bit different.

What interests me about picking this historical time, 1630 AD, is that it is post-Columbian and a world trading system had started with a worldwide exchange of New World and Old World crops, livestock and human genes and products, affecting nearly every continent except for Australia and wider Oceania and Antarctica.

There had been an earlier Ghenghissid Eurasian world system, and a semblance of an earlier Eurasian system with the silk road, but by 1630 we had something unprecedentedly intercontinental, with New World crops seriously affecting, and raising, population ceilings in China and Europe, and minerals seriously affecting and inflating their economies. And Old World diseases seriously depopulating and reforesting the New World. Exchange of crops between the New World and West Africa. Establishment of major “gunpowder empires” throughout Eurasia.

Who disappears?

All Christians around the world. Defined as a) Any sincerely believing Christian by their own definition and understanding, no matter their geographic location or race, b) The children (or grandchild or minor dependent) ten and under of any Christian as defined by (a) above, regardless of their religious comprehension of personal speculation or baptismal status, c) subjects of historically (for multiple centuries) Christian countries or Christian self-governing communities, where Christianity is the official religion, who haven’t consciously rejected the religion, developed a conscious doubt, or adopted an alternate religion to practice or believe. So included countries include European Christendom, Ethiopia, self-governing Christian Balkan areas, locally self-governing Armenian, Georgian areas, areas under actual rule of Catholic Kongo rulers, European and Mestizo/Mestico New World colonies, etc. So basically in countries, communities, families where Christianity has been the default for generations and is “the default” even the religious inactive, ignorant, and unthoughtful, disappear along with the religiously fervent and reflective.

Beloved personal pets and hunting/leisure assistance animals go along with humans, but no wild animals, primarily food livestock or pure working animals, nor inanimate objects other than clothing on the body.

Who is excluded from disappearance?

All fervent and more casual genuine believers in non-Christian religions around the globe, b) In countries, communities, families where Christianity has been the historical/generational “default”, and infant baptisms are practiced, but other religions like Judaism or Islam or paganism are actually Crypto-practiced, they are excluded, c) In countries, communities, families where Christianity has been the historical/generational “default”, and infant baptisms are practiced, individuals ten and over who have reflected and settled upon views that are agnostic, atheist, or deist are excluded, d) In countries where Christianity is a new import, aggressively proselytized since 1492, where missionaries may be inclined to “baptize by firehose” to use an anachronism, and “cook the books” to overemphasize their success, and Christianity has not yet become “the default” like the Americas, most of Sub-Saharan Africa outside Ethiopia, most of the Portuguese Indies, much of Russian Asia, possibly some of Arctic Scandinavia, the unbaptized/improperly baptized, religiously inactive, religiously ignorant and uncommitted, religiously unthoughtful are excluded from disappearance along with their genuinely pagan/animist/non-Christian axial religion neighbors.

As noted above, with the exception of pets and clothing on the body basically, natural and manmade properties are all left behind.
This includes Churches.

Quick survey of the world:

Oceania and Australia: No perceptible change, except whatever unrecorded Euro visits that happened, stop happening, and visits from the wider world get delayed even longer from OTL

Southeast Asia: This entire region, from Burma to New Guinea, from Luzon and for good measure, Formosa/Taiwan, to the island of Timor, loses all of its Europeans, except for a few Jews, Agnostics, and Atheists who might possibly have been working in Dutch or Portuguese service, in single digit numbers.

The greatest number of absent merchants, mercenaries, sailors, pilots and so on who disappear, utterly eliminating all European based enterprises operating in the region, are Portuguese, Spanish, and Dutch. But, the small numbers of other Europeans like English and French also disappear.

In Southeast Asian ports, offices and trading houses, aka “factories”, sit nearly empty except for native staff or hired East Asians. Hundreds of ships plying trade in the region lose their crews, or most of them, becoming “ghost ships”, or “flying Dutchmen” getting blown around by the wind until they wreck, or get found by lucky local pirates or beachcombers.

The impact is largest on the Philippines where many devout Christian natives and mestizos also disappear along with Spaniards, along with Dutch Batavia, the Moluccas, and the European forts on Taiwan.

