mojojojo
Gone Fishin'
I would definitely think the Maori would be open to selling prisoners of war to the highest bidder, and might be inclined to start conducting slave raids on other pacific islands.
Lands of Red and Gold
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I am not sure if gunpowder is essential to fighting the Europeans: In the 17th century, European guns were only better than harkbuses by way of an improved matchlock mechanism. Even in the OTL British invasion of Australia, until the industrial revolution and the rifle came along, the Indigenous Australians had more accurate ranged weapons than the rank and file British muskateer in kylies and woomera-thrown spears. With a huge population advantage and diseases, I am sure that the Aururians could hold off the Dutch even with just kylies and spearthrowers long enough for the former to get a firm grasp on gunpowder weapons, which would certainly happen well before the industrial revolution. And crossbows are even easier to manufacture.
Probably stark horror and will resist with everything at their disposal including a long and protracted guerilla war with no surrender.
Y'know, that sounds extremely likely for the Maori. Things could get ugly indeed.
Note that I referred to cannon, especially. While I do think that muskets would be extremely useful too (see below), cannon are deal-breakers, both for naval warfare, and for land warfare too (versus fortifications).
The big advantage of firearms over everything else wasn't accuracy or firing time; for both of those, other weapons had the advantage. What matters is training time. Firearms are easy to learn and use; grab a few hundred random peasants and you can have them using muskets competently in a few weeks. This greatly diminishes the advantage of having veteran troops, and makes replacing losses much easier.
The biggest problem with muskets isn't making them - although that will require some improvement to Aururian metallurgy, and probably some expert advice, too. (If memory serves, even the Japanese had problems reverse-engineering muskets without advice, and their metallurgy was certainly ahead of the Aururians).
The big problem is manufacturing the powder in the required quantities. That's actually not all that easy; even some European nations struggled with it. It's the sheer scale required, more than anything else.
Unless the Aururians can manufacture powder, they'll be relying on imports. Not impossible, of course, but it will still be a limiting factor.
A diversity of opinions, I expect. Plirites are not monolithic in their views.
But I suspect that the most common view will be that Jesus, Muhammed etc were very good moral leaders, with useful examples of how to live, but rejection of the idea of omnipotent deities.
The Plirite faith doesn't have many absolute rules about deities, but one which it does hold to is that no-one is all-powerful. Even their deities can be wrong at times, and men are not bound to do something just because a deity asks them to do it.
Plus, as already mentioned, Plirites are going to be quite resistant to conversion attempts. Their priests will, in fact, convert right back. Plirism is an evangelical religion.
Probably stark horror and will resist with everything at their disposal including a long and protracted guerilla war with no surrender.
You never know...
Seriously, though, there are some branches of Plirism which will certainly hold a view of "never give up", but that isn't anti-Christianity or anti-Islam per se. It's anti-colonialism and anti-imperialism, and sometimes nationalistic.
mojojojo
Gone Fishin'
Y'know, that sounds extremely likely for the Maori. Things could get ugly indeed.
The whole demography of Oceania could wind up very different
How will they view Buddhism?
They'd better hope the Shaolin Monks show up
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wmn6baQXhIQ&feature=channel_video_title
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wmn6baQXhIQ&feature=channel_video_title
Absolutely. Lots to think about here, including possible Maori colonisation of various Pacific Islands.
A very good and timely question! One of the things I'm working through now - given that I've had to put off the assessment of Europe's status in the *30 Years War - is how East Asia is going to turn out. This will involve, among other things, whether Japan, China etc have any views on Plirism.
My brief thought is that Plirites will view Buddhism and Taoism as having part of the truth, ie being founded by good moral leaders, some of whose precepts are also useful. They would probably view Buddhism as being a bit inward-looking, though, and neglectful of the effects of one's own actions on the outside world.
With Japan in particular, things could get interesting. The general tone of Japan toward outsiders will probably be similar, I think, but I don't know how much the Aururian plagues will shake things up. After looking into things, I figured that Amakusa Shirō Tokisada will die of Marnitja and the Shimabara Rebellion as we know it won't happen, although of course there's still a strong trend toward seclusion. Anyone who knows much about Japan have any further thoughts on that?
mojojojo
Gone Fishin'
Will the natives of those islands be shipped off as slaves or wind up as dinner? And which would be the worst fate
But what would these slaves be used for? As Jared correctly pointed out earlier, Aururian sugar would be significantly more expensive to ship to Europe than Caribbean one was, and kunduri plantations, most probably, wouldn't need as much labor as OTL Queensland's sugar-producing estates did. Moreover, even what labor kunduri culture does need, would be provided mostly by Aururians themselves, as they have the know how, and there are a lot more of them than there are Pacific Islanders.Will the natives of those islands be shipped off as slaves or wind up as dinner? And which would be the worst fate
As for head-hunting-cum-Maori-colonization in Polynesia and Melanesia - well, there was an example of these things in OTL (I mean the Moriori's fate, of course), but the fact that this example of Maori's maritime conquests was the only one speaks for itself. There were reasons that discouraged Maori from going overseas, even when they had access to European firearms and ships.
