I like doorstoppers, even if it takes a few days to work up the courage to actually read through them. In my mind, this TL is associated with big (but juicy and delicious) doorstopper posts.
Epically awesome Jared. Seems the Europeans have arrived in interesting times.
Baffin comes to the Empire in 1636, and Nuyts, probably, in 1637. Both do it before the civil war ends. Both could try to influence the war's outcome.
The Englishman has his mother country's full support (for what it is worth), while Nuyts acts more or less on his (and his shareholders) own. The latter (taking into account his general badassery) may be more reckless, which could influence his relations with the Yadji (and with Baffin's men).
If shit hits the fan, the VOC and the United Provinces may disawov Nuyts and his ilk, and let the Yadji and the EIC do what they please with captured Dutchmen. On the other hand, memory of the Amboyna incident is still very much alive in late 1630s, and lure of Eastern Aururian riches may be too strong...
If Nuyts and Baffin will somehow manage to start the Anglo-Dutch war 15 years before schedule,... well, consequences would be immense.
The English Civil War itself could be butterflied away or at least changed beyond recognition.
If we see Baffin and Nuyts taking sides in the Yadji Civil War, it would set a precedent for European powers to fight proxy wars through their Aururian allies, much like OTL India... Which is an apt comparison considering that Aururia is also (or will be) valued for its spices and trading goods.
So did Batjiri's work become a tenth classic?
A few thoughts.
Assuming Baffin stays in the area long enough for Nuyts to arrive, that's going to make the situation even more complicated.
If Nuyts launches his invasion regardless of the English, Baffin is in an excellent situation to determine whether it succeeds.
I also wonder if Nuyts was planning on picking up local help, a la Cortes?
Either from the Cider Isle or from Aotearoa; both would have mercenaries for hire, although hiring Maori would require at least somewhat peaceful contact first.
Two potential crops for North American colonies would be wheat and wine. Wine is doable, as evidenced by some of the modern viticulture efforts on the East Coast, and wheat was the other major cash crop of late colonial Virginia besides tobacco.
With chaos likely in the Baltic region from the Swedes, Poles and Russians all reacting to the plagues, food exports from there are going to be unreliable for some time, making American grain more valuable as a result.
I also have some thoughts on crops that the Aururians might be particularly interested in importing. Olives are an obvious one, given that oil is at best a secondary product from the Aururian crops that produce it; it also grows well in that climate and remains productive for a very long time.
Sugar will be immensely valuable, just like it was everywhere else, and once it arrives cacao also will increase in value.
Tea and coffee are both possibilities, although I expect tea will be an easier sell prior to sugar becoming widely available.
Amongst the Atjuntja, and to a lesser extent the other Aururian nations, flowering plants with practical uses should do quite well also; saffron, for instance, or lotus, or hibiscus, jasmine, osmanthus, zucchini, elderberries...
And there's a tree I stumbled across while wikisurfing, called Moringa oleifera, that seems to be an excellent prospect for introduction. It should grow in the Aururian climate, every part of the tree is usable, and it apparently is widely grown in Indonesia and Sri Lanka and therefore could be encountered by Nangu traders in Dutch territory.
I doubt that wheat could be exported from Virginia to Europe at all, with prevailing transport conditions of the 17th century. Shipping was expensive and risky, and wheat is bulk commodity, and relatively low-value per unit of weight. To trade wheat (and rice) to the Caribbean sugar islands - sure, distances are not that great, and competition is almost absent with all fertile soil occupied with cane. But sugar industry itself could be disrupted by Aururian plagues (fewer consumers in Europe, fewer slaves in Africa).Why... yes. Yes, it would.
Wheat... hmm. Need to look into that. I'm not sure whether early colonial Virginia would find it profitable to grow food crops for export, given that in OTL, about 20% of new settlers died of starvation in the first year. Maybe once things get a bit more established, and/or if they find a way to redeploy labour after tobacco prices collapse.
Would probably help for a few years, but it's a narrow window of opportunity. Depends how much can be done in a few years.
Up to a point. Baffin's expedition is one of exploration. Sure, he has some sailors with muskets, and a few cannon, but Nuyts will be bringing over a thousand heavily-armed veterans.
And there's also the point that Nuyts may be inclined to cooperate with the English. After all, he's already acting against the VOC, and if he wants contact with the rest of the world, using English ships may be a convenient way to do it. At least until he has consolidated his position in Aururia enough that the VOC have to recognise him.
