It's also an issue that malaria comes over straight away. It's not that settlements are built in its midst by bad luck, per se. The issue is that the kinds of places where an early settlement can be built and where the climate is friendly enough for it to succeed, are also exactly the sorts that naturally harbor mosquitoes.
Colonizing America is Hard
- Thread starter Faeelin
- Start date
Valdemar II
Banned
I'm going to disagree, the Caribbian* was as much settler colonies as North America was, the main difference was that in Caribbia the settler was brought from Africa involuntary, but of course so was many of the Scot-Irish in USA too.
*And that was Spains were first settlement in America was.
I Blame Communism
Banned
"Scots-Irish" is, I understand, confusing Americanese for "Ulster Scots", and the Ulster Presbyterians in the 18th C migrated voluntarily. A lot of "Scots and Irish" people were forced overseas by the Famine and the Clearances, but neither of these things was designed to get them to America: the Famine wasn't designed at all, and the landlords in the Highlands didn't generally give a shit what their peasants did - and all of this was long after the eastern seaboard had been thoroughly colonised. And Cromwell deported his enemies, including Mosstroopers and Confederates, to America but that was never demographically significant as far as I'm aware.
I'm not quite sure what you're referring to.
I think the Romans would probably have been able to provide a large and stable enough market for tobacco, if a reliable means of accessing it had been found. They'd probably grow it closer to home though, I suppose.
Valdemar II
Banned
Many of the people usual called Scot-Irish was brought over as involuntary indenture servants.
yourworstnightmare
Banned
There are a couple of recipes for successful colonization:
1. Right climate and soil for plantations,
The easiest one to pull of, you need s few entrepreneurs, deal with some slave traders and some capital, and there will be profit.
2. Conquest
This require something to conquer, ie. an advanced agricultural civilization such as the Incas and the Aztecs. Also a surplus of young adventurers willing to conquer the place for you. Manageable if you just had some wars closer to home and now need some new place to send (read get rid of) your soldiers to.
3. Settlement
This is the hardest one. For this you need to be stronger than the natives, or you're doomed. Easier to handle if the natives are hunters/ gatherers who just can be driven away. You also need a surplus population, because why would someone leave their homeland if they don't have to. Easier to manage if you oppress and persecute certain aspects of your population, which causes them to migrate to a "freer" climate in the colonies. This will cause whole families to migrate, which is necessary. The climate must be right too, or the settlement would surely fail, and there can't be any dangerous diseases your population isn't immune to around.
1. Right climate and soil for plantations,
The easiest one to pull of, you need s few entrepreneurs, deal with some slave traders and some capital, and there will be profit.
2. Conquest
This require something to conquer, ie. an advanced agricultural civilization such as the Incas and the Aztecs. Also a surplus of young adventurers willing to conquer the place for you. Manageable if you just had some wars closer to home and now need some new place to send (read get rid of) your soldiers to.
3. Settlement
This is the hardest one. For this you need to be stronger than the natives, or you're doomed. Easier to handle if the natives are hunters/ gatherers who just can be driven away. You also need a surplus population, because why would someone leave their homeland if they don't have to. Easier to manage if you oppress and persecute certain aspects of your population, which causes them to migrate to a "freer" climate in the colonies. This will cause whole families to migrate, which is necessary. The climate must be right too, or the settlement would surely fail, and there can't be any dangerous diseases your population isn't immune to around.
Good god... I'm still struggling with the wholly depraved idea that slaves can be considered settlers or colonists...
The Caribbean sugar plantations you refer to needed a constant supply of fresh "settlers" because of the death rates associated with cane production. The "settlers" involved in field lasted on average about two years. These "settlers" were usually segregated by sex too, severely limiting any chance of producing more "settlers".
In Haiti as late as 1790, the "settler" population there was dropping by as much as 4% annually despite the constant arrival of fresh "settlers" and the fact that most "settlers" weren't working on the more deadly sugar plantations.
Providing fresh African "settlers" to what were basically industrialized agricultural operations produced a lot of "wastage" too. Apart from the roughly 10% average "wastage" rate for "settlers" during the voyage to the Caribbean, the "seasoning" camps where new "settlers" were "trained" for their duties enjoyed a "wastage" rate as high as one third.
The lives of the Scotch-Irish "settlers" by contrast were less hellish. They usually worked at less hazardous tasks, were either enslaved for a fixed period or routinely manumitted, and enjoyed a smaller "wastage" rate despite their alleged European unsuitability for the climate.
Seeing as the imperial powers who transported all those African "settlers" to the Caribbean also routinely destroyed them through work and took active steps to keep their birth rates low, I don't think they actually intended to colonize the islands with Africans no matter what happened in the end.
And transporting several million settlers to produce "colonies" of a few hundred thousand isn't exactly the best way of getting the job done either.
Excuse me now while I go wash my brain out with soap...
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yourworstnightmare
Banned
I'm with Lardo. Caribbean plantation colonies can't be considered settler colonies, since the slaves didn't reproduce (except female slaves with slave owners or overseers).
