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The Americas able to hold their own against the Ch

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  Quote bilal_ali_2000 Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Topic: The Americas able to hold their own against the Ch
    Posted: 10-Nov-2007 at 16:21
    It has already been posted that what if the Chinese had discovered America before they curtailed their Naval Expeditions. But it was viewed from an angle that whether if Chinese would have been a bit more empethic towards the Americans. But i am not looking at it from a moral viewpoint but a more practical one. They forget that the technological distance between the Chinese and the native Americans would have been far less and they would have been in a position to withstand the Chinese encroachment (if there ever was any such attempt) much more than they were able to withstand the European one centuries later. Disease would still have been a problem but they could have actually quarentened the diaseased and the disease would not spread so rapidly without them being consigned to restricted spaces. And if the native americans were able to withstand the initial Chinese onslaught (if there ever was) then they had a very rosy future ahead of them. They had large reservoirs of gold which is the most valued of commodities which they coudl have traded with the mainland nations and as a result would have been able to fill up the technological gap between themselves and the mainland nations very quickly. And their vast wealth of agriculture products would have found a huge market in the mainland nations. In my opinion had Chinese discovered the Americas the Americas would not have been there for the taking by the European nations a few centuries later.    
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  Quote edgewaters Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 10-Nov-2007 at 19:31
They forget that the technological distance between the Chinese and the native Americans would have been far less


In the late 15th or very early 16th century? Not really. Asia had cannon-armed ships suitable for long voyages on open seas too by this point - heck, by 1592, Korea had ironclads, centuries ahead of the Europeans.

They were also using muskets extensively from the 14th century on, under the Ming. But the firearms of the contact period were not really all that effective in New World battles with natives during the contact period - steel weapons and shields, metal helmets, horses, and germs were the chief decisive elements, and the Chinese had all of these.

On the other hand, it is unlikely that the Chinese would have sought to colonize the Americas or establish a lasting presence there in any case.
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  Quote Sander Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 10-Nov-2007 at 19:47
Originally posted by bilal_ali_2000

    It has already been posted that what if the Chinese had discovered America before they curtailed their Naval Expeditions. But it was viewed from an angle that whether if Chinese would have been a bit more empethic towards the Americans. But i am not looking at it from a moral viewpoint but a more practical one. They forget that the technological distance between the Chinese and the native Americans would have been far less and they would have been in a position to withstand the Chinese encroachment (if there ever was any such attempt) much more than they were able to withstand the European one centuries later. Disease would still have been a problem but they could have actually quarentened the diaseased and the disease would not spread so rapidly without them being consigned to restricted spaces. And if the native americans were able to withstand the initial Chinese onslaught (if there ever was) then they had a very rosy future ahead of them. They had large reservoirs of gold which is the most valued of commodities which they coudl have traded with the mainland nations and as a result would have been able to fill up the technological gap between themselves and the mainland nations very quickly. And their vast wealth of agriculture products would have found a huge market in the mainland nations. In my opinion had Chinese discovered the Americas the Americas would not have been there for the taking by the European nations a few centuries later.    
 
There is little reason to think that Chinese contact with americas would have resulted in structural changes for the local people. For example : in the 1400s  Chinese went to several (overseas) states to trade ; SE Asian,  South Asian,  Middle eastern , African etc. Apart from things of commercial nature, no structural changes in the socio-political organization took place there because of the contact, so why would this have been the case when they would have reached  the americas?
 
If it would follow the normal pattern ; then contact would be largely commercial (most extensively with the most organized states). Commodities would have been exchanged and it would be normal some Chinese traders would settle among the locals, just as they did in other places. Via these setttlements some cultural exchanges could take place but there is no reason to expect structural changes,  like for example South american states under Chinese domination or something.


Edited by Sander - 10-Nov-2007 at 20:20
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  Quote Guests Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 10-Nov-2007 at 20:54
I tend to agree that if Chineses had come to the Americas, the continent had evolved better.
 
