Tinto Talks #49 - 5th February 2025

[SAmaster]

Yes, but as I've explained the first wave wasn't necessarily the deadliest, the first smallpox epidemic in Mexico killed 5-8 million people, so something around 40% of the population, which is below the 50% minimum you proposed, while the 1545 cocoliztli killed 60-90% of inhabitants of Mexico (which is much more), and it might have been endemic.

Well sounds like you could still just tweak it to have a second wave be deadlier. The issue of if it was brought over by europeans or not seems like a matter of academic speculation that I don't think Paradox is equipped to definitively answer, so I think we should have them err on the idea that they were a wave of european diseases, part of the 'great pestilence'.

 

[Sebroar]

You sure you are thinking and comparing absolute and relative values correctly?

Because let's asume for the argument sack and easier math.... Pre-Columbian Mexico had 1.000.000 population. First plague you are speaking of killed 'only' ~45% and the second one you are mentioning had ~85% kill rate.... you see huge difference in relative number, but same absolute numbers.....

Also, I think you don't account for secondary effects such a huge loss of life in short span has on Social, Political and Economical stability of any society.... and how inturn this internal conflict makes dealing with and future challange that much more difficult.

You are overvaluing how many people died in military active combat.... attrition from army desieses killed more soldiers till late 19 century when we finally discovered long barrel artillary and machine guns that alows for such mass murder in timly fashion

Yes, I'm comparing them correctly. Mortality isn't an absolute number, but a relative one. Also, even the absolute number in the graphic are different. Let's read it together.

We start with ~21.5 million people, and the 1520 smallpox outbreak kills ~7 million of them, leaving us with ~14.5 million people (the text in the image claims it's 8 million, but the graph says it's 7, I'm reading the graph here). After that, we have the first cocoliztli, which kills another ~11.5 million people, and we're left with ~3 million people (again, weird rounding). The second cocoliztli kills the last ~2 million people, for a final population of ~1 million people. The number of deaths I've found reading the graphic are perfectly in line with the ranges cited in the article I took the image from.
Now let's do some final math, and let's keep in mind that when we're doing this type of calculations we must only count those that survived. The smallpox kills 7M/21.5M, which is ~32.6% (this time I'm using a calculator, so it's more precise), the first cocoliztli kills 12M/14.5M, so ~82.8%, and the second cocoliztli kills 2M/2.75M, or ~72.7% of the population. So, by mortality (a percentage, so a relative number) we have, in decreasing order (from the deadlies to the least deadly):

1. The first cocoliztli
2. The second cocoliztli
3. The smallpox

while by deaths (so an absolute number) we have (still in decreasing order):

1. The first cocoliztli
2. The smallpox
3. The second cocoliztli.

Again, when we talk about mortality we talk about the relative number of deaths, which is higher for the cocoliztli that for the smallpox. Which is exactly what I said in the original post:

[the cocoliztli] was extremely deadly, especially the one of 1545, and it caused even more casualties than the 1520 smallpox outbreak, despite the population being lower.

I've added some words in square brackets here, so that context is crearer. They were implied in the original post, but apparently the fact that I didn't specify it lead to some misunderstandings, which is why I specified it here. Also, the "it" refers to the first cocoliztli. I haven't edited the original, despite the fact that I've just noticed a typo, which I usually correct as soon as I spot them.


Lastly, to address completely your criticism: I know there were lots of casualties caused by diseases, but it's not like only one dude per battle died in combat. During the conquest of Tenochtitlan, for example, a minimum of 40,000 people were killed in action, which is not a low number. There were also internal conflicts (as you mention) and other campaigns (against other native polities), which contribute to make people more vulnerable to diseases, in turn increasing mortality.

 

[Sebroar]

Well sounds like you could still just tweak it to have a second wave be deadlier. The issue of if it was brought over by europeans or not seems like a matter of academic speculation that I don't think Paradox is equipped to definitively answer, so I think we should have them err on the idea that they were a wave of european diseases, part of the 'great pestilence'.

Even the fact that the second wave is deadlier is not universal. It depends on the region we're considering. They don't have to address the origin of the cocoliztli, I've just put it in my post to diverge a bit more on the possible nature of the disease.