Moving up to China:

China is going through the death throes of the Ming dynasty, and the abrupt turning of Manila Galleons into “ghost ships” and the end of new departures from Spanish America bearing silver will not help *at all*

The Ming are facing Li Zicheng’s peasant rebellion in the west, calling itself the “Shun Dynasty”, and assaults from Hong Taiji’s Manchus from the Northeast on the Great Wall. The latter are attacking along its whole length, having conquered Inner Mongolia as well.

The Chinese residents of Macau reporting of the mass disappearance of the “Ferengi” aka the Portuguese/westerners from town, almost to a man, are a strange and disturbing portent, even though they were annoying and often piratical.

The Manchu in a few years will proclaim themselves the “Qing Dynasty” and breach the Great Wall, and begin a lengthy conquest of China itself.

After a century of silver inflation, a drought of foreign silver is hurting China hard. With the end of Spanish silver, Japan, the only other major source of silver has a newfound leverage. China is also suffering Little Ice Age exacerbated famine, disease, plagues.

In Japan:

All the gaijin disappear to a man. As do all the sincere Kirishitan. The Shogun’s “Red Seal” ships continue to bring goods back in from “Nanban”, Southeast Asia, but in the months ahead, they report the sudden absence of the white, bearded gaijin from all their southern ports of call.

With the western and Christian threat evaporated, there is no need for the Shogunate to adopt the super-regulated Sakoku trade policy, and it can continue the Red Seal trading policy, and down the road, consider arming ships for self-defense.

Additionally, Chinese merchants appear more eager than ever to sell their wares for silver cash. Despite odd and frightening supernatural developments, there are advantageous trends for Japan in the world.

 

[raharris1973]

Quick Survey of the World, Part II:

In India:

Almost to a man, European traders disappear, and stop coming entirely, leaving abandoned properties to local looters. Local rulers and economies adapt accordingly. The Indian coast and offshore islands are also beset by the wrecks of many western “ghost ships” where property, but no human, remains and wreckage can be found.

Things are similar, but less dramatically so in Persia, but more notable to Persian court, urban, and merchant circles and people living in the Persian northwest are the derelict houses and villages and churches of the Armenians, and in the far northwest, the Georgians.

In the Ottoman Empire, and its vassals:

Vast numbers of Christian subjects, from Mesopotamia to Hungary, from Moldavia to Upper Egypt, disappear, leaving abandoned houses and fields. No Jews disappear, and of course, no Muslims.

This is a social and economic dislocation of vast magnitude, but also an inspiration to great piety among believers in the surviving religions of Islam and Judaism. As the religion of the state, the Muslims can celebrate as loudly as they want. Jews taking millenarian or messianic takes on the event are soon shown to keep their thoughts to themselves.

The Ottoman Empire finds itself without military opposition in Europe, merely facing ghost towns and ghost forts. Over the years ahead this can lead to a rebalancing of forces and concerted efforts to destroy the Persian army, to the extent that internal stability allows.

Ottoman riding and exploratory parties can roam through the mostly derelict lands of Europe, finding out just how derelict most of it is, and cart off material of interest in terms of weapons, gold and silver hoards, stored grain, and herds of sheep and cattle.

Of course, finding new lands to assign as grants (timars?) to all and sundry in the Muslim community is now simplified, but farm *labor* for the fields is now a commodity in very short supply. It is in extremely short supply throughout the Balkan and Hungarian lands *already* in the empire’s possession, much less in any new lands.

In the Maghreb, few in the Ottoman’s Barbary vassals, or Morocco disappear, except Christian captives, but the Spanish Habsburg garrison/settlements on the coast lose all their personnel. Barbary pirates will need a new business model.

The Ottoman and Maghreb Mediterranean coasts are littered with numerous derelict wrecks of Italian and other “ghost ships”

Up in Russia: Which at this time extended from the Don (or Dnepr) River to roughly the Yenisei River or Ob River in Asia, and already vast, often empty-seeming “big sky country” has just become much more so. All its Christians are gone, and it had hardly any Jews, atheists, or agnostics to speak of. The largest, densest populations remaining on its lands are the Muslim Volga Tatars and Muslim Bashkirs. In its Arctic and some Sub-Arctic lands are some animist and still not quite Christian-but-Animist Finno-Ugric peoples like Sami, Samoyeds, people from other language groups on the side of the Urals like Evenki and Yakuts.