ITTL, Aotearoa is far more densely populated, so demographic pressure should be higher, but would it be enough to force one iwi or another to sail in search of greener pastures instead of just trying to kill a neighbouring iwi, as they mostly chose to do in OTL?
Disagreement. The promising sugar land in Aururia is little more populated than in OTL. More to the point, absolute Aururian population numbers are beside the point. The continent's distance from Europe and Asia means that it will be exposed to a new epidemic or two every generation for more than a century. The result will be persistent population contraction, setting labor costs high - there will always be not quite enough people to do all the things that were planned a decade before.
Keep in mind though that those Maori had given up Polynesian sailing skills entirely - these *Maori still regularly sail the tremendous distance to the continent. In OTL the Maori's crop package kept them out of much of the South Island (except for hunter-gatherers) and their population low - European plagues then decimated the population. In short, there was a tremendous amount of land to go around. Disease will improve the options for local expansion in this timeline as well, but because of the Aururian plagues, it will do so to a lesser degree in relative terms.
Look at it this way: These people with plenty of land, no economic drive for empire, a low population, and no sailing technology launched one naval conquest. That's not an indicator that they were averse to it, the shocking bit is that they did any.
Is there any reason sugar couldn't be sold to Japan, China, Indonesia, India, etc. instead? Did they already produce the stuff?
Misunderstanding. I do not see any "promising sugar land" in Aururia (that is, before steamboats would make shipping cheap enough - more on it below, in response to truth is life's question). I do see promising kunduri land in Aururia, though (similar to tobacco plantations of OTL Virginia), and kunduri-growing region (that is, Tjibarr) is fairly densely populated by 1618.
Its population will decline after the contact, of course, but still, there will be hundreds of thousands Aururians left alive, with most of them being peasants, ready and able to grow kunduri. Of course, labour's cost will go up, and slave imports may go long way in lowering "wages" - but slaves themselves are not without cost. Our prospective kunduri estate owner would have to pay Maori (or European) slavers full price of catching/buying these Melanesians/Polynesians and transporting them to Aururian ports. It may be cheaper to control Aururian kunduri growers (through local aristocracy, if possible) than to ship new field hands from overseas.
In OTL, the British (and Americans) used slave labour to grow cotton, tobacco and sugarcane in the New World, but the same British were content with use of "free" Indian, Egyptian and Turkish peasantry for cotton, sugar and tobacco production, as expenses were lower that way, without formal enslavement. I do recognize the fact that demographic pressure in Aururia is much lower than in early modern India or Egypt (and cost of labour is correspondingly higher), but still, this pressure is much higher than in the colonial Americas, so that chances for chattel slavery introduction (and slave imports) in Aururia are lower than in the New World, but higher than in Asia.
I would think that if slavery would get introduced despite these hurdles, most slaves would be imported from Asia (especially Indonesia), and not Oceania, as it makes sense for European traders to buy slaves themselves, without Maori intermediaries, and there are much more people in Asia than in Oceania. The Dutch did it to some extent in OTL, with the end result being the Cape Malays (descendants of Malay slaves transported to Dutch African colony).
Points taken. So, Maori's conquering parts of Oceania looks plausible enough. Poor Oceanians...
To my best knowledge India was the first country to produce sugar, so yes, they did produce it (and transferred their skills to China and Indonesia) well before da Gama appeared in Malabar. Japan imported sugar from China, as the four main islands are mostly too cold to grow sugar ane (the Ryukyu chain is suitable for sugarcane, but it wasn't part of Japan before 1870s).
Europeans may attempt to sell Aururian-produced sugar in Japan, but it is hard to see how they can get their sugar cheaper than Chinese-produced one, taking into account distances involved. Their only hope is some sort of Chinese embargo against Japan (or foreigners in general) - there were such embargoes from time to time in OTL, but they were honoured more in the breach than in the observance (with blockade-runners being mostly Europeans themselves - buying Chinese goods in Macau and taking them to Nagasaki).
The thing is, economics was for Chinese sugar exports to Japan, but politics (well-founded anti-Japanese feelings in China) was against them. In OTL, economics won most of time (through bribes to Chinese officials, among other things). If ITTL Chinese government somehow does prevent the Chinese from trading with Japan (including trade through European intermediaries) - then Aururian sugar has some chances (but again, the Philippines and even Java are far closer to Japan than Aururia is, so even then, Aururian sugar is in worse position on the Japanese market).
