Charles I went to war with France, to support the Hugenouts, (and against Spain,) during one of his "I want more money" phases.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huguenot_rebellions#Third_Huguenot_rebellion_.281627-1628.29
Lands of Red and Gold
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Charles I went to war with France, to support the Hugenouts, (and against Spain,) during one of his "I want more money" phases.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huguenot_rebellions#Third_Huguenot_rebellion_.281627-1628.29
As AE mentioned, this is a question of timeframes. Charles I backed the Huguenots in their rebellion (1627-9 in OTL), but the English involvement was a fiasco of its own, at least on the Continent. (Different story in the New World.) The centre of Huguenot power, La Rochelle, was besieged in August 1627, and despite various English relief attempts, the besieging fortifications were completed in April 1628 and the city surrendered in October, more or less breaking the Huguenot rebellion. England and France signed a peace treaty in April 1629.
ATL, the epidemic of Marnitja sweeps through La Rochelle in April, incidentally killing Cardinal Richelieu. It stops the fortifications being completed, and the hit of about 15% on the besieging troops (plus all the usual diseases that hit besieging armies) was enough to lift the siege, at least for a while, and the Huguenot rebellion continued. The war with England sputtered on for a while longer, too, but peace will eventually be agreed sometime in 1630. (As I mentioned, this time difference could be significant.)
Who said that the Netherlands prosper for much longer? All the quotes from the last post which mention the Netherlands as prosperous only run up to about 1650 or so.
Not saying that the Netherland are necessarily going to be crushed after that date, of course... just pointing out that nowhere has it been confirmed that they will do well, either.
Well, if there is any place where Plirism and Islam will interact rather intensively enough to produce downright syncretism, it will be Indonesia. And I'll looking forward for this
Of all Indonesian regions, Lesser Sunda will be the most likely to go predominantly Plirite. The spread pattern of Plirism I think will be most determined by of course, whether Aururians will comply to Dutch monopoly in the region. Ironically enough, I think should Aururians not be to respectful enough of Dutch monopoly in the region, it will probably drive Dutch to be more expansionist, and thus facilitates the spread of Christianity into peripherial regions such as Lesser Sunda(earlier than OTL). Though it would also depend whether the Aururians would be able and willing to assist the Indonesians bypassing Dutch monopoly.
Now about that Islam-Plirite syncretism thing, I wonder where it will occur most significantly..... Will it be Lesser Sunda, the place I think where encounters between Plirite and Muslim traders occur most frequently ? Or will it be in Sulawesi, due to Bugis sailors visiting parts of Northern Australia, some are rather close to Nuttana ? Or will it be in, well, Northern Australia ?
Though I'd like to see whether Plirism would be able to make visible foot prints in further western places like Java and Bali.....
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mojojojo
Gone Fishin'
Very interesting suggestionsWell, if there is any place where Plirism and Islam will interact rather intensively enough to produce downright syncretism, it will be Indonesia. And I'll looking forward for this
Of all Indonesian regions, Lesser Sunda will be the most likely to go predominantly Plirite. The spread pattern of Plirism I think will be most determined by of course, whether Aururians will comply to Dutch monopoly in the region. Ironically enough, I think should Aururians not be to respectful enough of Dutch monopoly in the region, it will probably drive Dutch to be more expansionist, and thus facilitates the spread of Christianity into peripherial regions such as Lesser Sunda(earlier than OTL). Though it would also depend whether the Aururians would be able and willing to assist the Indonesians bypassing Dutch monopoly.
Now about that Islam-Plirite syncretism thing, I wonder where it will occur most significantly..... Will it be Lesser Sunda, the place I think where encounters between Plirite and Muslim traders occur most frequently ? Or will it be in Sulawesi, due to Bugis sailors visiting parts of Northern Australia, some are rather close to Nuttana ? Or will it be in, well, Northern Australia ?
Though I'd like to see whether Plirism would be able to make visible foot prints in further western places like Java and Bali.....
Well, if there is any place where Plirism and Islam will interact rather intensively enough to produce downright syncretism, it will be Indonesia. And I'll looking forward for this
Could be all sorts of interesting possibilities, although I should probably start by checking how syncretic Islam has been in Indonesia in OTL. Too much of the world still to read up on...
Broadly speaking, the Nangu will trade anywhere that they think they can make a profit. However, they're not suicidal either, and are capable of making binding agreements not to break another power's trading rules if they think that it's necessary (eg not trying to trade with the Atjuntja's western ports).
Which leaves, of course, the question of what the Dutch would think of such efforts.
My first impression is that the VOC would overlook trade between the Nuttana and the smaller islands of Indonesia so long as that did not interfere with the VOC's main profit-making enterprises. That is, the VOC makes its main profits from the inter-Asian trade which saw goods moved between India, China, Japan and Indonesia, and shipping those goods to Europe.
If trade between the Lesser Sundas and Aururia is small-scale enough that it doesn't really offer much value to the VOC, then the Dutch will probably ignore it. If it means that the Dutch are being denied access to Aururian trade goods which they could resell for higher profits elsewhere, then that's another story.
As to whether the Dutch will succeed in keeping the Nuttana out, well, that would be getting ahead of myself.
The other point, of course, is that the Nangu will very enthusiastically spread Plirism anywhere they contact, unless they have strong reason not to do so. By previous precedent and trade agreement, the Nangu did not attempt to convert the Atjuntja or Yadji, but they spread the Plirite faith elsewhere in Aururia as they traded.
Post-Old World contact, I expect that the Nuttana would try to spread the Plirite faith to the Ryukyus, although they're forbidden to have direct contact with Japan. Unless the VOC is rather pro-Christian (which they aren't, as far as I know), they won't particularly care whether the Lesser Sundas are Plirite, Muslim or Christian - they will only care about trade, if anything.
The Nangu/Nuttana will certainly try to reach the Lesser Sundas, so there's potential for syncreticism there.
As for other places, well... the question of whether the Bugis are already visiting northern Australia is one of those things which is slightly annoying, since I haven't been able to find out exactly when that contact started in OTL. (The dates cited vary, to say the least.)
For the purposes of the TL, I made the arbitrary decision that if there is pre-1619 contact between the Bugis and northern Australia, it won't matter much, since northern Australia isn't significantly changed from OTL anyway. (There are Aururian diseases, but given that the Bugis used to wait out the monsoon in northern Australia, the diseases will have burnt out before the Bugis sail back, unless one of them becomes an asymptomatic carrier of Marnitja.)
After 1619, if the Bugis aren't already sailing, then they will now hear about this big new Spice Island, and will probably be motivated to do something about it. Sea cucumbers, here we come.
One of the little ironies, though, is that the Nangu will see very little value in northern Australia, past setting up a resupply station or two. No-one lives there to trade with, and they'd be more likely to sail to Sulawesi and trade directly with the Bugis, rather than trying to set up a meeting point in northern Australia.
For bonus points, there's also the influence of Catholicism to consider, depending on who ends up in control of Timor.
Hmm. Bali might involve Hindu-Plirite syncreticism... which could be very interesting too. Java would really depend how open Indonesian Islam is to syncretic influences - which I have to admit I really wouldn't have a clue about, one way or the other.
Thanks!
Various European powers might have Thoughts about this idea, but it's a fair bet that the Nangu will try.
Lands of Red and Gold #51: As the Butterfly Breaks the Earth...
Lands of Red and Gold #51: As the Butterfly Breaks the Earth...
A few glimpses of how the broader world has been changed by Aururian contact...
* * *
In history as we know it, China in the 1630s was ruled by the Ming Dynasty (大明); once great, now crumbling.
For over two and a half centuries, Ming rule had brought stability to the greatest economy in the world. But as the 1630s began, Ming authority was failing.
The economy relied on silver currency, largely imported from the New World, and Spain had curtailed those imports. Later in the decade, Japan’s closure of most overseas trade eliminated another source of bullion. With the loss of silver imports, the economic structure collapsed, leading to rampant inflation and collapsing tax revenues.
Coupled with the economic problems came climate change; the advent of the Little Ice Age brought cooler and drier weather to most of China. In turn, that led to crop failures and widespread famines. These two problems led to inevitable unrest, with growing rebellions threatening the revenue-starved Ming government.
