World 1600 - from EU3

[delra]

For all the fans of whole world add-on, but also everyone else interested in EIC historic background, here's a F12 screenshot from EU3. It shows world in January, 1600 so you know exactly what you're getting into:



What you can see here:

- Ottoman Empire inherited Egypt and half of Barbary Coast and now they are completely blocking land trade with India. With Genoa's colonies in the Black Sea coast gone to Crimea it means the land route is cut off completely.

- Portugal already control Cape Verde, Luanda, Goa and Malacca. They will soon control Benguela and Mozambique and Oman (Pirate in EIC) as well. They enjoy their head start in general taking best pieces of the cake. In EIC those are still neutral in 1600.

- Spain has everything in the New World except Brazil. Outside of South and Central America they also own Southern Italy, half of Netherlands, the Philippines and many other places. They are a monster. If you want Americas added to EIC you have to propose what to do with Spain and Portugal.

- England hasn't started colonizing yet. They only own St. Lucia in the Caribbean. Barbados will join soon. It will take them further 60 years before they colonize what we call now the US coast and also take New Amsterdam from Dutch West India Company (yes!) with four Frigates and rename it to New York.

- The Netherlands are still at war with Spain. They will start colonizing soon enough though. By 1630 they will own Madras in India and a bunch of footholds in Dutch East Indies. They will control Malacca in 1641, 12 years later von Rieebeck will land with three ships and plant first almond in the place now called Cape Town.

- Sweden is overshadowed by Norway-controlling Denmark. They desperately need a port in their strategically crucial slip of land that accesses the North Sea. In 20 years they will bring Dutch architects who previously planned Jakarta to build a city that you now know as Gothenburg.

- Germans have no reason to be in EIC at all... They are split into pieces like for the most of their history. Main player as you can see is white blob of Austria who already grabbed plenty of land in Germany and Hungary and now struggle against Ottoman Empire. Ostend East India Company will be founded in 1717 to compete with Dutch but quickly closed per treaty with English.

 

[Ionus]

An enjoyable read.

It is not only the occident that has possibilities, but also the orient. Japan, Korea and China had all solved ship building. China gave up to concentrate on the Great Wall rebuild (again), Japanese sailors hugged the coast (?puzzling?? they seem to have been scared of the ocean), mainly setting up pyrate bases (yes, the only known ports that were owned totally by pyrates) on the coast of China and Taiwan, and Korea was having internal difficulties that distracted it. But anyone of these could have sailed to Europe, it was a strange quirk of history that these three fine shipbuilding nations, whose ships and navigation in the early days were superior to western ships, did nothing with their technological lead.

Another strange fact is Portugal was severly damaged by a Tsunami,which killed its ship and trade infrastructure. It never fully recovered. Not that it had the population to spread into the new world, those people were provided in the main by the British and Germans, due to severe winters in Northern Europe. But the far east would not have had any population problems. They could have settled anywhere if they had of wanted to.

 

[unmerged(141752)]

A great BBC series by James Burke (The day the universe changed) tries to shed some speculative light on this issue. In the final episode 10 he concludes that the great cultural differences originating from the religious beliefs (buddhist vs. christian basically) lead to different world view which affected to the interest in science and the will to explore distant lands. These series seem to be available at the youtube, at least for now. Recommended!

 

[delra]

Myself I think they didn't sail that far because they didn't need to. They had Spices and Silk and Coffee and all other stuff right there. It was Europeans who needed to fuel our internal conflicts with gold from overseas and also feed greed of our populations with silk, spices, coffee and tea imported from another end of the world. And this greed led us to first sail there commercially and later subdue the populations there to maximize profits.

Imagine Chinese conquered Portugal instead of building the Great Wall to trade with Europe. What their gain would be? They don't need colonial (or any other) manpower, they don't need cash (they already can afford the Great Wall) and they don't need anything produced in Europe at all... So they had little motivation to go after us.

Reading about that era in China you get convinced Chinese looked down at barbarians in Europe. I remember a scene from some movie where Kublai Khan started laughing when Marco Polo bragged about how wonderful Venice is. Same with Japan, after a short adventure with Europeans they reverted back to their tradition and lived many centuries without European wonders and had no problem with that until industrial era.

 

[Ionus]

eikka - thanks I will find it and watch - I love that stuff.

delra - yes, but it is an interesting what if...much of the European exploration was driven by individuals as well as by war. The Chinese, on the other hand, had a massive state run program approved by the Emperor. The drive for expansion was different.

When Cortez landed on the coast of Mexico, they were under orders not to do exactly what they were doing. So if they failed they would have been executed. Yet when they arrived at the mainland, in the bay was a fleet of ships. It would be reasonable to assume these were European except that no one could identify them. Cortez's men would have been able to say what nationality they were, or at least what sort of class of ship they were...but no. They were a bit rattled by this fleet, wondering about their intentions. It is possible they were Chinese.

Most of the East Indies and surrounding islands have a strong trace of Chinese in their DNA, from fishermen and traders who sailed these waters long before the Europeans showed up.

In Arabia, the story of Sinbad the Sailor is probably an adaptation of Zheng He, a regular traveller to India, Arabia and Africa. Some say he rounded the cape and got as far as america.

Whilst recognising it is improbable that an Eastern Power would colonise far afield, it is no less a possibilty than the Dutch in Asia and the Asians had capable sailors, better ships (in the 15th and 16th C) and more people. They most certainly could have competed for India and the east coast of africa.

If the far east is to be included in an expansion, giving the Asians their due is only going to increase replayability.

 

[unmerged(141752)]

Reading about that era in China you get convinced Chinese looked down at barbarians in Europe. I remember a scene from some movie where Kublai Khan started laughing when Marco Polo bragged about how wonderful Venice is. Same with Japan, after a short adventure with Europeans they reverted back to their tradition and lived many centuries without European wonders and had no problem with that until industrial era.

And yet that would be the exact reason why Christians would conquer those lands (in addition to emerging scientific interests of all things earth), to convert the 'barbarians' into christianity. Chinese religious/cultural base just didn't provide the same incentives to start exploring and colonizing. I recommend to watch James Burke's series. It really illustrates how several interconnected events in the western history has lead to world state that we are now (or actually were in the 80's).