The reason I'm against having it part of the "Great Pestilence" is that the first cocoliztli occurred 25 years after the first epidemic. Unless it uses some unique mechanic they didn't specify, it would simply be wrong to include all of it in one single outbreak, because it would mean that those people would die either in a few years (if it doesn't last for a long time), or uniformly (in relative terms) in a span of several decades (if it lasts for a long time). The former would just be bad representation and would also cause problems, since the survivors would then be victims of further epidemics (of the "regular" diseases, so the same smallpox, typhus etc. that happen in the Old World). The latter would be an abstraction I could accept, but it would not give any resistance to the natives of the region, and I would prefer a proper representation of the various waves. Maybe there are mechanics that they didn't unveil yet, but I don't know, and I don't have any way to access this kind of information until they confirm it or they talk about the Columbian Exchange. Everything depends on the actual implementation, maybe they managed to properly represent the various waves with just one disease, but as of now, I have no way of knowing it. I hope the Columbian Exchange TT is coming soon, because I'm sure that it will contain more details, which are extremely important to give useful feedback.

 

[Znikii]

Even the fact that the second wave is deadlier is not universal. It depends on the region we're considering. They don't have to address the origin of the cocoliztli, I've just put it in my post to diverge a bit more on the possible nature of the disease.

The reason I'm against having it part of the "Great Pestilence" is that the first cocoliztli occurred 25 years after the first epidemic. Unless it uses some unique mechanic they didn't specify, it would simply be wrong to include all of it in one single outbreak, because it would mean that those people would die either in a few years (if it doesn't last for a long time), or uniformly (in relative terms) in a span of several decades (if it lasts for a long time). The former would just be bad representation and would also cause problems, since the survivors would then be victims of further epidemics (of the "regular" diseases, so the same smallpox, typhus etc. that happen in the Old World). The latter would be an abstraction I could accept, but it would not give any resistance to the natives of the region, and I would prefer a proper representation of the various waves. Maybe there are mechanics that they didn't unveil yet, but I don't know, and I don't have any way to access this kind of information until they confirm it or they talk about the Columbian Exchange. Everything depends on the actual implementation, maybe they managed to properly represent the various waves with just one disease, but as of now, I have no way of knowing it. I hope the Columbian Exchange TT is coming soon, because I'm sure that it will contain more details, which are extremely important to give useful feedback.

Both cocolitzi, but defentely the first one, were almost surley cocktail of several of major diseases acting together, and it's wide and deadly spread was only possible by high human density and trade activity in order to be transmitted.
I think what matters here, is the fact that first few major outbreaks [in mexico case smallpox and cocolitz] in such a short time [both in less then 50 years since European arrival] where so massive and game-changing that's for gameplay & computational reasons it makes sense to represent them as a unique mechanic, which is also a nice counterpart to the fixed Bubonic outbreak Eurasia will experience in the mid 14. century.

ofc we don't know finer details in order to judge if 75-90% mortality is finer or if 50-80 would fit better..... but in the end imo this should be left to balance & game rules at setup to determine fine number tuning.

 

[51states]

Will Malaria appear in places where it became endemic in the Americas after Europeans brought it?

 

[Lank1]

yeah, but rather inefficiently in most cases.

Is there a way to see what % of each army/regiment is infected? This would be useful to gauge how long until it disappears from disease or to send them to do war crimes

 

[Dystopianist]

Hey there. I haven't gotten the chance to read this entire thread but I just wanted to provide some thoughts. I've provided a loose bibliography of books the devs might be interested in below, though this is really just off the top of my head and not a formal set of citations.

Most of this isn't formally addressing the dev diary. Actually a few of these issues I think the devs are already aware of and adjusted for. But this is just for completion's sake, really.

• The vulnerability of a region to incoming disease is overwhelmingly dependent on its stability and prosperity. Overwhelmingly, of course, not totally. There are major exceptions. But humans are much likelier to die of disease when they lack appropriate shelter, nutrition, sleep, clean water, and community support networks. Much of what we think of as "mass plague deaths" are really deaths caused by famines, imperial violence or years of war & displacement, not "foreigners bring in diseases." Take the Inca Empire for example: a large proportion of the demographic destruction wasn't caused by foreign smallpox (McCaa et al.). It was caused by a major internal civil war between Atawallpa and Huascar, which displaced thousands and exacerbated the preexisting trauma of Inca imperial policy - which had entailed massive forced population movements and great violence. And I see someone upthread is already talking about cocoliztli, which was really a product of the murderous colonial policies of Nueva Espana.