Externally, the Manchurian tribes, once tributaries to China, had been unified under Nurhaci (努尔哈赤). Nurhaci had rebelled against Ming authority in 1618, and began a campaign of military expansion against China, Korea, the Mongols, and his Manchurian neighbours. Nurhaci had several notable successes, until in 1626 he was defeated by a Ming army commanded by Yuan Chonghuan (袁崇焕), and died of his wounds a few days later.
Nurhaci’s son, Huang Taiji (皇太極), took command of the Manchus and continued the raids into China. Yuan, one of the few Ming generals to have any success against the Manchu, successfully defended Beijing from Huang’s forces in 1629, but was betrayed by his own emperor and condemned to death.
After Yuan’s execution, the Manchus continued their expansion, breaking Ming control over Korea in 1638, and pushing into China. Major rebellions within China saw rebel leaders such as Li Zicheng (李自成) and Zhang Xianzhong (张献忠) gain control of large parts of the country. Li Zicheng broke Ming rule in 1644 by capturing Beijing; the last Ming emperor committed suicide by hanging himself from a tree.
Li proclaimed himself emperor, but his dynasty was one of the shortest-lived in Chinese history. The Manchus under Huang drove Li out of Beijing after less than two weeks of his rule, and chased him across much of China until he died a year later. Huang proclaimed himself as emperor of the Qing Dynasty (大清) in 1644. The Manchus were effective rulers of China from that time, although some Ming loyalists held out for nearly two more decades.
*
In history as it might have been, the fate of China moved onto another path. In 1619, the Dutch explorer Frederik de Houtman first made contact with the natives of what he called the Great South Land, and which would later be known in English as Aururia. This was a land of gold and silver, spices and the strange new drug kunduri. Most important of all for the fate of China, Aururia was the home of two new epidemic diseases; the two-stage disease known in Aururia as the Waiting Death (Marnitja), and a new version of influenza called blue-sleep.
Contact with Aururia saw these two diseases escape into the wider world, even as Old World diseases were beginning to ravage Aururia. In later European history, the familiar story of these two plagues would see Marnitja, most commonly known as the Dutch curse, brought by ship to the Netherlands and then sweep through Europe in 1627-9. Blue-sleep was carried by Portuguese ships first into Flores, then through Indonesia and into mainland Asia, where it burned a path across the continent to emerge into Europe in 1631-2 and strike a population still reeling from the previous plague.
In China, the course of those two epidemics was reversed. Merchant ships brought blue-sleep from the Indies to China in 1629-30. Marnitja traced a slower path through much of the Old World, from Madagascar to mainland Africa to Arabia, before being carried by returning hajj pilgrims to India, then to Southeast Asia, and then by ship to Guangzhou (Canton) in 1632, from whence it spread across China in 1632-4.
The effects of the plagues wrenched China’s fate into a new path. Blue-sleep appeared first in Guangzhou in February 1629, from whence it spread both by land and sea. Ships carried it to Tianjin in May 1629, from where it was carried both into Beijing and into the Manchu-occupied province of Liaoning.
Blue-sleep has the peculiarity that its mortality is most severe amongst young adults, and thus it took a considerable toll among the young men of military age in both the Ming and Manchu armies. While both sides were disrupted, this was of most advantage to Yuan Chonghuan, who in the winter of 1629 fought the Manchu armies further from Beijing, and made effective use of his superior artillery to rout the enemy armies.
Now confirmed as a military hero, with no aura of betrayal, Yuan spent 1630-1632 in overall command of China’s northeastern armies, where he worked hard to rebuild military forces, strengthen his artillery corps, and planned the reconquest of Liaoning.
While the consequences of the blue-sleep were fortunate indeed for Yuan personally, the wider effects of the twin plagues were catastrophic. The famines of the 1620s had left a weakened, vulnerable population. Blue-sleep killed over 6% of the population, and had a disproportionate effect on young adults.
The Marnitja epidemic which followed was even worse. In southern China it killed around 15% of the remaining population, while in famine-stricken northern China the mortality was even worse, reaching over 20%.
The current Ming ruler, the Chongzen Emperor, had the fortune to survive both plagues. Had he known the fate of his counterpart in another history, the Emperor would doubtless have celebrated the fact that Marnitja claimed people who would have been prominent rebel leaders: Li Zicheng slipped into a fatal coma in 1633, while Zhang Xianzhong died of the pink cough in 1634.
Since the Chongzen Emperor lacked that knowledge, of course, he was far more concerned with the problems in the China he found. The massive death toll of the plagues was taken as a sign that the Ming Dynasty had lost divine legitimacy. While the historical rebel leaders were lost to the plagues, others emerged to take their place; revolts sprung up throughout China.
Busy planning his campaigns on the frontier, Yuan was almost indifferent to the troubles in the rest of China. In 1634-5, with the effects of Marnitja subsiding, Yuan launched his planned reconquest of Liaoning province. With disciplined troops and his advantage in artillery, he pushed the Manchus out of China and back into Manchuria proper. Korea, which in another history would have been lost to Chinese influence, remained a tributary state.
Yuan’s reconquest brought considerable glory to himself and his armies, but his very success was deemed suspicious in a time when rebel generals were springing up in several provinces. Some of Yuan’s allies at court sent him word that his victories were viewed as too effective, that he was thought to now be cooperating with the Manchus and planning to turn them into allies and launch a revolt of his own.
In April 1636, Yuan received an order calling on him to surrender command of his armies and return to Beijing. He was astute enough to realise what this order meant. Knowing that he would be deemed as a rebel regardless of his actions, and believing that the plagues were proof that the Ming had lost their legitimacy, Yuan refused the summons. Legend claims that his reply to the Emperor was: “When I come to Beijing, I will not be alone.”
Huang Taiji heard rumours of Yuan’s plans, and tried to launch more raids into Liaoning. Yuan fought one last great battle against the Manchus near Xingjing (兴京) in May 1636, where Huang was killed in the fighting, and the surviving Manchus sued for peace.
With his rear secure, Yuan marched into China himself. Feted as a hero by the local population, he won a battle north of Beijing in late June, and captured the city after the Chongzen Emperor fled the city ahead of his forces. Yuan pushed further into northern China, finding plenty of local support. In April 1637, at a battle near the city of Liaocheng (聊城), Yuan defeated the Ming armies under Hong Chengchou (洪承疇) who had been sent to reconquer northern China.
After this victory, Yuan proclaimed himself as the first emperor of the You Dynasty (大佑) [1]. He was quick to consolidate control over northern China, but lacked the manpower or support to push further south and conquer the whole country. The result was a stalemate: Yuan did not want to risk his previous triumphs by a military gamble in southern China, while the surviving Ming rulers did not have the strength to push him out.
So, as had happened so many times before in its history, China was again divided, with the You ruling in the north while the Southern Ming tried to arrest their decay in their new southern dominions...
* * *
In history, France from 1624 onwards was dominated by the famous Armand Jean du Plessis, Cardinal-Duc de Richelieu et de Fronsac, or Cardinal Richelieu as he is usually known. The Cardinal served as King Louis XIII’s chief minister, and before his death in 1642 he would do much to strengthen the central authority of the French state.
In domestic affairs, Richelieu sought to bolster royal power at the expense of the nobility and religious dissidents. The former saw the dismantling of most fortifications in France, to limit aristocrats’ ability to rebel. The latter led to Huguenot rebellions in 1625 and 1627-9. Charles I of England tried to intervene in the latter rebellion, resulting in the brief Anglo-French War of 1627-9.
As part of suppressing the Huguenot rebellion of 1627-9, the Cardinal took personal control of the troops besieging the fortified Huguenot city of La Rochelle. Despite British naval efforts to relieve the siege, La Rochelle surrendered in October 1628. The Huguenot rebellion persisted for a few more months, until Richelieu negotiated the Peace of Alais with the Huguenots. Under the terms of this peace, the Huguenots were guaranteed tolerance, but were stripped of their political rights.
In foreign affairs, Richelieu’s core goal was opposition to the Habsburgs whose dominions in Spain, Austria, and the Netherlands came close to encircling France. A pragmatic statesman, Richelieu put French national interest above religion. While the Thirty Years War had begun as a religious struggle between Protestants and Catholics, the Cardinal provided French support a several Protestant nations against the Catholic Habsburgs.
