Thread 17903048

Could they have held the Americas if their population hadn't been decimated by contact with old-world diseases?

>>17903048 (OP)
In many parts yeah not to mention how they'd still find European allies to help them fight against whitey

>>17903057
But a lot of America would still be screwed nonetheless (for the natives not for the settlers)

>>17903048 (OP)
No. They're still outnumbered and facing multiple enemies with an industrial base. The most immediate band-aid solution is to join up with Europeans against Americans, which they did IRL. However, if their European allies got btfo of the Americas just like they did IRL, they would essentially be sitting ducks and enemy combatants. Not to mention that they would need to quickly learn the laws of the empire they join and use its legal channels to protect themselves from encroachment. This is essentially what the tlaxcalans did under Spain and they were able to preserve their autonomy for centuries.

>>17903048 (OP)
If they had been trained in guerilla tactics to the same extent as a force like the Viet Cong, absolutely. Obviously, though, they'd never have cause to develop such tactics against a force like the Colonists prior to their arrival. The kind of tribal warfare they had previously engaged in just wasn't comparable.

>>17903048 (OP)
I think that would have resulted in a lot more mixture with settler populations, much like the native peoples south of the US mixed with the Spanish.

>>17903048 (OP)
The Amazon cities, yeah. The rest I'm not sure. Navigating the Amazon forest is still big trouble for anyone not indigenous or highly trained.

>>17903048 (OP)
Yes, easily. It's hardly even a question. The near-total collapse of civilization following the loss of 75-90% of the population did more heavy lifting than any amount of gunpowder.
Spain wouldn't have had a foothold, and the English wouldn't have been able to establish more than a few trading outposts. The settler colony model would've been met with significant pushback from rival traders and the (now much more numerous) competing natives, likely armed by said traders.
This means a slower rate of centralization within Europe also, and opens the door to many alternate history outcomes.
>>17903296
The Amazon is interesting here, because it potentially demonstrates what would've happened if the natives had been "inoculated" earlier.
That is, if the Malian account is true, and the evidence we have of their voyage really indicates their arrival, then somewhere between 1312 and Portuguese settlement in the early 1500s (or the Spanish exploration of the Amazon river in the 1540s), the native population contracted a series of diseases and didn't recover by the time European colonization began.
This tracks with the Mexican population timeline, since it took approx. 3 centuries for them to recover.
In OP's scenario, that could rewrite even the history of South American settlement, meaning only the Caribbean would be open for plantation labor, and the gold rush following the conquest of the Andes just wouldn't have happened. Almost no Trans-Atlantic slave trade, no Price Revolution, no golden age of piracy...
A totally unrecognizable world.

Eventually they'd have contact with those diseases and the disaster would come. If it European colonization happened on a slower time table, and gave the natives time to recover from the epidemics that devastated them, things might've been different. It's one thing to overrun disparate tribes who live in scattered communities in what is basically a post-apocalyptic society, another to deal with very large population centers with a centralized system of rule that can organize massive resistance. It's one reason why East Asia wasn't overrun the same way the Americas were, and even when the Europeans did set up colonies they had to co-opt local government and use collaborators to manage the population.

>>17903048 (OP)
No, their population wasnt decimated either.
The proposal there were 100m of them is absurd.
90% of the Aztecs survived European diseases but somehow 90% of North Americans died off despite NOT living in cities where disease spreads rapidly?
Nonsense.
Also just based on Hunter Gatherers and semi-nomadic proto-agriculturalists today we can build a realistic estimate. North America very likely never had more than 15m ever and was mostly around 3-7m total in all of North America (outside of the actual city-states of Central America).
>>17903140
that is so unbelievably retarded.
The Viet Cong tactics only worked because mutts didnt have it in them to wipe those people out.
Where do the VC hide when the jungle is gone and the population is all Whites with guns?
What are they going to do against a much higher IQ much stronger force that is using the same tactics they are? Theyre going to lose and lose hard.

>>17903140
>If they had been trained in guerilla tactics to the same extent as a force like the Viet Cong, absolutely.
Wow.

>>17903048 (OP)
Only if they could figure out how to make guns and ammunition themselves. One of the main things that undermined native resistance, other than disease, was that the supply of guns and ammo only went one way. It could easily be cut off and then they’re fucked. Sure, they’d use captured supplies and rival Europeans could equip them, but that only goes so far. Such a tribe is still 1) reliant on a European power and 2) still going to be outmatched by the local production and growing population of Americans (which would be the main threat pushing westward).
For example, consider that the first Mayflower settlers were capable of routing larger native forces despite being outnumbered then. Further consider conflicts like King Philip’s War where the cutting off of supplies of guns and ammo drastically hampered the Native’s war effort despite still getting guns from France and some other private sellers.
Also consider the vicious cycle: you need guns and ammo to get pelts at a rapid enough rate to trade for more guns and ammo. If you don’t have enough guns and ammo for hunting, then you can’t keep trading for guns. If you’ve started a conflict with your largest neighbor and trade partner, then you will have a shortage of guns and ammo to obtain, and then it’ll be harder to get it from elsewhere unless a rival power is just nice enough to give them to you (they’d much rather keep their guns for their own soldiers if they can).
They could stockpile them, but that’s what they did in King Philip’s War and they still lost.

Tl;dr: if you give a man a fish, he’ll eat for a day. If you teach a man to fish, he’ll eat for a lifetime. The natives needed to learn how to fish if they ever wished to stand a chance. Otherwise, the more advanced side is still going to win, no matter how many men are on the other side.

>>17903048 (OP)
>resisted
Even if they would have been conquered, it would have been like the colonization of Africa and India. No massive European migration, natives would remain the majority in the colonists. No USA as we know it, but new native-led countries forming along former colonial borders.

>>17903048 (OP)
No. By the time whites came back to north America, the brownoids had already forgotten everything. They didn't even remember how to smelt copper, they fell all the way back to the stone age.

>>17904150
They really got a double holocaust. Terrible luck. By the time most whites arrived they already experienced apocalypse

>>17903907
This, alot of early Amerindian “historians” were self hating doomers who are retarded for thinking the small ruins there are in places such as California or the Mississippi magically housed millions while historians in the same area claimed far larger ruins in Africa housed only a few thousand despite blacks being leagues more advanced than native Americans at the time. I say there is no shot that Meso America and the Incans did not contain 80% of the native population of the Americas since we have no evidence nor massive burial grounds to suggest any other part of the areas were densely populated.

>>17903140
Anon… the indians were using those tactics. They lost because both the Mexicans and Americans did not have the modern moralistic savior complex that westerners now do, infact i’d say the indians were far more resourceful and tricky than the Vietcong, just not gonna do much when your enemy tries to extinct your massive food supply and issues head bounties on your entire people, had the Americans done the same in Vietnam, you bet they would have won hand in fist