Nuyts plans on picking up local help, but he is expecting to do it from within the Yadji Empire. He has heard of one subject people there - the Yadilli - who live near the *Murray Mouth, and are Gunnagalic Plirites who resent Yadji rule both on religious and linguistic grounds. He believes that he can get help from them, and perhaps from other Plirites such as the Mutjing in the *Eyre Peninsula.
Wheat... hmm. Need to look into that. I'm not sure whether early colonial Virginia would find it profitable to grow food crops for export, given that in OTL, about 20% of new settlers died of starvation in the first year. Maybe once things get a bit more established, and/or if they find a way to redeploy labour after tobacco prices collapse.
Good point. Olives and olive oil could be quite valuable. (Olives would also go feral, as they've done in OTL, but c'est la vie.) As you point out, there aren't that many oil crops available in Aururia. They can kinda-sorta create linseed oil from native flax, but it doesn't store very well in the Aururian climate. Olive oil would be marvellous. (Especially to deep-fry yam slices... mmmm.)
As an aside, there are native Australian olive species, too. For all I know, some of them may be domesticable, but there's not enough evidence, so I didn't include any of them ITTL's Aururian crop package. (Apart from red yams themselves, I only include plants which in OTL have been shown to have some potential for domestication - even though there are almost certainly others where the Aboriginal knowledge has been lost.)
Everyone loves sugar! I don't know how much of it the Aururians will be able to obtain, but those who can get it will love it. Especially the cacao+sugar combination.
I've been mulling over whether any of the native Aururian tea-like beverages (think lemon-tea types) will be popular enough to be taken up overseas, or for that matter whether they will last even within Aururia without being displaced by tea. At the very least, tea will probably become popular with the Atjuntja, who lack the eastern beverages.
Good suggestions. The Atjuntja love anything flowering... and they will now have a lot to choose from.
Good find! I can certainly see the Aururians taking up that plant, especially as another perennial to add to their farming.
And as an aside, the wiki article is a classic example of all that's wrong with wikipedia (except that it doesn't credit Poland for inventing the tree).
I doubt that wheat could be exported from Virginia to Europe at all, with prevailing transport conditions of the 17th century. Shipping was expensive and risky, and wheat is bulk commodity, and relatively low-value per unit of weight. To trade wheat (and rice) to the Caribbean sugar islands - sure, distances are not that great, and competition is almost absent with all fertile soil occupied with cane. But sugar industry itself could be disrupted by Aururian plagues (fewer consumers in Europe, fewer slaves in Africa).
At the same time, European wheat importers of the time (the Netherlands, mostly) were well-supplied by Baltic grain. Of course, wars and plagues will disrupt Baltic exports, too, but you'll need disruption in the Baltic coinciding with bumper crops and absence of plagues in America. Very narrow window of opportunity, indeed. And as soon as Baltic commerce would be restored (the Dutch in OTL 'convinced' Baltic nations to restore exports, going as far as sending war fleets to Danzig), Virginian (and any other American) grain exports to Europe would become non-competitive again, and for a long time. Before steamships and railroads, transoceanic exports were of necessity high-value - sugar, indigo, tobacco, cotton cloth, etc.
By this point in OTL, Charles I had signed a secret treaty with Spain to oppose the Dutch on the high seas. While the plagues have probably butterflied the specific treaty away, it was the result of a trend since the turn of the seventeenth century, so England is already aligned against the Dutch and Baffin will take any opportunity to gain a foothold for England in Aururia and keep yet another Dutchman out.
The Royal Terra Incognita Company, perhaps?
Minor point-- I seem to recall Jared saying before that his idea of making flour from ground wattleseeds was only theoretical (perhaps I misremembered) but I recently came across a reference to Aborigines doing it in OTL.
I doubt that wheat could be exported from Virginia to Europe at all, with prevailing transport conditions of the 17th century. Shipping was expensive and risky, and wheat is bulk commodity, and relatively low-value per unit of weight. To trade wheat (and rice) to the Caribbean sugar islands - sure, distances are not that great, and competition is almost absent with all fertile soil occupied with cane.
But sugar industry itself could be disrupted by Aururian plagues (fewer consumers in Europe, fewer slaves in Africa).