With cheap enough shipping (that is, with steamboats), though, Aururian sugar might become quite competitive good even in China itself, as it might be cheaper to ship it from *Queensland to *Beijing by sea than to transport Chinese sugar from valleys of Southern China via atrocious roads and undermaintained canals to great cities of China's north. However, before the advent of steam power distances mattered far more.
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Hard to say, but it's not really like either fate has much to recommend it.
Kunduri is going to be an interesting crop, although I suspect that most of coastal Queensland is too wet for it. Inland is really where it shines... that, or an otherwise drier climate.
Sugar, now, may or may not be cost-effective in Asia (see below). On reflection, though, there's one incontrovertible market for sugar: within the Third World itself. Sugar plantations in north-eastern Queensland would be excellent for growing enough of the crop to trade it to points further south and south-east: the eastern seaboard, Aotearoa, and even around into the southern coast. This could be both for useful commodities in themselves, but also for spices and kunduri which could be profitably exchanged somewhere in Asia.
Far north Queensland could, in short, become a very productive regional trading hub with sugar as its own commodity and shipping bringing in the rest.
Pretty much true as far as kunduri goes, although forced labour is always useful in a time of labour shortages (ie Old World epidemics).
As far as sugar goes, well, growing it in plantations in OTL was a fate which pretty much any sane person would avoid if they had a choice. Parasites, disease and climate saw to that.
Far north Queensland would actually have fewer disease problems than the Caribbean - malaria is less of an issue since mosquitoes there don't transmit it as well, and yellow fever may well not get established at all. Still, it won't be a pleasant task for people to do willingly, and so it might be done unwillingly.
As Admiral Matt pointed out, given the demographic hit from diseases and already low population, it's amazing that the Maori accomplished even one raid. Given what they're like ATL, I wouldn't put anything past them.
One possibility is that defeated iwi may, by negotiated settlement with the victors, vacate their land in exchange for being allowed to sail off elsewhere in search of conquest. Perhaps.
Yup. This is going to be a huge - and persistent - problem. The short-term demographic effects aren't going to be as instantaneously severe as the multiple waves of die-offs which Euro contact brought to the Americas, but there's still going to be a long, severe decline which will see at least two-thirds of the population lost, if not more. And as you say, each decade or generation, things get worse.
It could certainly be sold, if grown. Whether it's profitable to sell it, given that there's existing production there, and the shipping distances, I'm not sure.
I see kunduri and sugar as complentary crops, not competing ones. The best zones where kunduri can be grown aren't really the same as those where sugar can be grown. Essentially, the wetter the better for sugar, while waterlogged soils are very bad for kunduri - the plants will probably rot.
For kunduri, I agree that it's most likely that mobilising locals - with perhaps varying degrees of force - makes more sense than importing slaves, save perhaps in a couple of areas in the north of the continent (ie where's not currently much in the way of local population.
Sugar is iffier...
If a sugar slave economy does exist, there are multiple sources. I could see Maori POWs being shipped to northern Queensland, either by Maori or Europeans traders. I don't so much see Maori becoming intermediaries in trading Oceanian slaves to QLD, but then there's places close to Queensland where the Europeans (or, even, Aururians) themselves might go. (Melanesia, in particular). There are historical precedents for that, too.
Of course, I'm not yet sure that a full-blown chattel slavery market will exist. Some forms of more unwitting or unwilling labour may be more possible, though, as happened with the blackbirders in OTL.
To my best knowledge India was the first country to produce sugar, so yes, they did produce it (and transferred their skills to China and Indonesia) well before da Gama appeared in Malabar. Japan imported sugar from China, as the four main islands are mostly too cold to grow sugar ane (the Ryukyu chain is suitable for sugarcane, but it wasn't part of Japan before 1870s).
The economics of *Queensland sugar is something I'm really not sure of. On the one hand, Queensland has a very good climate for it and will be relatively free of some of the problems which occur elsewhere (mostly disease). On the other hand, the shipping distances won't make things cheap, and there's not a native labour force in the immediate sugar regions, while there is in Asia. On the third hand, getting a native labour force may be relatively cheap if the Maori are selling off excess POWs or if *blackbirding is set up. On the fourth hand, either of those labour sources are more vulnerable to Old World epidemics of the sort which will be hitting with grim regularity.
In short, this is still something I need to think through.
Agreed. I did not think it through - obviously, even after the Eurasian plagues, there would be enough sugar-hungry consumers in Aururia and Aotearoa to provide market for a number of sugar estates, with *Queensland being the natural choice for these plantations' location. With scarce labour resources of the region, slave/indentured servant/"blackbird" imports seem inevitable...
Yes, and now I (belatedly) recall that they (or, to be accurate, their Polynesian ancestors) even had tradition of resolving their conflicts in this way (well, it didn't prevent them from exterminating their rivals, too - but it wasn't the only way out of a war).