Early in the Thirty Years’ War, Richelieu sought to use French subsidies to finance opposition to the Habsburgs, with French military action being limited to secondary fronts. In that cause, France subsidised the Dutch to fight the Spanish, and the Danes and then the Swedish to fight against the Habsburg forces in the Holy Roman Empire. Meanwhile, France fought directly against the Habsburgs in northern Italy during the War of the Mantuan Succession (1628-1631), where Richelieu again took personal command of French forces, this time in northern Italy.
Ultimately, the Cardinal’s indirect efforts to weaken the Habsburgs were insufficient, since neither Denmark nor Sweden were able to break Habsburg power. As a result, Richelieu engineered direct French intervention in the Thirty Years’ War. France declared war on Spain in 1635, and on the Austrian Habsburgs in 1636. These wars both continued after Richelieu died in 1642. The French war against the Austrians continued until the Thirty Years’ War ended in 1648, while the war with Spain lasted even longer, ending only in 1659.
One of the Cardinal’s other goals was expansion of French colonial power. He was a supporter of Samuel de Champlain, the French explorer who founded New France. In the early seventeenth century, a variety of companies had been granted monopolies in the fur trade from New France, but had problems enforcing their monopolies due to traders from other nations, and because of political opposition in France. In 1627, Richelieu founded the Company of One Hundred Associates, granting it a monopoly on the fur trade, and ensured Champlain was involved both as an investor and the commander of the Company’s first fleet sent to Quebec.
Richelieu continued to advocate for the interests of Champlain and New France even when another problem emerged: the war with England. During the Anglo-French War of 1627-29, the English military efforts against France proper were largely unsuccessful. English colonial forces had more success in North America, with much of New France being conquered; even Quebec City itself was captured in July 1629, with Champlain being forced to surrender the colony.
Fortunately for the future of New France, France and England had signed the Treaty of Suza in April 1629, which permitted both sides to retain colonies they had captured before that date, but required the return of ones captured later. This included Quebec City and other parts of New France. Getting England to hand back those colonies was a harder task, but Richelieu persisted. The Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye (signed in March 1632) returned Quebec, Acadia and Cape Breton Island to France.
*
In allohistory, the fate of France and New France was shifted onto a new course. The early years of Dutch contact with Aururia meant little to France; a new source of gold for the Netherlands meant that France provided slightly reduced subsidies to the Dutch, while the Dutch in turn would provide additional subsidies to Denmark when the latter nation intervened in the Thirty Years’ War.
As with all of Europe, France would suffer the effects of the Aururian plagues. Marnitja swept across France in 1628-9. The effects were not as severe as they would later be in China, but were still devastating: about 14% of the population died. The most notable victim was Cardinal Richelieu himself. At the siege of La Rochelle, in April 1628, he died coughing up blood, and many of the government soldiers died with him. The casualties of the epidemic, and the power vacuum left by Richelieu’s death, saw the siege of La Rochelle lifted, for the time being.
With the French court intrigue-ridden after Richelieu’s death, Louis XIII turned to Honoré d'Albert, Duc de Chaulnes, marshal of France and brother of his former favourite, Charles d'Albert, Duc de Luynes. De Chaulnes became the effective chief minister of France by July 1628, replacing Richelieu. De Chaulnes had an equal desire to Richelieu to ensure France’s safety from the encircling Habsburgs, but he also had an appreciation of how heavy a toll the “Dutch curse” had taken on French manpower and prosperity. De Chaulnes supported the policy of subsidising the Habsburgs’ enemies, but was disinclined to take direct military action.
De Chaulnes had no shortage of political opponents within the French court, but perhaps the most prominent was Marie de’ Medici, Louis XIII’s mother and former regent. Half-Habsburg herself, Marie sought to advise Louis to maintain peace with that family rather than continue a bloody war. De Chaulnes’s arguments, and Louis’ own suspicion, proved to be decisive, and Marie was exiled to Compiègne in February 1629.
Under De Chaulnes’ direction, while La Rochelle was left alone, French royal forces continued the fight against the Huguenot forces in southern France. The weakened French economy meant that the struggle took longer, but the Huguenot leader, Henri, Duc de Rohan, was eventually forced to peace terms. In February 1631, the Peace of Alais concluded the civil war, on terms which restored most of the Huguenots political rights, except that they were no longer permitted to build any fortifications [2]. This peace was rather timely, since blue-sleep would sweep over France later in the same year.
The problems within France meant that the war with England continued for a few crucial months longer, with the English believing that the continued Huguenot effort offered opportunities. In practice, though, the only real English actions were naval efforts or colonial ventures; Charles I had neither the money nor the interest to invade France itself. English ships under the Duke of Buckingham made half-hearted efforts to bombard Calais in October 1628, and Le Havre in February 1629, with the main intention being to require France to keep royal forces in the north and thus weaken the offensive against the Huguenots in the south.
After the failure at Le Havre, Charles I gave up interest in the endeavour. Peace negotiations were concluded at Suza in August 1629. As happened with the historical Treaty of Suza, the treaty terms were essentially that each nation kept any territory acquired until that time.
Peace in Europe itself was easily restored, since neither nation had seized any European territory from the other, but that left the fate of New France much more ambiguous. Marnitja had not yet crossed the Atlantic, leaving the French and English/Scottish colonists in North America to fight each other without distractions.
The English/Scottish colonists had rather more success; as they had done historically, the English/Scottish colonists had seized most of New France by July 1629, including Quebec City, Port Royal, and Cape Breton Island, and the isolated trading post of Fort Pentagouet [Castine, Maine]. At the time the Treaty of Suza was signed, the only part of New France which still held out was Cape Sable [Port La Tour, Nova Scotia].
Even though Richelieu was dead, though, the Company of One Hundred Associates lived on, and its investors still looked for returns. De Chaulnes personally did not care that much about New France, but he did find it galling that England should come away with so much colonial territory when its forces in Europe had been so spectacularly unsuccessful. Once the Huguenots had been subdued, he began fresh negotiations with England for a revised treaty.
These peace negotiations were caught up in the broader foreign policy dynamics of post-Richelieu France, and the ravages of blue-sleep which swept through Europe in this era. Under De Chaulnes’ guidance, France avoided direct war with Spain. In Italy, this meant that France did not intervene in the disputed succession of Mantua, leaving the Spanish to partition the Mantuan succession between the rival claimants [3]. In the Holy Roman Empire, this meant that France offered subsidies to Denmark until that nation made peace in April 1630, and then that France began to offer subsidies to Bavaria and Sweden.
The new negotiations between France and England continued through much of 1631. With the civil war over, the threat of renewed French military action was a credible one, and Charles I was in a poor domestic position due to lack of money. All negotiations were suspended when Charles I himself succumbed to blue-sleep in November 1631.
France continued to press for a resolution, and with the chaos amongst the Austrian Habsburgs, France also had no clear rival that might be credibly considered to threaten it if it took military action against England. In England, though, the new Duke Regent, William Cavendish, Duke of Newcastle, also could not afford to undermine his own position by handing back all of the colonial acquisitions.
Eventually, the Treaty of Bobigny was signed in May 1632. In it, England agreed to restore Quebec City and the St Lawrence River to French rule. France recognised the new Scottish colonies in Nova Scotia and Cape Breton Island, although it retained Cape Sable and a vaguely-defined part of southern Nova Scotia (neither side had accurate maps of the interior). France also obtained English recognition of its control over mainland Acadia [roughly New Brunswick and parts of eastern Maine], which would have a new capital founded at Fort Saint Marie [Saint John, New Brunswick] [4], and where the displaced colonists from Nova Scotia could resettle.
The other captured French outpost was the small trading post at Fort Pentagouet [Castine, Maine]. Settlers from the Plymouth Colony had seized Fort Pentagouet in 1628 and claimed it for their colony. France wanted it removed from English rule, but it had also received a request from Gustavus Adolphus, king of Sweden, that Sweden be granted the region of Penobscott Bay (including Fort Pentagouet). Gustavus Adolphus had his own visions of securing part of his legacy in the New World, while France wanted to maintain good relations with Sweden to ensure its continued efforts against the Habsburgs in the Holy Roman Empire. Under the Treaty of Bobigny, England relinquished control of Fort Pentagouet and, in turn, recognised the French cession of that outpost to Sweden...