In that case, I won't expect Chineses send those huge waves of immigrants and slaves that overcrowded the Americas and changed it demographically, and that more than disseases, changed the hemisphere and pushed Amerindians as minorities in theirs own lands.
 
I rather would expect the treatment Chineses with the Amerindians would have been similar to that they had with other peoples of Asia. I mean, more equalitary in terms.
 
I also would have expected a rapid development in technologies in the Americas with the introduction of guns, iron, farm animals, writing, etc., that would had made impossible for the barbarian Europeans to destroy the Americas the way they did.
 
In one hand is too bad the Chineses didn't come earlier. I agree on that.
 
On the other hand if they they, people like me, and the largest majorities of the Western Hemisphere, wouldn't exist. Not the U.S. as we know today and not Latin America would have ever existed. The Americas would have been radically different, with a local touch but very influenced by Chinese civilization.
 
 
 
 
 


Edited by pinguin - 10-Nov-2007 at 20:55
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  Quote Guests Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 11-Nov-2007 at 07:18
Thats not true, Chinese Rule in Burma or Vietnam was hardly egalitarian. Chinese would have acted much the same as the Spanish.
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  Quote Guests Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 11-Nov-2007 at 11:58
Originally posted by Sparten

Thats not true, Chinese Rule in Burma or Vietnam was hardly egalitarian. Chinese would have acted much the same as the Spanish.
 
Supporting evidence, please. How the Chineses treated people in theirs conquered territories?
 
Perhaps I pick the wrong partner for Amerindians and you just have blown up the image I had of the Chineses LOL
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  Quote Guests Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 11-Nov-2007 at 15:03

Chinese rule was rather brutal, in Vietnam the imposition of culture was ruthless. And like the Spainiards the Chinese would have taken all the silver they could get their hands on. Only difference would have been perhaps no slave trade; African slave trade.

The sad fact is that the Amerindians were in trouble whoever made contact, the place was too rich to pass up or get pangs of conscience over.
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  Quote Sander Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 11-Nov-2007 at 19:40
 Chinese were expansionists but that was against its neighbouring states. It not un- common for neigbours to fight and trying to incorporate each other with all consequences ( including imposing etc ) . Anyhow, this cannot be compared with their contact with far away overseas states and I think that this is what it is all about. The states in the americas would have been overseas states for them, not  direct neighbours that were fighting with them.  This fighting was usually 2 way, otherwise we would not see neighbours invading China and viceversa.
 
Dealing with far away overseas states was a different issue,  different policy. We clearly see that the Chinese had long contacts with many overseas states. These were overwhelmingly 2 way commerical contacts and there were only a few minor conflicts over the centuries. 
 
Equality was not a chinese specialty and there was a superiority complex. Non Chinese were called barbarians and wether the exchanged good came from the Arab, Indian, SE asian or African countries, there always recorded as 'tributary gifts' in the chinese annals. Good examples of literary self- aggrandizement but not harmfull for  those overseas contacts. 
 
Anyhow, lets compare some things.  The 1400 s were close to the Spanish contact with the amerindians, so we can compare Zheng He times with the arrival of Cortes and Pizarro. Was Zheng He trying to do the same as Cortes and Pizarro etc ? Nope,  so there is no basis for expecting  they would act the same as the Spaniards, after encountering the Americas.
 
Its simple ; polities like those of the Incas etc would have represented far away overseas states for the Chinese ( and not contiguous states with whom they were often fighting ). Therefore, if chinese contacts would have followed the general pattern of dealing with overseas states,  then the contacts would not be very different from their contacts with all the overseas states in Asia and Africa etc.  In other words, mainly commercial.
 
 
 


Edited by Sander - 11-Nov-2007 at 21:44
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  Quote jdalton Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 11-Nov-2007 at 23:28
Originally posted by Sparten

Thats not true, Chinese Rule in Burma or Vietnam was hardly egalitarian. Chinese would have acted much the same as the Spanish.