In Sub-Saharan Africa: Christian-acculturated, mainly Portuguese forts and outposts, Christian Amharic northern Ethiopia, and the Catholic core region of the Kongo Kingdom lose their populations, while all else remain. European, most prominently Portuguese, but also others like Englishmen, Dutchmen, French and Spanish, stop coming to buy slaves and sell rum and guns. In the eastern part of the continent, slave trade, and other trades, with the Islamic world remains large, and even expands in scope. Here too, in the east, but especially the west of the continent, the coast is littered with wrecks of “ghost ships”




In the Americas:

The Spanish Empire faces the severe human losses with the disappearance of millions of Spanish, Mestizo, and sincere Indio Christians. Left over to inherit the properties of New Spain, Captaincy of Guatemala, Viceroyalty of Peru are mainly animist or only superficially converted Mestizos and Indios, with the largest and most prestigious of the languages still remaining Nahua, Maya, and Quechua, but still hundreds of other local languages spoken, and many groups still uncontacted and largely disconnected from others.

In the Caribbean, the newest and least Euro acculturated slaves, along with runaway and maroon colonies and indigenous holdouts are the main holdovers, while nearly all masters disappear, with the exception of some Jewish masters in former Dutch colonies.

In Portuguese Brazil, patterns are similar with severe human losses.

Rio Sao Paulo, Lima, Asuncion, Mexico City, Havana, they all leave interesting ruins for anyone ready, interested and able to make use of them. Stone and other material construction goods will be recycled in some interesting way. Some animists had some literacy in Spanish, Nahua or Quechua or Tupi or Guarani written materials the Spanish or Portuguese put into libraries.

Somebody somewhere *might* read some of it. Most will simply be repurposed as termite food and fire fuel.

North America, only much more superficially colonized at this time, would face much smaller scale of human disappearances. Native Americans and some mixed race folk would continue their own development, influenced by their contact with old world influences to date, and be free to wander through the derelict ruins of St. Augustine, Santa Fe, the Virginia Colony’s Jamestown, the Plymouth Colony, the brand new Massachusetts Bay Colony, New Amsterdam Fort Orange on the Hudson, Acadia Port Royal, Quebec and Montreal.

European genetics from some mixed race folks will mix into their populations as will likely a larger amount of African genetics from enslaved but not yet converted African indentured servants and slaves.

Now in Europe, we’re talking from Poland-Lithuania to Portugal, from Sicily to Sweden, the change is most dramatic.

The vast majority of the human population is *gone*. The economy is *gone*. All the main-made, and man-maintained structures are there, but mass depopulation leaves them all vulnerable to decay and reclamation by nature over years and decades.

But there are people “left-behind”. Obviously, non-Christian people, from areas outside of traditional European “Christendom” who want to sail on over or ride on over and explore.

But also, spread across the continent, certainly a few score, maybe couple hundred, generously up to 1 or 2,000 atheists or agnostics wandering in isolation and desolation.

In Spain, I am not sure if the Moriscos or Mudejars, many of them crypto-Muslims, were gone yet, and if so, what their numbers were. Poland may have had its Lipka Tatar Muslims in whatever by numbers. Many Sami in northern Scandinavia were likely still Animist. Possibly some deep rural Finns or Balts.

But the largest non-Christian population left behind in Europe, in places forming actual communities, would be the Jews, numbering at a minimum, several hundred thousand, possibly up to about 1 million. And they would be thickest on the ground in the lands of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, a bit in eastern Germany, upper Hungary and Bohemia and Amsterdam, and thinnest on the ground in western Europe and northern Europe.

This community, despite its ability to take non-perishable food supplies from the houses, granaries, barns and other properties of disappeared Christian neighbors, will have to diversify its economic activities and expand into agriculture/gardening, herding, hunting, gathering quick.

Reviewing it all, different parts of the world, people of different religions and races have been exposed to the products of trade from other continents and developed a taste for them. In many cases, they copied or duplicated crops or livestock from abroad at home and that satisfies the urge. But in other cases, only trade will provide the goods.