* * *
In their long isolation from the other two worlds, Aururian peoples developed both crops and agricultural techniques which were distinct from any known in the Old World or the New. Perennial crops, combined with systems of crop rotation, companion planting, low-till farming, and soil restoration, were well-suited to the poor soils and irregular rainfall of most of Aururia.
After European contact in 1619, it was inevitable that many Aururian crops would spread around the globe. Whether the associated techniques would also be passed on, and how quickly, was another question entirely. Transporting a few seeds across the seas was one thing; bringing all of the accumulated agricultural knowledge was quite another.
The Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie was open to any new crop which might turn a profit; in his second voyage to the Great South Land, de Houtman brought back the first Aururian crops back to Batavia. The Old World received its first samples of red yams, warran yams, wattles, murnong, and Aururian flax.
Whether through optimism or foolishness, Company officials tried to plant these crops in Batavia itself. Perhaps they had heard that Aururia was hot too, and so thought that the tropics would be suitable. These efforts were spectacular failures. Red yams simply would not form tubers in tropical latitudes, and the other plants could not cope with the heat and excessive rainfall of the tropics.
Some Dutch trading captains brought more samples of the crops over the next few years. Some of them tried to plant the crops in different parts of the East Indies, with no more success than the first efforts in Batavia.
Other captains brought the crops back to the Netherlands. The first European efforts to cultivate Aururian crops were also largely unsuccessful. Where Batavia was largely too hot, Amsterdam was mostly too cold, and for some crops, too wet. Red yams, wattles [5] and Aururian flax all failed to grow in the Netherlands.
One crop, though, did grow around Amsterdam: murnong. This perennial plant, a staple in its Aururian homeland, grows above ground in a form which to the Dutch reminds them of a dandelion. But it is the portion below ground which is useful as a crop; each plant produces either four or eight radish-shaped tubers. When farmed in Aururia, one or two of these tubers would be left in the ground to regrow the following year, while the rest would be harvested.
Unlike the other Aururian crops, murnong tolerated the cold of Amsterdam without difficulty. It required well-drained soils, and too much rain or inadequate drainage could ruin the crops, but it was at least possible to grow murnong in the Netherlands.
To the Dutch of the 1620s and 1630s, murnong was a flavoursome but occasional addition to their cuisine. Its taste was sweet, vaguely reminiscent of coconut, and some Dutchmen and Dutchwomen developed a fondness for it. Still, murnong did not grow easily in the Netherlands, with some areas receiving too much rain, or with poor drainage in soils already below sea level. More, while murnong can grow in poorer soils than many other crops, it did not yield as abundantly as its obvious rival, the potato. So, while murnong was adopted into the Netherlands, in its early years it did not become more than a minor crop.
Things changed in 1637, when Lars Knudsen returned home to Amsterdam. Knudsen was a man of Danish birth, but who had migrated to the Netherlands in 1616 and joined the Company’s service in 1621 [6]. His foreign birth created some initial mistrust, but he had served the Company well. After ten years occupying a variety of roles, and with the shortage of native-born talent created by the Aururian plagues, in 1631 he was chosen to serve a five-year term as governor of one of the most valuable outposts, Fort Nassau [Fremantle, Western Australia].
After five years distinguished service at Fort Nassau, Knudsen returned to Amsterdam to live a more profitable life based on the private wealth he had accumulated at such a profitable outpost. Knudsen had an interest in agriculture, and he had been quite observant of Aururian agricultural practices during his tenure. He planned to become a landowner on his return to the Netherlands.
Knudsen did much to spread knowledge of Aururian crops throughout the Netherlands and, indeed, further. While his efforts to grow wattles in the Netherlands met with little more success than his predecessors, the name he used for them, cornnarts (meaning grain-trees), would become the standard name for them in many languages, including English. Knudsen’s descriptions of Aururian crops were among the factors which led the Company to decide to try those crops at the Cape after European crops had failed. This meant that in 1640, Aururian farmers recruited by the Company were established in the Dutch settlement at the Cape, and brought with them both their crops and their agricultural knowledge.
Another of Knudsen’s actions, made almost in passing, would also have great consequences. While he wanted to live in the Netherlands, he had not forgotten the land of his birth. He had a fondness for murnong as a part of cuisine, and thinking that it might grow in Denmark too, sent seeds and tubers back to his home town of Lemvig.
The consequences were revolutionary.
Murnong turned out to be almost the ideal crop for much of Denmark. Many parts of the country, particularly in western Jutland, had poor, sandy soils which did not give good yields of most European crops. Even potatoes did not grow particularly well there. Murnong, though, was native to a continent where nutrient-poor soils were the norm. Even on the poor soils of western Jutland, murnong yielded about as well per acre as turnips.
Better still, as a perennial crop the requirements for ploughing and harvesting were lower; a valuable trait indeed in the labour shortage conditions of post-plague Europe. Cultivation of murnong spread quickly across the country, and it transformed Danish agriculture. Murnong was perfectly useful as human food, albeit not as a complete diet, but it was even more useful as a fodder crop. Murnong-fed cattle allowed larger herds to survive over Danish winters, and the growing herds added considerably to Danish agricultural wealth.
In short, the cultivation of the “Dutch dandelion” (murnong) was the first part of what later scholars would call the Danish Agricultural Revolution.
The second element of that revolution also owed its inspiration to Lars Knudsen, although this time the particular crop he introduced to Denmark was of European origin. Knudsen had learned of Aururian techniques of crop rotation, where wattles were alternated with other crops to replenish the soil, particularly its nitrate content.
Despite his best efforts, Knudsen still could not find varieties of wattles that could grow in the Netherlands. However, the Dutch had other crops that could be used for rotation, particularly red clover. Knudsen found red clover to be a reasonable replacement, if not quite as effective as wattles were in Aururia, and used it in his own farming. As he had done with murnong, Knudsen realised that crop rotation would work equally well in Denmark, and sent samples of red clover to Lemvig in 1645. As that crop spread, the system of crop rotation dramatically boosted Danish agricultural productivity, and in turn, the population and wealth of the Danish state [7].
While Knudsen’s direct actions benefited Denmark in particular, his inspiration for the adoption of Aururian crops at the Cape would eventually benefit much of the world. The Aururian farmers who were settled at the Cape brought over the core of the Aururian crop package, and vigorously applied their indigenous techniques of production in their new homeland. And since the Cape was a regular resupply point for ships both Dutch and foreign, in time these crops would be carried over much of the globe.
Of the early vectors of Aururian crops from the Cape, two were particularly noteworthy. The first successful introduction of the red yam into Europe was by a Portuguese sailor named Miguel Ferreira do Amaral, who in 1648 collected some tubers from the Cape, and replanted the surviving ones when he returned to Portugal.
Red yams thrived in the Portuguese climate; the latitude is appropriate for them, and as a drought-tolerant plant, the red yams grew vigorously even during the dry heat of a Mediterranean summer. From Portugal, red yams would in time spread to Spain, Italy, and the Ottoman dominions of Greece, Turkey and North Africa. The red yam would boost agriculture in the Mediterranean almost as much as the potato would boost agriculture in northern Europe.
The other major early introduction of Aururian crops came in 1654, when a Spanish ship blown off course resupplied at the Cape before returning across the Atlantic to its original destination of Buenos Aires. This ship, the Santa Maria, brought with it wattle seeds, and a couple of sailors who had seen how vigorously those trees grew in South Africa. They planted some wattles around Buenos Aires, both as ornamentation and in two outlying farms.
The wattles thrived around Buenos Aires; in such a climate, they will grow even without deliberate farming. Wattles are quite capable of spreading wild, and this was exactly what they would do over the next couple of decades. The trees became, in fact, an invasive species which would spread over much of the interior.
What mattered more for the future of Buenos Aires, though, was in the early 1670s, when farmers started making major use of wattles as crops. For relatively limited labour, the wattles yielded abundant food and timber. Farming around Buenos Aires was transformed in productivity and in nutritional yield, and South America would never be the same again.