• First Corollary: Newcomers entering a region does not necessarily mean a plague. Jesuits and traders were already mingling with the Guarani for a century, with no major population hits. What really reduced their numbers was forced migration from their homeland due to the Treaty of Madrid (Ganson). And it's hard to explain why exactly most native confederations of the American West suffered their worst disease casualties after being forced into reservations, instead of during their centuries-long trade with Europeans (Kelton et al.) without accounting for this. (To comment on "The Great Pestilence:" the largest wave of smallpox hit in the late 1700s, centuries after contact. It also greatly affected Europeans as well; you might recall Washington's harrowing winter at Valley Forge.)

• Second Corollary: death by disease is often a more-or-less intentional result of colonial violence, not a biological given. In the American Southeast, most of death was due to disease, yes, but that was only possible because of decades of English slave-raiding which destroyed the social fabric of native societies (Kelton). Not to mention that well, the plantations where those slaves were taken to often had upwards of a 90% fatality rate within five years, which killed thousands of Native Americans. Yes, that extends for Africans too - colonizers didn't figure out how to breed chattel slaves internally until the 1800s, by which point millions of people had been shipped to their doom. But in general, extractive and violent policies like ecological destruction (see Cronon), slave-taking, reconcentration, encomiendas, silver mining, etc were the direct catalyst for most disease related death.

• Migrants are just as vulnerable to disease as natives. As Phillip Curtin points out, 2/3rds of all Europeans who entered Africa before the 1800s died of malaria (Curtin). So uh, the current malaria mortality might be a bit low. In the Americas, we have a tendency to forget that most colonies failed, often because every settler died of disease (McDonald & Waters). This isn't necessarily because they lacked immunity to anything - though there's no lack of native diseases in the Americas, whether cocoliztli, Chagas disease, Rocky Mountain spotted fever, etc (Kelton) - but because settlers were often leaving communal support networks and entering hostile environments with poor nutrition.

• European style hospitals and medical schools are not the only type of medical care system. This point is my most direct critique of the dev diary. Remember the Great Pestilence I mentioned above? George Washington and the 13 Colonies didn't survive it better than their native neighbors because they had better immunity; they survived it because of innoculation. Innoculation was the most effective preventative treatment at the time, and did not originate in Europe. The Americans received it from Akan slaves (do we usually associate the Ashanti kingdom with "modern medical schools"?) while the British received it from the Ottoman Turks. And of course, even before then, medical schools only proliferated in Europe due to the eradication of traditional folk healers, often women (Federici). These weren't unskilled amateurs by any means; often the systems destroyed were say, monasteries which had carefully experimented with medicinal herbs for centuries, or women trained in long traditions of family care.

Sources:

William Cronon, Changes in the Land
Phillip Curtin, Death By Migration
Silvia Federici, Caliban and the Witch
Barbara Ganson, The Guarani Under Spanish Rule
Ed. Paul Kelton et al, Beyond Germs: Native Depopulation in North America
Paul Kelton, Epidemics and Enslavement
James Lockhart, The Nahuas After Conquest
Robert McCaa et al, "Why Blame Smallpox? The Death of the Inca Huayna Capac and the Demographic Destruction of Tawantinsuyu (Ancient Peru)"
David McDonald & Raine Waters, We Could Perceive No Sign of Them: Failed Colonies in North America, 1526-1689
Michael Vincent Wilcox, The Pueblo Revolt and the Mythology of Conquest: An Indigenous Archaeology of Contact

 

[Dystopianist]

I was going to reply to some comments earlier in the thread but I think Smiths and Sebroar have written very well on this topic. They should be trusted on this.

Also, just noticed some errors on my part about smallpox chronology and some other things. Again, spitballing off the top of my head after years away from this topic - Sebroar has the more accurate description wrt that.

 

[Sapa Inca]

Please, consider the possibility of The Great Pestilence to spawn in Australia/Oceania when europeans arrive in this continent too.

 

[Nullslayer]

Hey there. I haven't gotten the chance to read this entire thread but I just wanted to provide some thoughts. I've provided a loose bibliography of books the devs might be interested in below, though this is really just off the top of my head and not a formal set of citations.

Most of this isn't formally addressing the dev diary. Actually a few of these issues I think the devs are already aware of and adjusted for. But this is just for completion's sake, really.