On the other hand, the main drivers and executors of world trade, its technical experts, European Christians, are gone and unable to do it any more. The global trading network is smashed. It is not easy to put back together. Regional components of it, in the China Seas, Indian Ocean, the Mediterranean, seas off Africa north of the equator, can probably be fairly briskly reconstituted by local “left-behind” actors moving toward opportunity, but longer range interconnected and global systems are much, much harder.

Disruptions will be forcing people the world over to deal with chaos and disruption and fight for survival. Amidst all this, there may not be any states in more than a century or two at least, able to imitate global trading networks similar to what Portugal, Spain, or Netherlands had going.

But I would think it might be possible for some particularly enterprising or successful “family firms” or “guilds” or associations to pull off a revival of transatlantic, Africa to Americas or Mediterranean to Americas trade, or cross-Pacific trade, even in the absence of European-style mercantilism.

Your thoughts on that?

I also think that between the Ottomans, Moroccans, Barbary states and Ashkenazi Jews, two hundred years after the event, both the ruins of Europe and its natural endowments will be put to some good use by some state or state-like structures.

Your thoughts on that?

What about the future of Christianity without Christians?

On the one hand, dead because of lack of adherents, and oblivion isn’t great advertising?

Or is it? “Hey, maybe oblivion is the better place they were all talking about?”

 

[fluttersky]

Interesting scenario.

Globally, I expect society would continue mostly as normal with pre-colonial structures but with technical advantages (a stronger revived Inca Empire for example). Parts of modern Ethiopia might end up Jewish majority.

Europe is of course where the biggest change happens. Iberia- definitely still has some remaining crypto-Muslims as well as recent exiles from the 1609 expulsion. I expect that most of them would return to Iberia and quickly reclaim land. Small states akin to the Republic of Salé are likely to crop up (probably most of them end up under Ottoman protection).

By far the state which benefits the most is the Ottoman Empire. Morocco would be too weak to seriously challenge Ottoman dominance of Europe. Kösem Sultan probably stays a strong force in the Empire for longer than she did in reality. It would be simple for them to pay Janissaries with large amounts of land; I expect that pretty quickly (within a few years at least) the entire European continent would be under either the direct or indirect control of the Ottoman Empire, with millions of people from Anatolia, the Balkans, and North Africa having moved into the readily available accommodation to the north and west. There would likely be a general perception that God had intervened to help Muslims and the Caliphate, so I think at least in the short term there wouldn't be any serious challenges to the dominance of Ottoman authority across Europe. It's possible that even Morocco would become a vassal state, given the lack of any serious challenge to total Ottoman dominance. Some of the more distant eyalets may be under looser control at first of course though (British Isles, etc). Possible that some sort of effectively independent Ashkenazi Jewish state continues to exist if it's in an area unimportant enough to the Ottomans.

The longer term consequences are an interesting question though. Such as where the Industrial Revolution eventually ends up happening- Bengal perhaps?

 

[raharris1973]

By far the state which benefits the most is the Ottoman Empire. Morocco would be too weak to seriously challenge Ottoman dominance of Europe. Kösem Sultan probably stays a strong force in the Empire for longer than she did in reality. It would be simple for them to pay Janissaries with large amounts of land; I expect that pretty quickly (within a few years at least) the entire European continent would be under either the direct or indirect control of the Ottoman Empire, with millions of people from Anatolia, the Balkans, and North Africa having moved into the readily available accommodation to the north and west.

Who is going to work the land gifted to the Janissaries? It seems like there is no one but the existing Janissaries and bother Muslim soldiers themselves, and if they are farming, they will lose their military skills.

There will not be any native Christians to do the farm work for them and pay taxes. They could possibly move militarily into areas of higher Jewish concentration like the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and possibly mandate occupational change for Jewish subjects, obliging them to take up farm labor by charging them taxes in grain and other farm produce. That could be a partial, though not complete, solution to severe labor shortages that will also start afflicting the Ottoman ruled Balkans, which will lose all its Christian farming subjects...and taxpayers.

And this actually means the Janissary recruiting pool, young Christian boys, goes up in smoke. The Ottoman Empire will have to source soldiers in new ways. Do the Ottomans turn overwhelmingly too animist or "insufficiently" Islamic peoples of sub-Saharan Africa as new primary labor sources wherever they need people to work the land, or even replenish their armies?