* * *
[1] The word “You” can be translated as “bless” or “protect”, with the connotation that the people of China would be safe with Yuan in charge.
[2] In effect, the *Peace of Alais has continued the terms of the original Edict of Nantes (1598), with the exception of no fortifications being permitted.
[3] This meant that Ferrante II, Duke of Guastalla, received the Duchy of Mantua, while Charles Emmanuel I, Duke of Savoy, was given the Duchy of Montferrat. This also means that northern Italy has been spared a rather bloody war which would otherwise have significantly depopulated the region.
[4] Historically, Fort Saint Marie was founded in 1631. Allohistorically, it will be founded in 1633 and become the new capital of Acadia.
[5] There are some varieties of Aururian domesticated wattles which are capable of withstanding Amsterdam’s winters, but these are mostly grown in *Tasmania and *Victoria, not the varieties in *Western Australia which were available to the early Dutch visitors.
[6] Knudsen features in post #28.
[7] Historically, red clover was introduced to Denmark about a century later, and brought similar agricultural benefits when it arrived.
* * *
Thoughts?
P.S. Originally I’d planned to cover the fate of the Habsburgs in both the Holy Roman Empire and Spain, and the broader end of the *Thirty Years’ War. Alas, getting that written properly took longer than I’d planned. So, rather than keep everyone waiting even longer, I’ve posted the other sections of this instalment, and the end of the *Thirty Years’ War can wait for another post.
A few glimpses of how the broader world has been changed by Aururian contact...
* * *
In history as we know it, China in the 1630s was ruled by the Ming Dynasty (大明); once great, now crumbling.
For over two and a half centuries, Ming rule had brought stability to the greatest economy in the world. But as the 1630s began, Ming authority was failing.
The economy relied on silver currency, largely imported from the New World, and Spain had curtailed those imports. Later in the decade, Japan’s closure of most overseas trade eliminated another source of bullion. With the loss of silver imports, the economic structure collapsed, leading to rampant inflation and collapsing tax revenues.
Coupled with the economic problems came climate change; the advent of the Little Ice Age brought cooler and drier weather to most of China. In turn, that led to crop failures and widespread famines. These two problems led to inevitable unrest, with growing rebellions threatening the revenue-starved Ming government.
Externally, the Manchurian tribes, once tributaries to China, had been unified under Nurhaci (努尔哈赤). Nurhaci had rebelled against Ming authority in 1618, and began a campaign of military expansion against China, Korea, the Mongols, and his Manchurian neighbours. Nurhaci had several notable successes, until in 1626 he was defeated by a Ming army commanded by Yuan Chonghuan (袁崇焕), and died of his wounds a few days later.
Nurhaci’s son, Huang Taiji (皇太極), took command of the Manchus and continued the raids into China. Yuan, one of the few Ming generals to have any success against the Manchu, successfully defended Beijing from Huang’s forces in 1629, but was betrayed by his own emperor and condemned to death.
After Yuan’s execution, the Manchus continued their expansion, breaking Ming control over Korea in 1638, and pushing into China. Major rebellions within China saw rebel leaders such as Li Zicheng (李自成) and Zhang Xianzhong (张献忠) gain control of large parts of the country. Li Zicheng broke Ming rule in 1644 by capturing Beijing; the last Ming emperor committed suicide by hanging himself from a tree.
Li proclaimed himself emperor, but his dynasty was one of the shortest-lived in Chinese history. The Manchus under Huang drove Li out of Beijing after less than two weeks of his rule, and chased him across much of China until he died a year later. Huang proclaimed himself as emperor of the Qing Dynasty (大清) in 1644. The Manchus were effective rulers of China from that time, although some Ming loyalists held out for nearly two more decades.
*
In history as it might have been, the fate of China moved onto another path. In 1619, the Dutch explorer Frederik de Houtman first made contact with the natives of what he called the Great South Land, and which would later be known in English as Aururia. This was a land of gold and silver, spices and the strange new drug kunduri. Most important of all for the fate of China, Aururia was the home of two new epidemic diseases; the two-stage disease known in Aururia as the Waiting Death (Marnitja), and a new version of influenza called blue-sleep.
Contact with Aururia saw these two diseases escape into the wider world, even as Old World diseases were beginning to ravage Aururia. In later European history, the familiar story of these two plagues would see Marnitja, most commonly known as the Dutch curse, brought by ship to the Netherlands and then sweep through Europe in 1627-9. Blue-sleep was carried by Portuguese ships first into Flores, then through Indonesia and into mainland Asia, where it burned a path across the continent to emerge into Europe in 1631-2 and strike a population still reeling from the previous plague.
In China, the course of those two epidemics was reversed. Merchant ships brought blue-sleep from the Indies to China in 1629-30. Marnitja traced a slower path through much of the Old World, from Madagascar to mainland Africa to Arabia, before being carried by returning hajj pilgrims to India, then to Southeast Asia, and then by ship to Guangzhou (Canton) in 1632, from whence it spread across China in 1632-4.
The effects of the plagues wrenched China’s fate into a new path. Blue-sleep appeared first in Guangzhou in February 1629, from whence it spread both by land and sea. Ships carried it to Tianjin in May 1629, from where it was carried both into Beijing and into the Manchu-occupied province of Liaoning.
Blue-sleep has the peculiarity that its mortality is most severe amongst young adults, and thus it took a considerable toll among the young men of military age in both the Ming and Manchu armies. While both sides were disrupted, this was of most advantage to Yuan Chonghuan, who in the winter of 1629 fought the Manchu armies further from Beijing, and made effective use of his superior artillery to rout the enemy armies.
Now confirmed as a military hero, with no aura of betrayal, Yuan spent 1630-1632 in overall command of China’s northeastern armies, where he worked hard to rebuild military forces, strengthen his artillery corps, and planned the reconquest of Liaoning.
While the consequences of the blue-sleep were fortunate indeed for Yuan personally, the wider effects of the twin plagues were catastrophic. The famines of the 1620s had left a weakened, vulnerable population. Blue-sleep killed over 6% of the population, and had a disproportionate effect on young adults.
The Marnitja epidemic which followed was even worse. In southern China it killed around 15% of the remaining population, while in famine-stricken northern China the mortality was even worse, reaching over 20%.
The current Ming ruler, the Chongzen Emperor, had the fortune to survive both plagues. Had he known the fate of his counterpart in another history, the Emperor would doubtless have celebrated the fact that Marnitja claimed people who would have been prominent rebel leaders: Li Zicheng slipped into a fatal coma in 1633, while Zhang Xianzhong died of the pink cough in 1634.
Since the Chongzen Emperor lacked that knowledge, of course, he was far more concerned with the problems in the China he found. The massive death toll of the plagues was taken as a sign that the Ming Dynasty had lost divine legitimacy. While the historical rebel leaders were lost to the plagues, others emerged to take their place; revolts sprung up throughout China.
Busy planning his campaigns on the frontier, Yuan was almost indifferent to the troubles in the rest of China. In 1634-5, with the effects of Marnitja subsiding, Yuan launched his planned reconquest of Liaoning province. With disciplined troops and his advantage in artillery, he pushed the Manchus out of China and back into Manchuria proper. Korea, which in another history would have been lost to Chinese influence, remained a tributary state.
Yuan’s reconquest brought considerable glory to himself and his armies, but his very success was deemed suspicious in a time when rebel generals were springing up in several provinces. Some of Yuan’s allies at court sent him word that his victories were viewed as too effective, that he was thought to now be cooperating with the Manchus and planning to turn them into allies and launch a revolt of his own.
In April 1636, Yuan received an order calling on him to surrender command of his armies and return to Beijing. He was astute enough to realise what this order meant. Knowing that he would be deemed as a rebel regardless of his actions, and believing that the plagues were proof that the Ming had lost their legitimacy, Yuan refused the summons. Legend claims that his reply to the Emperor was: “When I come to Beijing, I will not be alone.”
Huang Taiji heard rumours of Yuan’s plans, and tried to launch more raids into Liaoning. Yuan fought one last great battle against the Manchus near Xingjing (兴京) in May 1636, where Huang was killed in the fighting, and the surviving Manchus sued for peace.