At the same time, European wheat importers of the time (the Netherlands, mostly) were well-supplied by Baltic grain. Of course, wars and plagues will disrupt Baltic exports, too, but you'll need disruption in the Baltic coinciding with bumper crops and absence of plagues in America. Very narrow window of opportunity, indeed. And as soon as Baltic commerce would be restored (the Dutch in OTL 'convinced' Baltic nations to restore exports, going as far as sending war fleets to Danzig), Virginian (and any other American) grain exports to Europe would become non-competitive again, and for a long time.
Before steamships and railroads, transoceanic exports were of necessity high-value - sugar, indigo, tobacco, cotton cloth, etc.
Well, given that information, Nuyts won't have to worry about a spoiling attack, or at least not to the extent that it would impact his plans. What he will have to worry about is keeping Baffin from spilling the beans to the VOC before they can be presented with a fait accompli. Aside, of course, from the fact that Nuyts simply won't be expecting any other Europeans to be there when he arrives.
This also assumes that Baffin, having arrived the better part of a year earlier, hasn't already started to interfere with the civil war.
I see this going spectacularly wrong in three ways. With the Yadilli, their Plirite beliefs are going to ensure that the war becomes vastly uglier the moment they enter it, and Nuyts is going to alienate them if he tries to moderate their behavior to even the standards of 17th century Europeans.
Hiring Mutjing means that he's openly interfering with the main Nangu food supply, and in such a way as to guarantee that the *Eyre Peninsula will no longer be off-limits to the continental powers post-war, to say nothing of the fact that the VOC presence amongst the Mutjing will want to stop him from ruining their trade.
And given what we saw with the Kurnawal rebellion, Nuyts doing either of these makes it more likely that the two Yadji claimants will call a truce long enough to crush him before returning to the civil war.
If the climate is appropriate, I can see more attempts being made at tea, coffee and silk production in the southern colonies, along with rice and possibly citrus fruit; the latter two were grown there IOTL, although tobacco, cotton and indigo overshadowed them, and the former three are all going to be a bit harder to come by with the drop in bullion to pay for them at the source.
Dutch gold from Aururia won't help the English much there, because most of it is probably being spent in Asia before it can return to Europe and enter the broader continental economy.
Besides those five, feel free to postulate any other crops that might grow well in Virginia or the Carolinas and fetch high prices in Europe, even if they never took off IOTL;
with kunduri destroying tobacco's potential as a cash crop, cotton still a relatively minor player until the invention of a cotton gin, and both slave and free labor less available (especially slaves, since keeping sugar production up in the West Indies is going to be the first priority for the lessened supply), colonial farmers are going to be very willing to experiment.
Olive oil got me thinking about balsamic vinegar, which leads me to another question: do the Aururians know how to make vinegar, and if so what do they use for it? If they don't, then it might be a useful trade good for European merchants once the Aururians see how useful it is for pickling things; if they do, then depending on the flavor it might be a highly valuable trade good back in Europe and Asia.
Depends on how soon sugar gets taken up in Queensland. Now that the Kiyungu are hooked into the greater trade network, it's only a matter of time until someone with knowledge of sugarcane cultivation learns about the region and realizes the potential in growing it so close to the Asian and Aururian export markets.
It probably depends on how effective the native tisanes are as a stimulant when compared with tea, how expensive tea is compared with the native alternatives, and how it tastes compared with the native alternatives.
I actually think that the first Aururians to willingly make it past Java might be Atjuntja gardeners/botanists searching for new flowers to add to the Garden. While most Nangu would probably sell the Good Man himself to get a first-hand look at Europe, the Dutch aren't going to give potential competitors that sort of information windfall without something unbelievably valuable in exchange.
Aside from various types of flowers, the Atjuntja travellers will also probably try to bring back peafowl (apparently the appropriate term for peacocks), although they might prefer the Green Peafowl to the more common IOTL Indian Peafowl due to the females of the former being just as spectacularly colored as the males.
I expect that the lotus will be taken up by the Yadji almost as quickly as by the Atjuntja, given its beauty, its usefulness, and its connection with water.
Maybe Flocc would know more? IIRC, he's the only AH.commer in the general region where you'd find it grown IOTL, so he at least has a better shot of obtaining first-hand information about it.
I think that while sugar production will decrease due to the plagues, it won't be disrupted per se; the drop in production will be balanced by the drop in consumers, keeping the price high. What might happen if production recovers faster than European consumption is more emphasis put into selling it in Asia, packaging it with other products (cacao and coffee being the most obvious), and refining it into rum.
Do the Aururians have any team sports like the ball games of ancient Mesoamerica? or any strategic board games like chess? If so would there be any possibility of these games becoming popular in the outside world?