But weren't Maori (and especially Maori warriors) too militant to be useful slaves? I do know that Europeans used African-warriors-turned-slaves on plantations, and most of time cruel discipline kept these fierce and strong men in line. However, at least once European slaveholders paid high price for their use of enslaved warriors, that is, during the Saint Domingue/Haiti revolution of 1790s. Of course, there were many reasons for the revolution's success (weakening of French control due to the French revolution being very important one), but still - would it be reasonably safe to import whole enslaved iwis to *Queensland? On the other hand, importing only women and children would be pretty much safe bet, but women can't work as hard as men (especially during pregnancies and breastfeeding), while children need some time to grow into first-rate field hands. That is, there are two options for our prospective *Queensland planter - to get strong adult Maori male slaves (with their women and children, most probably) who can work hard and bring handsome profits to him almost immediately, but can also kill him and his family, or to get less dangerous Maori women and children only and to be content with long wait for profits. Of course, if Maori winners would kill off warriors of a defeated Maori iwi and sell their families, this dilemma would be solved without the planter's participation.
I know about blackbirding, but wasn't it limited to Melanesia in OTL because Indonesia/Dutch Indies was reasonably well-governed by the time of Queensland's sugar industry beginnings, so that going to the Dutch colonies to buy de-facto slaves would end with prison term at best and gallows at worst? Melanesia, on the other hand, was more or less independent (and defenseless) before late 19th-early 20th century, so Australians went blackbirding that way.
Summing up all this slave trade and Maori conquests talk, the "Third World" looks set to become a strange, brutal but interesting place by late 17th - early 18th century, or so, with:
Maori fleets raiding all over Oceania,
European (or Maori, or even Nangu) traders participating in the two-directional trade between *Queensland and Aotearoa (sugar and rum for slaves and flax),
European planters, in their luxurious residences, trying to maximize their profits (and risking rebellions),
slaves from Asia, Melanesia and Aotearoa suffering together under lash of (probably non-European) overseers and being made by their common experience into a new race, with its own pidgin language,
different European countries trying to develop colonies or protectorates of their own (and destroy rival settlements), and being forced into alliances of convenience with Aururian or Aotearoan states (even when some of their partners eat human flesh or sacrifice some of their subjects).
One can imagine three Maori chieftains meeting at the home of one of them, and recalling their lives - the first chieftain having made his fortune selling Polynesian slaves to Aururia, the second one being co-sponsor of his nephew's expedition to some Melanesian archipelago, and the last of them having been captured as a child by rivals who had raided his father's fortress, then sold to some slave trader, freed by his remaining kin in the Tasman Sea and returned to his iwi to grow up and bring vengeance to his father's killers. All three of them saw wider world beyond Aotearoa, speak at least one European language, and are good shots. One of them was baptized by Spanish missionaries some time ago (mostly out of hope to get better trade terms from Spain), another one accepted Pliri faith with sincere belief, while the third one remains "heathen". Confessional differences do not harm their friendship, though.
Maori fleets raiding all over Oceania,
European (or Maori, or even Nangu) traders participating in the two-directional trade between *Queensland and Aotearoa (sugar and rum for slaves and flax),
European planters, in their luxurious residences, trying to maximize their profits (and risking rebellions),
slaves from Asia, Melanesia and Aotearoa suffering together under lash of (probably non-European) overseers and being made by their common experience into a new race, with its own pidgin language,
different European countries trying to develop colonies or protectorates of their own (and destroy rival settlements), and being forced into alliances of convenience with Aururian or Aotearoan states (even when some of their partners eat human flesh or sacrifice some of their subjects).
One can imagine three Maori chieftains meeting at the home of one of them, and recalling their lives - the first chieftain having made his fortune selling Polynesian slaves to Aururia, the second one being co-sponsor of his nephew's expedition to some Melanesian archipelago, and the last of them having been captured as a child by rivals who had raided his father's fortress, then sold to some slave trader, freed by his remaining kin in the Tasman Sea and returned to his iwi to grow up and bring vengeance to his father's killers. All three of them saw wider world beyond Aotearoa, speak at least one European language, and are good shots. One of them was baptized by Spanish missionaries some time ago (mostly out of hope to get better trade terms from Spain), another one accepted Pliri faith with sincere belief, while the third one remains "heathen". Confessional differences do not harm their friendship, though.
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The thing is, the Moguls were more than able to build strong navy on their own, they had money, timber and sailors for it (they lacked naval guns and gunners, but these might be bought/hired in Europe/Ottoman Empire). However, they never built it. They were just not interested, it seems.
mojojojo
Gone Fishin'
Sounds like the congixie might have some company in the interesting hybrid cultures of this TL
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