With his rear secure, Yuan marched into China himself. Feted as a hero by the local population, he won a battle north of Beijing in late June, and captured the city after the Chongzen Emperor fled the city ahead of his forces. Yuan pushed further into northern China, finding plenty of local support. In April 1637, at a battle near the city of Liaocheng (聊城), Yuan defeated the Ming armies under Hong Chengchou (洪承疇) who had been sent to reconquer northern China.
After this victory, Yuan proclaimed himself as the first emperor of the You Dynasty (大佑) [1]. He was quick to consolidate control over northern China, but lacked the manpower or support to push further south and conquer the whole country. The result was a stalemate: Yuan did not want to risk his previous triumphs by a military gamble in southern China, while the surviving Ming rulers did not have the strength to push him out.
So, as had happened so many times before in its history, China was again divided, with the You ruling in the north while the Southern Ming tried to arrest their decay in their new southern dominions...
* * *
In history, France from 1624 onwards was dominated by the famous Armand Jean du Plessis, Cardinal-Duc de Richelieu et de Fronsac, or Cardinal Richelieu as he is usually known. The Cardinal served as King Louis XIII’s chief minister, and before his death in 1642 he would do much to strengthen the central authority of the French state.
In domestic affairs, Richelieu sought to bolster royal power at the expense of the nobility and religious dissidents. The former saw the dismantling of most fortifications in France, to limit aristocrats’ ability to rebel. The latter led to Huguenot rebellions in 1625 and 1627-9. Charles I of England tried to intervene in the latter rebellion, resulting in the brief Anglo-French War of 1627-9.
As part of suppressing the Huguenot rebellion of 1627-9, the Cardinal took personal control of the troops besieging the fortified Huguenot city of La Rochelle. Despite British naval efforts to relieve the siege, La Rochelle surrendered in October 1628. The Huguenot rebellion persisted for a few more months, until Richelieu negotiated the Peace of Alais with the Huguenots. Under the terms of this peace, the Huguenots were guaranteed tolerance, but were stripped of their political rights.
In foreign affairs, Richelieu’s core goal was opposition to the Habsburgs whose dominions in Spain, Austria, and the Netherlands came close to encircling France. A pragmatic statesman, Richelieu put French national interest above religion. While the Thirty Years War had begun as a religious struggle between Protestants and Catholics, the Cardinal provided French support a several Protestant nations against the Catholic Habsburgs.
Early in the Thirty Years’ War, Richelieu sought to use French subsidies to finance opposition to the Habsburgs, with French military action being limited to secondary fronts. In that cause, France subsidised the Dutch to fight the Spanish, and the Danes and then the Swedish to fight against the Habsburg forces in the Holy Roman Empire. Meanwhile, France fought directly against the Habsburgs in northern Italy during the War of the Mantuan Succession (1628-1631), where Richelieu again took personal command of French forces, this time in northern Italy.
Ultimately, the Cardinal’s indirect efforts to weaken the Habsburgs were insufficient, since neither Denmark nor Sweden were able to break Habsburg power. As a result, Richelieu engineered direct French intervention in the Thirty Years’ War. France declared war on Spain in 1635, and on the Austrian Habsburgs in 1636. These wars both continued after Richelieu died in 1642. The French war against the Austrians continued until the Thirty Years’ War ended in 1648, while the war with Spain lasted even longer, ending only in 1659.
One of the Cardinal’s other goals was expansion of French colonial power. He was a supporter of Samuel de Champlain, the French explorer who founded New France. In the early seventeenth century, a variety of companies had been granted monopolies in the fur trade from New France, but had problems enforcing their monopolies due to traders from other nations, and because of political opposition in France. In 1627, Richelieu founded the Company of One Hundred Associates, granting it a monopoly on the fur trade, and ensured Champlain was involved both as an investor and the commander of the Company’s first fleet sent to Quebec.
Richelieu continued to advocate for the interests of Champlain and New France even when another problem emerged: the war with England. During the Anglo-French War of 1627-29, the English military efforts against France proper were largely unsuccessful. English colonial forces had more success in North America, with much of New France being conquered; even Quebec City itself was captured in July 1629, with Champlain being forced to surrender the colony.
Fortunately for the future of New France, France and England had signed the Treaty of Suza in April 1629, which permitted both sides to retain colonies they had captured before that date, but required the return of ones captured later. This included Quebec City and other parts of New France. Getting England to hand back those colonies was a harder task, but Richelieu persisted. The Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye (signed in March 1632) returned Quebec, Acadia and Cape Breton Island to France.
*
In allohistory, the fate of France and New France was shifted onto a new course. The early years of Dutch contact with Aururia meant little to France; a new source of gold for the Netherlands meant that France provided slightly reduced subsidies to the Dutch, while the Dutch in turn would provide additional subsidies to Denmark when the latter nation intervened in the Thirty Years’ War.
As with all of Europe, France would suffer the effects of the Aururian plagues. Marnitja swept across France in 1628-9. The effects were not as severe as they would later be in China, but were still devastating: about 14% of the population died. The most notable victim was Cardinal Richelieu himself. At the siege of La Rochelle, in April 1628, he died coughing up blood, and many of the government soldiers died with him. The casualties of the epidemic, and the power vacuum left by Richelieu’s death, saw the siege of La Rochelle lifted, for the time being.
With the French court intrigue-ridden after Richelieu’s death, Louis XIII turned to Honoré d'Albert, Duc de Chaulnes, marshal of France and brother of his former favourite, Charles d'Albert, Duc de Luynes. De Chaulnes became the effective chief minister of France by July 1628, replacing Richelieu. De Chaulnes had an equal desire to Richelieu to ensure France’s safety from the encircling Habsburgs, but he also had an appreciation of how heavy a toll the “Dutch curse” had taken on French manpower and prosperity. De Chaulnes supported the policy of subsidising the Habsburgs’ enemies, but was disinclined to take direct military action.
De Chaulnes had no shortage of political opponents within the French court, but perhaps the most prominent was Marie de’ Medici, Louis XIII’s mother and former regent. Half-Habsburg herself, Marie sought to advise Louis to maintain peace with that family rather than continue a bloody war. De Chaulnes’s arguments, and Louis’ own suspicion, proved to be decisive, and Marie was exiled to Compiègne in February 1629.
Under De Chaulnes’ direction, while La Rochelle was left alone, French royal forces continued the fight against the Huguenot forces in southern France. The weakened French economy meant that the struggle took longer, but the Huguenot leader, Henri, Duc de Rohan, was eventually forced to peace terms. In February 1631, the Peace of Alais concluded the civil war, on terms which restored most of the Huguenots political rights, except that they were no longer permitted to build any fortifications [2]. This peace was rather timely, since blue-sleep would sweep over France later in the same year.
The problems within France meant that the war with England continued for a few crucial months longer, with the English believing that the continued Huguenot effort offered opportunities. In practice, though, the only real English actions were naval efforts or colonial ventures; Charles I had neither the money nor the interest to invade France itself. English ships under the Duke of Buckingham made half-hearted efforts to bombard Calais in October 1628, and Le Havre in February 1629, with the main intention being to require France to keep royal forces in the north and thus weaken the offensive against the Huguenots in the south.
After the failure at Le Havre, Charles I gave up interest in the endeavour. Peace negotiations were concluded at Suza in August 1629. As happened with the historical Treaty of Suza, the treaty terms were essentially that each nation kept any territory acquired until that time.
Peace in Europe itself was easily restored, since neither nation had seized any European territory from the other, but that left the fate of New France much more ambiguous. Marnitja had not yet crossed the Atlantic, leaving the French and English/Scottish colonists in North America to fight each other without distractions.
The English/Scottish colonists had rather more success; as they had done historically, the English/Scottish colonists had seized most of New France by July 1629, including Quebec City, Port Royal, and Cape Breton Island, and the isolated trading post of Fort Pentagouet [Castine, Maine]. At the time the Treaty of Suza was signed, the only part of New France which still held out was Cape Sable [Port La Tour, Nova Scotia].
Even though Richelieu was dead, though, the Company of One Hundred Associates lived on, and its investors still looked for returns. De Chaulnes personally did not care that much about New France, but he did find it galling that England should come away with so much colonial territory when its forces in Europe had been so spectacularly unsuccessful. Once the Huguenots had been subdued, he began fresh negotiations with England for a revised treaty.
