Will any of the Maori convert to the Pliri faith?
Good question. That's one of several things I'm trying to work out about the Maori. They won't have anywhere near as much exposure as some of the other peoples, but perhaps there will be enough.
If you decide to add something of this in, I was thinking that the Japanese Christians would leave small enclaves along their way, whether intentional or by fate. So, small communities of the JCs live in Taiwan, the Philippines, Borneo, Papua-New Guinea, East Timor,...
Eventually several make it to, what has become to them, the promised land.
This is actually the question which is bugging me more the more I think about it. Why would Japanese Christians see *Australia as a promised land? I'm not sure what the attractiveness of the place would be. As far as they're concerned, it's just some new spice island which the Dutch have discovered... larger than most, but not otherwise particularly welcoming. The areas of northern Australia are very poor for colonisation - which the earlier settlers will tell them. I'm not sure what attraction northern Australia would hold over, say, East Timor or Macau.
Say it takes 50 to 60 years to get a decent sized population in northern *Australia. What is interesting is that the JCs will be bringing along their own diseases and will encounter the indigenous diseases. The epidemics of these new diseases may be seen as further tests by God which strengthens their faith.
Hmm. If it's been 50 or 60 years, they will have been well-exposed to Australian diseases already. Except for swamp rash, but that's only in the Murray basin, which is nowhere near northern Australia.
The diseases that they bring may make them the scape goats for the *Australians when any disease outbreak occurs. The Dutch/VoC could use this to their advantage by selling medicines or pushing away hostile from themselves to the Japanese Christians.
Hmm hmm. Northern Australia doesn't have that many locals - still hunter-gatherer - so there may not be enough survivors to make their hostility felt very much. Depends on a few things, though, such as how well any JC colony would be prospering in general.
Hey Jared, fantastic new installment, thanks for writing it! Such a fun, colorful timeline you have here... a great tour-de-force of setting-construction so far.
Merci.
I've got a question concerning how the *Australians react to European diseases. In 2004, a theory was made that there were two main types of helper-T cells, ones that fight microorganisms and one that targets parasites. The body cannot sustain large numbers of both, and hence adult immune systems tend to be skewed towards one or another, usually depending on their childhood exposure to one or the other. The theory concerned the idea that Native American children were usually exposed to more parasites than germs, in contrast to European children where it was the other way around. It is said this is a reason why the Native Americans were so heavil depopulated, because their immune systems were not just unprepared to fight alien European viruses, but they weren't prepared to fight microorganisms as well.
That's not a theory I'd heard before. As far as I know, the two types of helper T cells don't distinguish between parasites and microorganisms in that way. Type 1 cells activate the cellular immune system, which includes macrophages and the like, and which hits viruses, bacteria, fungi, protozoans, cancer and, well, pretty much everything. Type 2 cells activate antibodies, which do all sorts of things, really, but which also help macrophages, and which target microorganisms, and so forth.
I've never heard that the body can't produce lots of both Type 1 and Type 2 helper T cells, and even if it only produced more of one or the other, I'm not sure that would make parasites more or less of a threat than other microorganisms.
I also doubt it because Eurasians were exposed to large numbers of both parasites and other microorganisms in those times, especially city dwellers. I hadn't heard that they were more vulnerable to parasites than, say, the Maya.
Do you think this theory holds some merit, and if so, where do the *Australians stand?
I am not an epidemiologist, but it sounds rather dubious to me. If it is true, well, the *Australians would be exposed more to epidemic diseases than parasites, except maybe-sorta the cities along the Murray.
So, you propose to make the JCs the Jews of *Australia and South-East Asia, don't you? But there were (and are) overseas Chinese, who met all requirements for the "market-dominant minority". Could the JCs compete with the Chinese even in *Australia itself? In OTL nobody did it in South-East Asia, and Australia hadn't (before recently) strong Chinese diaspora only because of deliberately racist immigration policy.
I don't know, was what you propose possible, or not. There were small Japanese colonies in SEA before Shogunate's seclusion of country, but more Japanese served as mercenaries than as merchants. On the other hand, the average Japanese (and the average JCs even more so) were more educated than the average Chinese, and Japanese economy was more commercialized than Chinese one. That sterngthens possibility of the JCs' success as trade minority in *Australia.
Overall, I'd suspect that the Chinese would fit into the role quite happily. From their point of view, the newly-discovered *Australia would be just one more spice island to settle in.
Indeed, I for one don't see the point of painstakingly bringing Japanese refugees to *Australia, when the Chinese were already everywhere in South-East Asia, including next door in the Indonesian archipelago. They'll readily take over the role of middleman minority in post-contact *Australia. Involving the Japanese would be redundant.
It has more to do with the fact that a large number of Japanese are about to have a very pressing reason to get out of Japan fast, and the timing is convenient.
I'm not sure that the timing is convenient. The Dutch would be reluctant to settle Catholics in a vulnerable area, I suspect. Even if the Dutch are shipping the Japanese Christians out of Japan, why would they take them all the way to Australia anyway?
And admittedly just the general potential for coolness of surviving Japanese Christians, given that they basically ceased to exist in OTL.
Hmm. This is something of a tangent, but as I understand Japanese history of the period, while there wasn't much chance of the Japanese Christians being left around foreover, there might be some chance that they would be left in Japan for a while longer. Particularly if butterflies mean that the Shimabara Rebellion doesn't happen on schedule.
Not knowing that much of Japanese history, I am curious what would happen if there was nothing like the Shimbara Rebellion. I presume that official persecution would continue much as it had, but how many Japanese Christians would still be around, and for how long? They may still have the option to emigrate elsewhere even if they don't end up in *Australia.