I agree with Sander. China had no reason to accost distant kingdoms because those distant kingdoms had nothing China wanted (unlike Korea or Vietnam or Central Asia). Europeans found all sorts of things in other parts of the world that Europe lacked and launched wars to steal them. China (however far Zhenghe really got) never found anything they wanted badly enough to start a war over. This is not nobility or virtue, simply practicality.
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  Quote Guests Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 12-Nov-2007 at 00:00

Well, don't agree. Chineses were very interested in the Silver from the Americas. Silver Spanish coins, printed in Mexico and Peru, circulated in large number in China, after the Spanish established a colony in Phillipines.

I bet if Chineses had knew there was silver in very large quantities in Peru and Mexico, they would had a motivation to go there. Without forgetting, emeralds, gold, jade and many other American producst that had called the attention of them.
 
 
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  Quote ehecatzin Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 24-Nov-2007 at 06:27
well the imperial fleet despite being a formidable war machine, its mission was to lay diplomatic and comertial agreements with foreign lands while showing China's military and cultural power.

If the fleet had gotten to America they would have been more interested in all these things, not in claiming all land they could see for themselvs like the spanish. These is they would have found all the exotic goods they could take back to china and start comercial persuits with america, smallpox and other diseases would have made their way into the continent sooner or later, but its not like american civilizations would dissapear because of this.
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  Quote Guests Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 24-Nov-2007 at 11:38
I agree on that. The American civilization would have evolved and addapted to the outside world, rather than being destroyed and replaced by an allien culture.
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  Quote longshanks31 Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 24-Nov-2007 at 16:31
I think the chinese would have done trade rather than conquest, i think the amerindians of all nations would have suffered much less, its hard to imagine how they could have suffered more.
 
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  Quote Reginmund Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 24-Nov-2007 at 19:24
Originally posted by pinguin

I tend to agree that if Chineses had come to the Americas, the continent had evolved better.
 
I tend to agree that this is an extremely naive stance in the well-established tradition of thinking the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence. Perfections is always around the next corner, or behind the former.
 
Originally posted by pinguin

In that case, I won't expect Chineses send those huge waves of immigrants and slaves that overcrowded the Americas and changed it demographically, and that more than disseases, changed the hemisphere and pushed Amerindians as minorities in theirs own lands.
 
I don't know enough about Chinese demographics at this time, but I doubt China was any less crowded than Europe. If the Chinese had brought slaves to America, they probably wouldn't have been Black Africans, but they'd still bring slaves of some sort to carry out hard manual work, unless they'd simply make use of the native population, which the European too tried at first. Both China and Europe shared the Eurasian bacterial flora, so it's unlikely the diseases brought by the Chinese would have been much different.
 
Originally posted by pinguin

I rather would expect the treatment Chineses with the Amerindians would have been similar to that they had with other peoples of Asia. I mean, more equalitary in terms.
 
The Chinese were anything but egalitarian with conquered peoples; in addition to the already mentioned Vietnamese and Burmese, the Koreans and the Turkic peoples of western China come to mind, the latter still consider themselves oppressed to this day. We need go no further back than february this year when a seperatist leader of the Uyghur people was executed for political dissent. Also, throughout the history of the Chinese empire they considered themselves to be the centre of the world, the name Zhongguo (or China in English) means "the central kingdom", and all peoples outside of it were considered as barbarian and inferior. The peoples of South America would at best have been considered second class citisens, but even that is in my opinion optimistic.
 
It is not disputed that the Chinese empire treated subjugated peoples as second class citisens, and as Sparten says there is no reason to believe the Chinese would have been any more favourably disposed towards the native Americans than their other subjects. The burden of evidence lies with those who would believe otherwise.
 
Originally posted by pinguin

I also would have expected a rapid development in technologies in the Americas with the introduction of guns, iron, farm animals, writing, etc., that would had made impossible for the barbarian Europeans to destroy the Americas the way they did.
 
"Barbarian Europeans"? I doubt the term "barbarian" is any less applicable to the native South Americans, in any case emotional sentiments do not belong in the historical science.