• The vulnerability of a region to incoming disease is overwhelmingly dependent on its stability and prosperity. Overwhelmingly, of course, not totally. There are major exceptions. But humans are much likelier to die of disease when they lack appropriate shelter, nutrition, sleep, clean water, and community support networks. Much of what we think of as "mass plague deaths" are really deaths caused by famines, imperial violence or years of war & displacement, not "foreigners bring in diseases." Take the Inca Empire for example: a large proportion of the demographic destruction wasn't caused by foreign smallpox (McCaa et al.). It was caused by a major internal civil war between Atawallpa and Huascar, which displaced thousands and exacerbated the preexisting trauma of Inca imperial policy - which had entailed massive forced population movements and great violence. And I see someone upthread is already talking about cocoliztli, which was really a product of the murderous colonial policies of Nueva Espana.

• First Corollary: Newcomers entering a region does not necessarily mean a plague. Jesuits and traders were already mingling with the Guarani for a century, with no major population hits. What really reduced their numbers was forced migration from their homeland due to the Treaty of Madrid (Ganson). And it's hard to explain why exactly most native confederations of the American West suffered their worst disease casualties after being forced into reservations, instead of during their centuries-long trade with Europeans (Kelton et al.) without accounting for this. (To comment on "The Great Pestilence:" the largest wave of smallpox hit in the late 1700s, centuries after contact. It also greatly affected Europeans as well; you might recall Washington's harrowing winter at Valley Forge.)

• Second Corollary: death by disease is often a more-or-less intentional result of colonial violence, not a biological given. In the American Southeast, most of death was due to disease, yes, but that was only possible because of decades of English slave-raiding which destroyed the social fabric of native societies (Kelton). Not to mention that well, the plantations where those slaves were taken to often had upwards of a 90% fatality rate within five years, which killed thousands of Native Americans. Yes, that extends for Africans too - colonizers didn't figure out how to breed chattel slaves internally until the 1800s, by which point millions of people had been shipped to their doom. But in general, extractive and violent policies like ecological destruction (see Cronon), slave-taking, reconcentration, encomiendas, silver mining, etc were the direct catalyst for most disease related death.

• Migrants are just as vulnerable to disease as natives. As Phillip Curtin points out, 2/3rds of all Europeans who entered Africa before the 1800s died of malaria (Curtin). So uh, the current malaria mortality might be a bit low. In the Americas, we have a tendency to forget that most colonies failed, often because every settler died of disease (McDonald & Waters). This isn't necessarily because they lacked immunity to anything - though there's no lack of native diseases in the Americas, whether cocoliztli, Chagas disease, Rocky Mountain spotted fever, etc (Kelton) - but because settlers were often leaving communal support networks and entering hostile environments with poor nutrition.

• European style hospitals and medical schools are not the only type of medical care system. This point is my most direct critique of the dev diary. Remember the Great Pestilence I mentioned above? George Washington and the 13 Colonies didn't survive it better than their native neighbors because they had better immunity; they survived it because of innoculation. Innoculation was the most effective preventative treatment at the time, and did not originate in Europe. The Americans received it from Akan slaves (do we usually associate the Ashanti kingdom with "modern medical schools"?) while the British received it from the Ottoman Turks. And of course, even before then, medical schools only proliferated in Europe due to the eradication of traditional folk healers, often women (Federici). These weren't unskilled amateurs by any means; often the systems destroyed were say, monasteries which had carefully experimented with medicinal herbs for centuries, or women trained in long traditions of family care.

Sources:

William Cronon, Changes in the Land
Phillip Curtin, Death By Migration
Silvia Federici, Caliban and the Witch
Barbara Ganson, The Guarani Under Spanish Rule
Ed. Paul Kelton et al, Beyond Germs: Native Depopulation in North America
Paul Kelton, Epidemics and Enslavement
James Lockhart, The Nahuas After Conquest
Robert McCaa et al, "Why Blame Smallpox? The Death of the Inca Huayna Capac and the Demographic Destruction of Tawantinsuyu (Ancient Peru)"
David McDonald & Raine Waters, We Could Perceive No Sign of Them: Failed Colonies in North America, 1526-1689
Michael Vincent Wilcox, The Pueblo Revolt and the Mythology of Conquest: An Indigenous Archaeology of Contact

Great points! Hopefully they update their system to take these things into account. I don't like the idea that Europe is better at handling outbreaks due to hospitals like the rest of the world did not have hospitals or medical techniques to help defend against outbreaks or sickness. And the general great pestilence is a pretty massive minus for the Americas. You made great points about population numbers not changing drastically in some areas until much later, with forced relocation and other changes in North America. Please Paradox and Tinto, make some tweaks to reflect these realities.