Much the same would apply to the Aururian equivalents (Leptospermum petersonii, mostly). The wild version is drinkable - it was used by the Aborigines as a medicine/flavouring, and early colonial settlers used it as a substitute for tea. Today, it is used as a "native tea" and as a flavouring in blends with true tea, so there's definitely potential there. With a history of thousands of years of cultivation, though (well, about 2000), the final product may not be that reminiscent of what we know from OTL. I may end just having to flip a coin on that one...
What about dog racing?
What about dog fighting?I haven't thought too much about it, but I could certainly see that being done in the Five Rivers. They might not get as competitive about it as football, but it could still become popular enough.
What about dog fighting?
Yeah, things aren't looking great for him, are they? His best course of action might be to ally with one side in the civil war and hope that he can tip the balance, and then exploit a position of power that way. Or possibly try and get help from Tjibarr, who might be keen to see the Yadji disrupted for a while longer.
Coffee can only be grown in the tropics, I believe - I think that the plant can't tolerate frost. Ditto for most citrus species. Maybe possibly growable in Florida or southern Georgia, but not much further north.
Silk... I have no idea. I'll have to look into it, although I suspect that at most it would be a niche crop - profitable, but too labour-intensive to be grown across most of the southern colonies.
Long-staple cotton can be grown in the coastal areas of South Carolina/Georgia, and probably still will be. It just can't be grown further inland. Short-staple cotton requires the cotton gin.
Indigo... well, in OTL that was viable because of British government subsidies - they didn't want to rely on importing it, so they subsidised the production. That market collapsed after the American Revolution. ITTL, there's an Aururian version of indigo, which can be grown... well, in quite a lot of places, but most notably in Iberia.
That depends how successful the VOC is at taking over the intra-Asian trade. In OTL, they did that pretty well, and didn't need to use that much bullion to pay for Asian goods.
ITTL... maybe. Could be at least some gold flowing through to Europe, but that doesn't mean that the English will get their hands on enough of it. Plus, of course, with a wealthier VOC, the English may not be able to go buying as many things in Asia anyway, since the VOC may keep more of a stranglehold on the market.
Offhand, I can't think of any other cash crops which might fit the bill, although I'll look into it. At the moment, I'm actually thinking that Virginia and the Chesapeake is likely to be economically moribund for decades, if not most of a century. Tobacco fit that climate really well - it's too cool and dry for the really tropical/subtropical crops, but just right for tobacco. Wine might make up some of the difference, but that would be a limited market (since wine can also be grown pretty well in Europe).
Of course, if there is some other cash crop which could plausibly be grown there, I'd be happy to introduce it. I'm just not sure what it might be.
The crunch of slave labour is something which I'm thinking is going to make a huge difference to the history of colonial North America. There are going to be fewer slaves available (less at source, and sugar planters will keep bidding up the price), at least a partially reduced market for them anyway (no real tobacco boom), and also slower European immigration.
Early colonial farmers are probably going to be willing to experiment with other cash crops, but until they are successful, then they're probably going to be lonely colonial farmers. Economic migrants to North America are probably going to be considerably reduced when compared to OTL. The British Isles will probably send some religiously-inspired ones (as OTL), but for the rest... Well, there'll be rice and a bit of cotton/indigo in *South Carolina, and furs in the north, but maybe not much in between, at least for a long while.
And figures out a decent source of labour. Planting sugar cane is damn unpleasant, often deadly work. The disease environment in Aururia won't be quite as bad as the Caribbean (although malaria is on the continent), but it won't be nice. Getting volunteers may not be easy.
Of course, there is always the way which OTL North Queensland sugar growers took...
The Atjuntja don't have quite the same drive for exploration that the Nangu do. They would welcome additions to the Garden, but aren't quite as likely to go looking for them. That doesn't mean that there will be no Atjuntja in Java, but they may not be quite as prompt about it.
Oh, yes, the Aururians have team sports. By far the most significant is the form of football which the Gunnagal play in Tjibarr (and, with different rules, elsewhere in the Five Rivers). It's a descendant of the ball games which the Aborigines played in OTL - and extremely fast-paced game where the ball can be held or kicked, with different rules. It's as important to the Gunnagal as chariot-racing was to the Byzantines, and the football supporters can get every bit as vicious as the Blues and Greens did in Constantinople, too. Worse, in some ways, since the factions rule almost everything in Tjibarr - commerce, land ownership, politics, etc.