Edited by Reginmund - 24-Nov-2007 at 19:26
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  Quote Guests Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 24-Nov-2007 at 19:51
Originally posted by longshanks31

I think the chinese would have done trade rather than conquest, i think the amerindians of all nations would have suffered much less, its hard to imagine how they could have suffered more.
 

 

Yes. I do agree with you. I bet we would end agreeing in everything LOL

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  Quote jdalton Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 25-Nov-2007 at 03:43
Reginmund, slavery hasn't been legal in China for 2500 years. Whatever else the medieval Chinese did, they didn't keep slaves.

China doesn't have a history of establishing overseas colonies, but it does have a long history of overseas migration. Chinese people moved out along the trade routes and built communities from Japan to Indonesia to the Philippines. You can still find the descendants of these migrants throughout East Asia, either integrated into the local societies or living in Chinatowns that predate Columbus.

Since the Americas are not connected to China by land (like Korea, Tibet, Mongolia, and Vietnam) it is far more likely that Chinese "colonialism" in America would have taken the form of towns and trading ports of Chinese merchants with no direct connection to the government in Beijing and no particular motivation for outright conquest.
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  Quote Kamikaze 738 Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 25-Nov-2007 at 08:00
I dont think we would ever try to colonize the Americans like what the European had done... taken from the example of Zheng He's voyages to Arabia and Africa, there has been no motivation of conquest except for establishment of recognition and trade. 
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  Quote Guests Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 25-Nov-2007 at 10:51

Well, even if Chineses wouldn't conquest or settle in the Americas, the very contact between Chineses and Amerindians would have changed history. Many inventions and ideas of the Eurasian world would have come to the Americas through those Chinese merchants.

Imagine an Americas with iron, horses, large ships and gunpowder. I bet Spaniards and other Europeans won't have a chance to invade it if they tried.
 
 
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  Quote Reginmund Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 25-Nov-2007 at 19:59
Originally posted by idalton

Reginmund, slavery hasn't been legal in China for 2500 years. Whatever else the medieval Chinese did, they didn't keep slaves.


Yes, I'm aware, and as such it's a weak point, but the Spaniards didn't practice slavery to any great extent before settling in America either.

Originally posted by Kamikaze 738

I dont think we would ever try to colonize the Americans like what the European had done... taken from the example of Zheng He's voyages to Arabia and Africa, there has been no motivation of conquest except for establishment of recognition and trade.


Well, it varied. The reign of Yongle, which sponsored Zheng He's expeditions was unusually outwardlooking, but without a sound commercial policy to back it up like the Portuguese and Spaniards. It's a contrast to the previous reign of Hongwu and the later Hongxi, which were more traditionally confucianistic, focusing on internal stability and agriculture at the expense of foreign adventures and commerce.

Originally posted by pinguin

Imagine an Americas with iron, horses, large ships and gunpowder. I bet Spaniards and other Europeans won't have a chance to invade it if they tried.


Without America as an outlet for population pressure and a place to exploit for resources, the Europeans' future would have looked all the worse. One man's bread is another man dead, they say.
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  Quote Guests Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 25-Nov-2007 at 20:35
Originally posted by Reginmund

...
Originally posted by pinguin

Imagine an Americas with iron, horses, large ships and gunpowder. I bet Spaniards and other Europeans won't have a chance to invade it if they tried.


Without America as an outlet for population pressure and a place to exploit for resources, the Europeans' future would have looked all the worse. One man's bread is another man dead, they say.
 
Too bad Chineses didn't arrive in time so Americans have a chance to survive ......
 
In the picture is Captain Popper, Romanian adventurer and exterminator of the Onas people of the Land of Fire. This is a shame of my own country, Chile, for allowing that kind of criminals as refugees. Captain Popper died stabbed by his own people, which if I were religious I would say it was divine justice.
 
This is what the European contact brought to the Americas, I am afraid: death and destruction.
 
 
 
 
 
 
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