Either way great system so far and cannot wait to see more of what you guys have in store.

 

[red1848]

If we can only rely on building time-consuming and expensive hospitals in a single location to fight against deadly epidemics from all directions, it is really too bad. It is recommended to add a primary hospital building (which can be named a pharmacy or clinic). Most countries in the world can build it, and some towns and villages have their own pharmacy at the beginning. The construction and maintenance cost of the pharmacy is very low, and it only takes a few months to build. However, its effectiveness in resisting epidemics is much lower than that of hospitals



By the way, you can also add regional laws to resist epidemics, which will greatly improve the gaming experience



This can solve the troublesome situation of countries in Eurasia having to deal with the Black Death at the beginning. Without these, the experience of playing in poor and small countries would probably be very poor, and the game balance would also be reduced

 

[yangzilata]

Are cities more resistant to disease than rural areas?

Urban centers generally have better sanitation, clearer water, and access to medicine compared to non-urban areas. Will cities have built-in resistance to diseases, while rural or nomadic settlements suffer more due to poor hygiene and lack of medical care?

 

[M Sohl]

Are cities more resistant to disease than rural areas?

Urban centers generally have better sanitation, clearer water, and access to medicine compared to non-urban areas. Will cities have built-in resistance to diseases, while rural or nomadic settlements suffer more due to poor hygiene and lack of medical care?

I´m not sure they were at that time. Water sources and wells in cities were often polluted far into the 19th century, causing repeated outbursts of cholera. And during the great plague in the 14th century peaople who could afford it fled the cities to try to escape the disease. Read Decamerone as an example. Another fact contradicting that cities were clean is that many european cities didn´t have natural population growth for centuries, simply because mortality was higher than on the countryside. Cities often grew due to immigration.

 

[yangzilata]

Do roads affect disease spread speed?

Since roads and trade routes historically accelerated the movement of people and goods, will they also cause diseases to spread faster?

I´m not sure they were at that time. Water sources and wells in cities were often polluted far into the 19th century, causing repeated outbursts of cholera. And during the great plague in the 14th century peaople who could afford it fled the cities to try to escape the disease. Read Decamerone as an example. Another fact contradicting that cities were clean is that many european cities didn´t have natural population growth for centuries, simply because mortality was higher than on the countryside. Cities often grew due to immigration.

So, it seems like cities weren’t automatically safer than rural areas. In fact, their dense population and lack of sanitation often made them more vulnerable to disease. Rural areas, on the other hand, might have had a bit of an advantage with fewer people and cleaner living conditions, even though they still faced challenges.

It’s definitely not as clear-cut as cities always being more resistant to disease, especially when you consider how things were in the past, in Europe...

What About Other Continents and Cultures?
When we look beyond Europe, cities in other parts of the world faced their own set of challenges, but the conditions were sometimes different. For example, cities in parts of Asia, the Middle East, and Africa often had their own methods of managing water and waste. In some places, there were advanced systems, like the Roman-style aqueducts or the sophisticated water management systems seen in ancient civilizations like the Indus Valley. In these cases, some cities might have had an edge over European ones in terms of sanitation.

However, like in Europe, overcrowding and limited medical knowledge still made disease a threat. For example, cities in parts of China or the Islamic world also dealt with outbreaks like plague, but many had better public health systems than their European counterparts during certain periods. The larger, more dense cities sometimes struggled similarly with disease spread due to the same issues seen in Europe: poor sanitation, limited access to clean water, and close living (Take a glance at Toledo on satellite maps.) conditions.

So, the exact experience varied. Will the game reflect this?

 

[yangzilata]

Are cities more resistant to disease than rural areas?

Urban centers generally have better sanitation, clearer water, and access to medicine compared to non-urban areas. Will cities have built-in resistance to diseases, while rural or nomadic settlements suffer more due to poor hygiene and lack of medical care?

What About the Muslim World During the Great Plague?

