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What If the Mali Empire or a Chinese Empire Colonizes the Americas?

Briefly, conquest but no genocides, except perhaps by the Chinese at the end. The Mali Empire or a Chinese empire brings iron and immunity and recovery time for Natives to later European diseases, giving the later conquerors a much harder fight. There's also no reason a Ming empire in the Americas couldn't rival European ones in size.
 
Alternate pre-Colombian contacts are fascinating, so I understand your interest, but I think your posts share a couple of problems that might be preventing the debate you're hoping for.

1. You can't just post a youtube video and expect it to pitch the scenario for you. Most people check in on the site on their phones during the course of the day and don't have the time to watch a... God, almost seventeen minutes of youtube.

2. Also, It's worth pointing out that if they do have the time, watching a random person talk for seventeen minutes about this scenario is probably not want they want to spend it on. This is a discussion board- written text comes first.

3. Your scenarios keep skipping to the end, as it were- how will the indigenous peoples ('Natives' is a word you should be careful about using) deal with the Europeans if they're sufficiently stocked with iron and immunity et cetera. Except that's skipping potentially centuries of divergent history. Why will European contact happen on schedule or in a recognizable manner if Eurasia and Africa have already gone through sweeping economic and political changes?

4. Also, while we're at it- your posts are asking two very different questions. 'What if the Chola Empire or the Vikings'... well, either one of those require completely different examinations. Similarly, the Malinese or "a Chinese Empire" don't even share a trade network. Why look at them together?

5. Lastly, with the possible exception of Viking contact, all of these questions suppose sweeping changes to the colonising cultures that can't be swept aside. For the Ming or the Chola to colonise the Americas we have to imagine a fundamental reworking of the trade and political networks of Eurasia. Maybe look at the changes to the Chinese and the Indians before we imagine how they affect the Americas.

6. Final point: I am personally incredibly dubious of the idea that there was some hypothetical great power that could embark in mass colonisation without genocide. The historical record is pretty clear that the killing and enslaving happens and then the society works out an intellectual framework to justify it.
 
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6. Final point: I am personally incredibly dubious of the idea that there was some hypothetical great power that could embark in mass colonisation without genocide. The historical record is pretty clear that the killing and enslaving happens and then the society works out an intellectual framework to justify it.
I would add to this that slavery in the Americas was based on simple economic logic: the European powers had a ton of new land and resources that they wished to exploit as cheaply as possible, and the obvious solution to that is to enslave people. I don't see why the Chinese, Malians, or any other power wouldn't see this logic. Furthermore these powers already had a history of slavery, so it's not that much of a leap to expand it into the New World.
 
I think the idea goes something like those powers not conquering as much land as quickly as possible and being more reliant on native proxies, trade, etc rather than outright imperial territorial addition(hence the persistent analogy of British India). With a healthy dose of thinking iron and gunpowder were the determinants of conquest.
 
I would add to this that slavery in the Americas was based on simple economic logic: the European powers had a ton of new land and resources that they wished to exploit as cheaply as possible, and the obvious solution to that is to enslave people. I don't see why the Chinese, Malians, or any other power wouldn't see this logic. Furthermore these powers already had a history of slavery, so it's not that much of a leap to expand it into the New World.
I can't comment about the Malians, but in the case of the Chinese, chattel slavery was economically unnecessary, since at any given time labor was plentiful enough to be dirt cheap without having to resort to formal serfdom. Should hypothetical Chinese colonists wish to engage in labor-intensive ventures in the Americas, they'll simply ship in the workforce from back home.

An added factor is that in OTL, China was one of the first countries to be demographically impacted by the introduction of New World crops, which arrived via the Spanish Philippines. These crops allowed previously uncultivated lands to become productive, resulting in a population boom that, by the 18th century, was beginning to outgrow agricultural output. The fact that this population surplus didn't find an outlet in OTL was one of the factors in the decay of the Qing dynasty. So a China that sets up colonies in the Americas would have plenty of people to bring in.
 
Conceivably, yes, and I don't think a Chinese empire would ship slaves in when the same ships could bring free or semi free labour from home.

On the other hand, the distances across the Pacific are so vast that I think it's possible that Chinese 'colonies' might actually consist of fairly small parties from home who would rely on forced local labour.
 
I think the big issue is that if you've overcome the cultural barrier of 'everyone comes to us because we have everything they could want, and they pay us for it, so why should we bother going over there?' in order to actually get colonies abroad, whatever happens next is going to be defined by that new attitude.

Historically in Taiwan it was 'try and limit immigration as much as possible (there was a big belief about how people had to eventually return to their ancestral shrines), just make the aborigines in the highlands pay tax and leave them to it', which certainly is a model that might be applied in California, but considering the much longer distance and the fact that the Qing were extremely reluctant to even acquire Taiwan in the first place I can't really see this model working as one that allows for any form of Chinese New World colony to emerge. Something more like the later Qing/20th Century assimilation policy meanwhile would take a 'allow Aborigines to carry on as they are, so long as they don't rebel, and it's clear that they have to accept as many Han settlers as possible.'
 
I think the big issue is that if you've overcome the cultural barrier of 'everyone comes to us because we have everything they could want, and they pay us for it, so why should we bother going over there?' in order to actually get colonies abroad, whatever happens next is going to be defined by that new attitude.
One possibility: a slower conquest by the Qing results in the "Southern Ming" actively pursuing overseas trade in order to finance its military apparatus.
 
One possibility: a slower conquest by the Qing results in the "Southern Ming" actively pursuing overseas trade in order to finance its military apparatus.

Possible, but wouldn't that push them towards Taiwan, the Philippines and Indonesia before the Americas?
 
Possible, but wouldn't that push them towards Taiwan, the Philippines and Indonesia before the Americas?
I'd definitely like to see what would happen if the Ming remnants took on the Spanish for control of the Philippines, same as in OTL they took on the Dutch for control of Taiwan. But once they have their thalassocracy going, it would be a logical enough next step to follow the already-charted sea lanes to where the gold and silver are coming from.
 
That would actually be a fascinating variation on the old cliche- instead of China getting to the New World first, what if it arrives in the seventeenth century as part of a wider conflict with Spain?

That's early enough that you could see some fascinating revivals- in name at least- of the old Mesoamerican states, in much the same way as the Tupac Amaru rebellion played on memories of the Inca.
 
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