These peace negotiations were caught up in the broader foreign policy dynamics of post-Richelieu France, and the ravages of blue-sleep which swept through Europe in this era. Under De Chaulnes’ guidance, France avoided direct war with Spain. In Italy, this meant that France did not intervene in the disputed succession of Mantua, leaving the Spanish to partition the Mantuan succession between the rival claimants [3]. In the Holy Roman Empire, this meant that France offered subsidies to Denmark until that nation made peace in April 1630, and then that France began to offer subsidies to Bavaria and Sweden.
The new negotiations between France and England continued through much of 1631. With the civil war over, the threat of renewed French military action was a credible one, and Charles I was in a poor domestic position due to lack of money. All negotiations were suspended when Charles I himself succumbed to blue-sleep in November 1631.
France continued to press for a resolution, and with the chaos amongst the Austrian Habsburgs, France also had no clear rival that might be credibly considered to threaten it if it took military action against England. In England, though, the new Duke Regent, William Cavendish, Duke of Newcastle, also could not afford to undermine his own position by handing back all of the colonial acquisitions.
Eventually, the Treaty of Bobigny was signed in May 1632. In it, England agreed to restore Quebec City and the St Lawrence River to French rule. France recognised the new Scottish colonies in Nova Scotia and Cape Breton Island, although it retained Cape Sable and a vaguely-defined part of southern Nova Scotia (neither side had accurate maps of the interior). France also obtained English recognition of its control over mainland Acadia [roughly New Brunswick and parts of eastern Maine], which would have a new capital founded at Fort Saint Marie [Saint John, New Brunswick] [4], and where the displaced colonists from Nova Scotia could resettle.
The other captured French outpost was the small trading post at Fort Pentagouet [Castine, Maine]. Settlers from the Plymouth Colony had seized Fort Pentagouet in 1628 and claimed it for their colony. France wanted it removed from English rule, but it had also received a request from Gustavus Adolphus, king of Sweden, that Sweden be granted the region of Penobscott Bay (including Fort Pentagouet). Gustavus Adolphus had his own visions of securing part of his legacy in the New World, while France wanted to maintain good relations with Sweden to ensure its continued efforts against the Habsburgs in the Holy Roman Empire. Under the Treaty of Bobigny, England relinquished control of Fort Pentagouet and, in turn, recognised the French cession of that outpost to Sweden...
* * *
In their long isolation from the other two worlds, Aururian peoples developed both crops and agricultural techniques which were distinct from any known in the Old World or the New. Perennial crops, combined with systems of crop rotation, companion planting, low-till farming, and soil restoration, were well-suited to the poor soils and irregular rainfall of most of Aururia.
After European contact in 1619, it was inevitable that many Aururian crops would spread around the globe. Whether the associated techniques would also be passed on, and how quickly, was another question entirely. Transporting a few seeds across the seas was one thing; bringing all of the accumulated agricultural knowledge was quite another.
The Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie was open to any new crop which might turn a profit; in his second voyage to the Great South Land, de Houtman brought back the first Aururian crops back to Batavia. The Old World received its first samples of red yams, warran yams, wattles, murnong, and Aururian flax.
Whether through optimism or foolishness, Company officials tried to plant these crops in Batavia itself. Perhaps they had heard that Aururia was hot too, and so thought that the tropics would be suitable. These efforts were spectacular failures. Red yams simply would not form tubers in tropical latitudes, and the other plants could not cope with the heat and excessive rainfall of the tropics.
Some Dutch trading captains brought more samples of the crops over the next few years. Some of them tried to plant the crops in different parts of the East Indies, with no more success than the first efforts in Batavia.
Other captains brought the crops back to the Netherlands. The first European efforts to cultivate Aururian crops were also largely unsuccessful. Where Batavia was largely too hot, Amsterdam was mostly too cold, and for some crops, too wet. Red yams, wattles [5] and Aururian flax all failed to grow in the Netherlands.
One crop, though, did grow around Amsterdam: murnong. This perennial plant, a staple in its Aururian homeland, grows above ground in a form which to the Dutch reminds them of a dandelion. But it is the portion below ground which is useful as a crop; each plant produces either four or eight radish-shaped tubers. When farmed in Aururia, one or two of these tubers would be left in the ground to regrow the following year, while the rest would be harvested.
Unlike the other Aururian crops, murnong tolerated the cold of Amsterdam without difficulty. It required well-drained soils, and too much rain or inadequate drainage could ruin the crops, but it was at least possible to grow murnong in the Netherlands.
To the Dutch of the 1620s and 1630s, murnong was a flavoursome but occasional addition to their cuisine. Its taste was sweet, vaguely reminiscent of coconut, and some Dutchmen and Dutchwomen developed a fondness for it. Still, murnong did not grow easily in the Netherlands, with some areas receiving too much rain, or with poor drainage in soils already below sea level. More, while murnong can grow in poorer soils than many other crops, it did not yield as abundantly as its obvious rival, the potato. So, while murnong was adopted into the Netherlands, in its early years it did not become more than a minor crop.
Things changed in 1637, when Lars Knudsen returned home to Amsterdam. Knudsen was a man of Danish birth, but who had migrated to the Netherlands in 1616 and joined the Company’s service in 1621 [6]. His foreign birth created some initial mistrust, but he had served the Company well. After ten years occupying a variety of roles, and with the shortage of native-born talent created by the Aururian plagues, in 1631 he was chosen to serve a five-year term as governor of one of the most valuable outposts, Fort Nassau [Fremantle, Western Australia].
After five years distinguished service at Fort Nassau, Knudsen returned to Amsterdam to live a more profitable life based on the private wealth he had accumulated at such a profitable outpost. Knudsen had an interest in agriculture, and he had been quite observant of Aururian agricultural practices during his tenure. He planned to become a landowner on his return to the Netherlands.
Knudsen did much to spread knowledge of Aururian crops throughout the Netherlands and, indeed, further. While his efforts to grow wattles in the Netherlands met with little more success than his predecessors, the name he used for them, cornnarts (meaning grain-trees), would become the standard name for them in many languages, including English. Knudsen’s descriptions of Aururian crops were among the factors which led the Company to decide to try those crops at the Cape after European crops had failed. This meant that in 1640, Aururian farmers recruited by the Company were established in the Dutch settlement at the Cape, and brought with them both their crops and their agricultural knowledge.
Another of Knudsen’s actions, made almost in passing, would also have great consequences. While he wanted to live in the Netherlands, he had not forgotten the land of his birth. He had a fondness for murnong as a part of cuisine, and thinking that it might grow in Denmark too, sent seeds and tubers back to his home town of Lemvig.
The consequences were revolutionary.
Murnong turned out to be almost the ideal crop for much of Denmark. Many parts of the country, particularly in western Jutland, had poor, sandy soils which did not give good yields of most European crops. Even potatoes did not grow particularly well there. Murnong, though, was native to a continent where nutrient-poor soils were the norm. Even on the poor soils of western Jutland, murnong yielded about as well per acre as turnips.
Better still, as a perennial crop the requirements for ploughing and harvesting were lower; a valuable trait indeed in the labour shortage conditions of post-plague Europe. Cultivation of murnong spread quickly across the country, and it transformed Danish agriculture. Murnong was perfectly useful as human food, albeit not as a complete diet, but it was even more useful as a fodder crop. Murnong-fed cattle allowed larger herds to survive over Danish winters, and the growing herds added considerably to Danish agricultural wealth.
In short, the cultivation of the “Dutch dandelion” (murnong) was the first part of what later scholars would call the Danish Agricultural Revolution.
The second element of that revolution also owed its inspiration to Lars Knudsen, although this time the particular crop he introduced to Denmark was of European origin. Knudsen had learned of Aururian techniques of crop rotation, where wattles were alternated with other crops to replenish the soil, particularly its nitrate content.
Despite his best efforts, Knudsen still could not find varieties of wattles that could grow in the Netherlands. However, the Dutch had other crops that could be used for rotation, particularly red clover. Knudsen found red clover to be a reasonable replacement, if not quite as effective as wattles were in Aururia, and used it in his own farming. As he had done with murnong, Knudsen realised that crop rotation would work equally well in Denmark, and sent samples of red clover to Lemvig in 1645. As that crop spread, the system of crop rotation dramatically boosted Danish agricultural productivity, and in turn, the population and wealth of the Danish state [7].