It’s also worth mentioning that cities in the Muslim world didn’t suffer as much from the Great Plague compared to European cities. While Europe was hit hard, many Muslim cities seemed to fare a little better. There are a few reasons for this:

1. Better Public Health Practices:
   Muslim cities had more advanced public health systems at the time. They had better sanitation, waste management, and even public baths. They also had early forms of quarantine, where sick people or ships arriving from affected areas were isolated, which helped prevent the spread of disease.
2. Stronger Medical Knowledge:
   The Islamic world had some of the best medical knowledge of the time. Scholars like Ibn Sina and Al-Razi wrote about hygiene, disease prevention, and the importance of isolation during outbreaks. This gave them a big advantage over Europe, where medical knowledge was less advanced.
3. Religious Practices Promoting Cleanliness:
   Islamic practices like regular washing before prayers and caring for the sick may have helped prevent the spread of disease. There was also a strong tradition of charity, with organized efforts to take care of the poor and sick, which likely helped cities manage the impact of the plague.
4. Geographical and Trade Factors:
   Some Muslim cities were on key trade routes, which allowed them to respond to outbreaks more quickly. Cities like Cairo and Damascus had good communication and resource networks, which made it easier to put measures in place to fight the plague.

While Muslim cities weren’t completely immune, their better public health, medical practices, and quicker response to the plague helped them avoid the high death tolls that European cities experienced.

 

[Bloodraven35]

so you could mitigate the spread of diseases by not trading at infected areas/ not allowing pops from infected areas into your locations? how effective could this potentially be with the boubonic plauge for example?

 

[Bigsoulja9]

Disease was not an insurmountable barrier to colonization in Africa. In fact, it was a manageable problem which was surmounted on a few occasions. The Portuguese successfully established control over lands in:

• Cape Verde (tbf, not as diseased)
• Sao Tome (was previously uninhabited afaik, became the center of a major plantation economy during the 16th c.)
• Angola (really, the Kwanza river region, as far north as the lands of Ndongo, and as far south as the territory of Benguela)
• South-East Africa (the Zimbabwe Plateau, Maniyika in Mozambique).
• The Swahili Coast

The complicating factor limiting colonial expansion in the latter 3 instances (Angola, Zimbabwe, the Swahili Coast) were logistical & military. The Portuguese attempted multiple times to extend their influence into Kongo (to the north of Angola), but were consistently rebuffed: they were existentially threatened in Luanda, suffered pyrrhic victories against Matamba which led them to abort their campaign, and they were eventually slaughtered at Kitombo. They were swept off the Zimbabwe plateau by the ascendant Rozvi. And they were expelled from the Swahili Coast by various alliances of Swahili cities and Omanis. This even small European military forces were able to enjoy major successes in South/South East Asia and, with substantial native support, the Americas.

In Angola and the Zimbabwe plateau, substantial numbers of the Portuguese present were of partial or majority African Ancestry (a trend which continued into the 19th century, by which point some of the "Portuguese" in Southern Africa could not even understand Portuguese.) These individuals would've been more resistant to tropical disease than their compatriots. Nonetheless, the development of a colonial administration in African lands remained quite rudimentary: even though the Portuguese had begun colonizing Angola in the 1500s, their colonial economy continued to run on local cloth-money, as opposed to mint coins, well into the 1700s.

It's not exactly clear what the limiting factor was in the Angolan case -- the colony was only a stone's throw away from Brazil and had a successful plantation system. Probably a case of "if it isn't broke, don't fix it." The main point is this: disease did not stop the Portuguese from forming communities in Africa, nor did it stop the Portuguese from raising armies of basically the same size as those which they (and the Spanish) raised elsewhere to greater territorial success. Yet they failed to see success at the scale the Spanish would in the Americas.

The fort system which developed along the West African coast, wherein European settlements and factories "leased" land from local powers, was a practical & pragmatic compromise made in recognition of the difficulty of direct involvement, which allowed Europeans to retrieve what they wanted (slaves for use in the Americas) without the positional and economic risks of costly warfare.

That looks very nice, but how does colonisation works then? How have we colonise Brazil and Africa if every European will die and hospitals protect only from the plague?

The most successful European colonies in Africa, prior to the 19th century. were coastal forts / "factories" constructed on "lease" land from local rulers. The only long-lasting, substantial colony on Continental Africa was that in Angola, and it did not cover most of the modern country (see above). You shouldn't be able to easily colonize Africa, though I agree that "disease" should not be the only mechanism preventing this from happening.

what part of africa was colonised in large amounts before 19th century by europeans.

Portugal had a few (see above).