I'm chalking the whole incident up to translation issues and not... well... something else.
It's best that we ignore the "idea" from here on out.
The only way I could see a dark-age civilisation settling the Americas is by gradual migration to areas the natives either don't want or are willing to share. There would hardly be any interest. But then, a dark-age settlement of anywhere you can't walk is very improbable. But once you move up from that stage, you don't need to advance very fasr to take an interest. Europe's fur trade penetrated into polar Russia as early asd the thirteenth century, and it looks like about that time the coastal whaling grounds were depleted. That would produce demand already. The Romans still had a European wilderness, of course, but they aren't terribly good candidates for transatlantic settlement anyway. The Umayyads would be better, tied into the trade networks to Asia.
A lot of what has been said here, if not all, could be applied to any of the far away settler colonies, like SA, Australia or NZ.
Each of the above also needed long term effort in terms of steady streams of settlers, investment, trade and soldiers from the metropole. All also had need for non white "coolie" labour, even the traditional "white" colonies of Australia and NZ. See blackbirding or Chinese workers
Each of the above also needed long term effort in terms of steady streams of settlers, investment, trade and soldiers from the metropole. All also had need for non white "coolie" labour, even the traditional "white" colonies of Australia and NZ. See blackbirding or Chinese workers
Faeelin
Banned
Woah, this was way, way too harsh.Look at the death rate and male-female balance among early settlers in Virginia. It's not thatdifferent from the Caribbean.
I Blame Communism
Banned
Interesting. Do you know which period this was? I'm rather ignorant of early America, I confess; I merely know that in Scotland we have a long tradition of voluntary migration, and I was under the impression that the Ulster Scots (who had voluntarily come to Ulster to start with) had migrated of their own accord again because of lean years in Ireland and frustration with absentee landlordism and the Ascendancy.
I know there were Scots and Irish indentured servants under Cromwell, as I say, but the use of America as a penal colony was general. Under the (English) "bloody code", a ridiculous number of offences bore the death penalty and it was often commuted to transportation. I would have thought Mosstroopers and Confederates were only a fraction of the number transported to America - and I was unaware they were considered "Scots-Irish". Some Mosstroopers went to the Caribbean, or Maine.
They were volunteers, even the indentured servants, and not property. What's more, the death rates they experienced were not expected and those deaths were not factored into the colony's everyday "business model".
None of those things can even be imagined to be part of the sugar production-focused slave trade the poster referred to.
The idea that slaves were colonists or settlers, were ever thought of as colonists or settlers, or could be considered colonists and slaves is absolutely repugnant and morally bankrupt. I have chosen to believe that the "thinking" behind even suggesting such an idea is due translation difficulties and not something else which would require the attention of a moderator.
Valdemar II
Banned
Sadly I couldn't read Don Lardo's comment, before you quoted our dear polite poster. But yes I fail to see the difference in bringing people involutary to another place just because they have different amount of melanin in their skin, and the death rate was atrocious both among slaves and indetured servants.
Valdemar II
Banned
It was in 17th cenrtury and early 18th century, I can't tell you much I have only seen superficial mentionings of it and indicators that their death rate was insanely high.
The fact that you continue to fail to see the hugely differing intents between involuntary indentured servitude and slavery speaks volumes.
In one, eventual manumission was a reality and certain personal destruction through labor was neither planned or intended.
In the other, manumission was impossible and certain personal destruction through labor was both planned and intended.
Indentured servants were intended to work and slaves were intended to work to death.
The fact that, early in the period, the death rates for both groups while laboring were roughly similar does not mean what you would like it to mean because you're deliberately overlooking the fact that slaves experienced a death rate of 10% during transportation and an additional death rate of 33% in the seasoning camps after their arrival.
Indentured servants, involuntary or otherwise, did not face the Middle Passage or the seasoning camps that slaves did. Indentured servants, involuntary or otherwise, were brought to the Caribbean with very different long term intentions in mind than slaves were.
I was willing, perhaps because I didn't want to examine the alternatives, to think that your incomprehension of both the differing intents between indentured servitude and slavery and the moral consequences of that differing intent was due to either translation issues or a simple lack of knowledge on the issue. Your continued incomprehension of the differing intent and moral consequences, despite both being explained to you, has forced me to reexamine that thinking.
The next time you allow us a peek at your Klan hood I'll bring it to the attention of the moderators.
The purpose of this thread is to debate how difficult was to colonize the Americas. From what I could understand from the initial posts, we agreed that the main difficulty was to reach a critical mass of population in order to clear the land, prepare the fields, plant, grow and harvest the crops and all the other works related to economical activities of the area, all that in a way that is profitable to the nation/company/group that is trying to colonize such region. Well, slavery allowed it in several regions. So, I really don't understand why Valdemar is being blamed for bringing slavery in this discussion. We are not debating the morality of it or not, we are debating the means how a region can be populated in order to be successfuly colonized.