Whether it would take off in the rest of the world... quite possibly. Although not for a while.
Addendum to my last post: having done a bit more research, I think that there is a slightly different beverage niche for "lemon tea" from Leptospermum petersonii.
This is because it turns out that the Aururian beverage doesn't have any stimulants equivalent to the theanine in tea and caffeine in both tea & coffee. What it does have is some mild sedative effects (and a nice flavour). So it's not something which people drink for a morning pick-me-up - not at all - but something which you'd be more likely to drink if you want to relax. Soothing and calming of an afternoon, say, or in a peace or hospitality ceremony (which is one time Aururians drink it), or to help someone with mild insomnia or the like. Different market to tea or coffee, but perhaps one which would be suitable for export, all the same.
What about dog fighting?
Methinks the Good Man would not approve.
The fun part there will be that Tjibarr is rather more politically sophisticated than Cortes' native help was, and if Nuyts ignores that he's going to get a very unpleasant surprise when he tries to weasel out of any deals he made with the "ignorant savages" after taking down the Yadji.
One citrus species that could be grown further north would be yuzu; IIRC, it can tolerate lengthy frosts. Whether it makes it out of Japan is more questionable; since there's no Amboyna massacre ITTL, though, the English factory in Hirado is probably still there, so there's at least some small chance that the English would know it exists.
In the absence of tobacco, do whatever factors prevented long-staple cotton from becoming a primary cash crop IOTL still apply?
Interesting. I didn't know about the OTL subsidies, and I wonder what the economic effects of Spanish indigo production might be.
A few things I've thought of since the last post:
1) Ginseng. It would be incredibly valuable in the Chinese market, and American ginseng grows quite well in the hilly woodlands in western Virginia.
2) Aururian spice trees. The various myrtles might grow in the Tidewater, although I suppose it depends on whether even Virginian winters are still too harsh for them. If they can survive, they'd make a logical cash crop for the area.
3) Hemp fiber. Aside from its industrial uses, it apparently makes very comfortable clothing once you soften it; the best way to do that without destroying the fiber would seem to be repeated washing.
4) Second-stage agricultural products. This depends a great deal on whether England is willing to sacrifice some of the American market for English manufactures in exchange for the profitability of its colonies. IOTL they weren't, but ITTL they might not have much choice if they want the colonies to be profitable at all.
The economics of slavery and Southern agriculture are going to be interesting. IOTL most colonial Virginian farmers above subsistence level could afford at least one or two slaves and some land in tobacco. Cotton changed that because it required much more land and labor than tobacco, and therefore more capital investment; essentially, the rural middle class was slowly squeezed out of both productive land and the slave market.
ITTL, tobacco won't be profitable anymore and cotton plantations won't be viable until a major technological development, but at same time slaves will be more expensive and rarer. I'm not sure what the ramifications will be for the developing Virginian class system with no tobacco and fewer slaves.
Race relations are also likely to be affected by the changes ITTL. IOTL, racism in the pre-cotton era tended to be more arrogant and condescending than fearful and hateful, and there was more differentiation between "blacks" as a general group and "blacks" as individual people. It didn't really shift into its more modern form until the dominance of cotton plantations put slaves out of reach of all but the wealthy planters, and therefore reduced the chance of the average Southern white person getting to know a slave as anything more than a cog in a machine that was steadily grinding non-planters into destitution. Short-circuiting plantation development while reducing the number of slaves is going to do something to alter this aspect of colonial society, but I have no idea what.
I think that the rate of migration out of England, and the rest of Europe for that matter, will depend on whether the land vacated by the dead is repopulated by small-scale farms or consolidated into large ones for pastureland and cash crops. If the former, migration will all but stop for decades; if the latter, the economic migrant flow will slow from OTL but still be an important factor in the growth of the colonial population.
So the two most likely sources of labor would be Chinese peasants or African slaves, with Indian or Javanese peasants as other possibilities?
On that note, how long is it likely to take for the VOC to transition from propping up the Atjuntja Empire to running it in all but name?
I'm presuming that the more tightly the Atjuntja are tied to Batavia, the more likely it is that Atjuntja will start leaving home for other VOC-ruled territories.
So even butterflies are afraid of Aussie-rules football...
With the effects you describe, East Asian cultures might see lemon-tea as something to use as a balance to tea; for example, the Japanese would serve lemon-tea at the beginning of a tea ceremony, to invoke the desired atmosphere, and then use regular tea at the end to bring the participants back to full awareness.