While Knudsen’s direct actions benefited Denmark in particular, his inspiration for the adoption of Aururian crops at the Cape would eventually benefit much of the world. The Aururian farmers who were settled at the Cape brought over the core of the Aururian crop package, and vigorously applied their indigenous techniques of production in their new homeland. And since the Cape was a regular resupply point for ships both Dutch and foreign, in time these crops would be carried over much of the globe.
Of the early vectors of Aururian crops from the Cape, two were particularly noteworthy. The first successful introduction of the red yam into Europe was by a Portuguese sailor named Miguel Ferreira do Amaral, who in 1648 collected some tubers from the Cape, and replanted the surviving ones when he returned to Portugal.
Red yams thrived in the Portuguese climate; the latitude is appropriate for them, and as a drought-tolerant plant, the red yams grew vigorously even during the dry heat of a Mediterranean summer. From Portugal, red yams would in time spread to Spain, Italy, and the Ottoman dominions of Greece, Turkey and North Africa. The red yam would boost agriculture in the Mediterranean almost as much as the potato would boost agriculture in northern Europe.
The other major early introduction of Aururian crops came in 1654, when a Spanish ship blown off course resupplied at the Cape before returning across the Atlantic to its original destination of Buenos Aires. This ship, the Santa Maria, brought with it wattle seeds, and a couple of sailors who had seen how vigorously those trees grew in South Africa. They planted some wattles around Buenos Aires, both as ornamentation and in two outlying farms.
The wattles thrived around Buenos Aires; in such a climate, they will grow even without deliberate farming. Wattles are quite capable of spreading wild, and this was exactly what they would do over the next couple of decades. The trees became, in fact, an invasive species which would spread over much of the interior.
What mattered more for the future of Buenos Aires, though, was in the early 1670s, when farmers started making major use of wattles as crops. For relatively limited labour, the wattles yielded abundant food and timber. Farming around Buenos Aires was transformed in productivity and in nutritional yield, and South America would never be the same again.
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[1] The word “You” can be translated as “bless” or “protect”, with the connotation that the people of China would be safe with Yuan in charge.
[2] In effect, the *Peace of Alais has continued the terms of the original Edict of Nantes (1598), with the exception of no fortifications being permitted.
[3] This meant that Ferrante II, Duke of Guastalla, received the Duchy of Mantua, while Charles Emmanuel I, Duke of Savoy, was given the Duchy of Montferrat. This also means that northern Italy has been spared a rather bloody war which would otherwise have significantly depopulated the region.
[4] Historically, Fort Saint Marie was founded in 1631. Allohistorically, it will be founded in 1633 and become the new capital of Acadia.
[5] There are some varieties of Aururian domesticated wattles which are capable of withstanding Amsterdam’s winters, but these are mostly grown in *Tasmania and *Victoria, not the varieties in *Western Australia which were available to the early Dutch visitors.
[6] Knudsen features in post #28.
[7] Historically, red clover was introduced to Denmark about a century later, and brought similar agricultural benefits when it arrived.
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Thoughts?
P.S. Originally I’d planned to cover the fate of the Habsburgs in both the Holy Roman Empire and Spain, and the broader end of the *Thirty Years’ War. Alas, getting that written properly took longer than I’d planned. So, rather than keep everyone waiting even longer, I’ve posted the other sections of this instalment, and the end of the *Thirty Years’ War can wait for another post.
Hnau
Banned
This is an update that I've been wanting to see for a long time: the beginnings of changes due to the introduction of the Aururian crop package. What interesting butterflies in other parts of the world too... China divided with a new dynasty in the north, France retaining more control over New World colonies and giving Sweden a piece as well... and who knew that Denmark would be one of the first European countries to receive huge benefits from Aururian crops? Lots of interesting here, Jared. I do hope you keep your eye on Argentina, I find the possibilities there very intriguing. Great update!
Great update!mojojojo
Gone Fishin'
I wonder what interesting culinary uses the Danes will be putting this Sweet tuber to?Desserts? Maybe they will add a whole new dimension to the Danish Pastry
Kaiphranos
Donor
Just wait until the Indians get hold of this "dane-delion" - imagine murnong curry
Well, this is the start... More to follow over time, of course.
France is in a funny position... fewer New World colonies than it had at the same point in OTL (they didn't lose Nova Scotia until 1710 in OTL), but more authority over the New World because they were in a position to demand *New Brunswick back from Britain, despite ceding it by treaty. In the long run, this could play out in several ways, of course.
and who knew that Denmark would be one of the first European countries to receive huge benefits from Aururian crops? Lots of interesting here, Jared. I do hope you keep your eye on Argentina, I find the possibilities there very intriguing.
Argentina is most certainly not forgotten, although the really meaningful changes won't play out until the eighteenth century... Who knows how long it will take me to cover things that far ahead? (Possibly... not all that long.)
I thought that would be an intriguing thing to have happen. Could play out in a few ways, yes.
Murnong reportedly tasted very nice. Traditionally the Aborigines baked or roasted it, so it would go very well with some pastries, or anything with ham or pork, too.
I'm tempted to try to grow some myself, actually, but seeds are pretty hard to come by, unfortunately.
Just wait until the Indians get hold of this "dane-delion" - imagine murnong curry
Oh, yes. And there's also a going to be an odd but significant other culinary outcome of introducing murnong to India. Jain cuisine (and those influenced by them) is even stricter than vegetarian, since some plants aren't allowed to be eaten either. This includes root vegetables such as onions, because collecting the tuber usually means killing the plant.
Murnong is different, though, since it's a root vegetable but is harvested perennially, so collecting the tuber(s) doesn't kill the plant. Which would, probably, make murnong acceptable to Jains... and create a whole new cuisine style.
Surviving Southern Ming, but for a different reason . Having two (or more) Han Chinas hasn't happend for while ITTL...
Also, Europe is going to benefit quite a bit from the new plants, especially those along the Med.
Looking forwards to seeing what effect the new crops will have in the Americans.
. Having two (or more) Han Chinas hasn't happend for while ITTL...Also, Europe is going to benefit quite a bit from the new plants, especially those along the Med.
Looking forwards to seeing what effect the new crops will have in the Americans.
Interesting update. I guess Portugal will have a larger population too, which may allow it to more heavily settle whatever colonies it may end up with or keep ITTL
Yes, it's been several hundred years, from my (very limited) knowledge of Chinese dynasties [1].Surviving Southern Ming, but for a different reason
Very much so. The whole Mediterranean zone is more or less perfect for the broad suite of *Australian crops, with the partial exception of murnong. The effects will be profound, although it may take a century or more for the crops to spread throughout the region.
The ideal growing zones for these crops perhaps not as broad as around the Med, but much of the OTL southern USA, California, Argentina and southern Brazil is capable of growing them. With interesting effects, although they will probably take longer to happen because most of those areas are not yet settled by people with access to the relevant crops.
Yes, Portugal will support a larger population. So will Spain, as a matter of fact. With considerable consequences for their own economies.
Whether that will lead to larger settlement of their colonies, well, maybe. I'm not sure enough about the social dynamics in Iberia which led to relatively limited settlement (as compared to, say, Britain), and whether these would be likely to change with greater population. But there's certainly a possibility there.
[1] ie according to Wikipedia.
I thought Portugal had an relatively massive movement of population to Brazil? Roughly 500-600k emigrated during the 18th century, out of a total population of roughly two million. Prior to that they managed over 100k when the metropolis populations was in the million range. I think that's slightly above the per capita movement to America of the British, just hamstrung by a smaller originating base and a less fertile destination.
The Spanish sent roughly the same amount of people in the same period, from a base population that was seven to nine times larger.
Hmm. For some reason I'd thought that the numbers were smaller than that. If those proportions hold, then yes, of course a more populous Portugal will be flooding its colonies with immigrants.
Unless, of course, the opportunities which attracted them in OTL are replaced by more prosperous agriculture at home. I'm not sure whether that will make much difference - sugar and gold and so forth will be big attractors of immigrants regardless of whether Aururian crops allow decent agricultural returns at home.
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