 

[Kotyk-durkotyk]

The most successful European colonies in Africa, prior to the 19th century. were coastal forts / "factories" constructed on "lease" land from local rulers. The only substantial colony in Africa which survived a long period of time, was that in Angola, and it did not cover most of the modern country (see above). You shouldn't be able to easily colonize Africa, though I agree that "disease" should not be the mechanism preventing this from happening.

Also the Cape Colony, I would say.
And of course I did not mean colonising inland Africa, but coastal trade outposts and something around the Cape of Good Hope could be possible. So I was just interested how it could work if any European is expected to die.

 

[Bigsoulja9]

Also the Cape Colony, I would say.
And of course I did not mean colonising inland Africa, but coastal trade outposts and something around the Cape of Good Hope could be possible. So I was just interested how it could work if any European is expected to die.

Sure. I didn't mention it because it was hardly more than a coastal settlement with a small hinterland, and I was limiting my points to more substantial colonies. This is also why I didn't mention Senegambia, which began to grow during the 1700s.

Even into the 1800s, colonists in the Cape Colony were ignorant of the large Tswana towns which existed just north of their colony.

 

[Conde de Montanelas]

Disease was not an insurmountable barrier to colonization in Africa, so much as a difficult-to-overcome complicating factor, but it was one that Europeans (or, rather, the Portuguese) did surmount on a few occasions. The Portuguese successfully established control over lands in:

• Cape Verde (tbf, not as diseased)
• Sao Tome (was previously uninhabited afaik, became the center of a major plantation economy during the 16th c.)
• Angola (really, the Kwanza river region, as far north as the lands of Ndongo, and as far south as the territory of Benguela)
• The Zimbabwe Plateau, Manyika lands (in Mozambique).
• The Swahili Coast

The complicating factor limiting colonial expansion in the latter 3 instances (Angola, Zimbabwe, the Swahili Coast) were logistical & military. The Portuguese attempted multiple times to extend their influence into Kongo (to the north of Angola), but were consistently rebuffed and eventually slaughtered at Kitombo. They were similarly swept off the Zimbabwe plateau by the ascendant Rozvi. And they were expelled from the Swahili Coast by various alliances of Swahili cities and Omanis. This even though their small military forces were able to enjoy major successes in South/South East Asia and, with substantial native support, the Americas.

Along the Zimbabwe plateau, and in Angola, substantial numbers of the Portuguese present were of partial or majority African Ancestry (a trend which continued into the 19th century, by which point some of the "Portuguese" in Southern Africa could not even understand Portuguese.) These individuals probably would've been more resistant to tropical disease. Communities of Portuguese thus did develop in both areas. Nonetheless, the development of a colonial administration in African lands remained quite rudimentary: even though the Portuguese had begun colonizing Angola in the 1500s, their colonial economy continued to run on local cloth-money, as opposed to mint coins, well into the 1700s.

It's not exactly clear what the limiting factor was in the Angolan case -- the colony was only a stone's throw away from Brazil and had a successful plantation system. Probably a case of "if it isn't broke, don't fix it." It may also be worthwhile to treat the Americas as an exception to the rule, given the unique social and economic devastation enabled by diseases in these areas -- surely, these were more directly destructive than the ruptures experienced by Africans, though those were to be pronounced in their own ways -- but I'm not an Americanist, so I can't easily compare. The main point is this: disease did not stop the Portuguese from forming communities in Africa, nor did it stop the Portuguese from raising armies of basically the same size as those which they raised elsewhere to greater territorial success.

All in all, the lack of European penetration into Africa was not a simple result of "disease stopped them" -- a point I believe I've raised before in other posts. The fort system which developed along the West African coast, wherein European settlements and factories "leased" land from local powers, was a practical & pragmatic compromise allowing Europeans to retrieve what they wanted (slaves) for use in the Americas, without risking costly wars that would threaten their position and economic status.



The most successful European colonies in Africa, prior to the 19th century. were coastal forts / "factories" constructed on "lease" land from local rulers. The only substantial colony in Africa which survived a long period of time, was that in Angola, and it did not cover most of the modern country (see above). You shouldn't be able to easily colonize Africa, though I agree that "disease" should not be the mechanism preventing this from happening.


Portugal had a few (see above).

Other than the Atlantic archipelagos, pre 19th century Portuguese presence in the African sub saharan mainland was confined to coastal (or riverine) settlements.

While Portuguese communities (mainly Luanda, Benguela, Ilha de Moçambique, and Sofala) did form, their growth was severely hampered by frequent outbreaks of "fevers" which imposed a heavy death toll.