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.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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

 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.

 

 

 

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.

 

 

 

 

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.

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.

 

 

 

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.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The best thing would have been if the chinese had tried to invade before the europeans, many amerindian tribes were quite welcoming of the outsiders (little did they know)

 

A large amount of contact with china would atleast have made them aware of where they related to other civs with regard to certain technologies.

 

Its worth noting that many tribes of the americas were far from easy to defeat, a bit of forewarning and it could well have been very different.

 

 

Given our fiery beginings, quite strange but when hearts are in the right places and thought out logic in order i will be bound to agree, i think you are the same pinguin

Originally posted by pinguin It may be, but Europeans weren't able to destroy Japan like they did with the Americas. In fact, Christianism was crush in Japan without piety, and foreigners were kept at distance. It is amazing the clear perceptions Japaneses have of the intentions of the Europeans.

Throughout their history the Japanese have taken great care to keep up with developments and never fall behind and become the victim of more advanced powers.

That being said, the Europeans never attempted to conquer Japan as far as I know. They simply traded with them and sent missionaries. These missionaries were relatively successful at first and some Japanese lords converted. The Japanese lords who converted were also the ones who first acquired guns from the Europeans, and could thus use this newfound power to grow on the expense of neighbouring lords who had not yet knowledge of firarms. The obscure Otomo clan is a good example of this; their leader Otomo Sorin converted to Christianity, possibly as a political manouver, and used European firepower to trumph the traditionally more powerful Shimazu clan. Oda Nobunaga, first of the three unifiers of Japan, patronised the Jesuits and the establishment of the first Christian church in Kyoto, although he never converted himself. It was only later when the Tokugawa held undisputed power in Japan that they adopted an isolationist and xenophobic policy, which affected Christianity in Japan badly as it was seen as something foreign and intrusive. Christianity was banished and the believers persecuted, the Japanese saints Magdalene of Nagasaki and Jacobo Kyushei Tomonaga were martyred in this period.

 

Yes, to stop them they would need nukes. Stopping foreign ambitions was why Chineses, Russians and Indians got it, anyways, and why Cuba also tried to get some.

 

I very much agree with the analysis that followed. Perhaps the Europeans would have been stopped somehow, but they would have entered, anyways.

 

The big problem of the Americas was that, proportionally, the areas of high civilization were confined to small fraction of the hemisphere. It would have taking centuries of developing and internal conquest to level matters out. Even today there are large fractions of the continent (Northern Canada, Western Amazons) where still development is very small.

 

 

 

 

 

Actually, the business was "illegal" and the bulk of the trade was carried by Cantonese merchants with their counterparts in Manila more or less against existing mercantile restrictions. From 1580 on the transport of merchandise west on the famous Manila Galleon was theoretically controlled (the level of smuggling was mind boggling and came to the attention of the Manila Audiencia with the sinking of one of the ships in the 1590s and salvage operations revealed a volume of cargo far exceeding the official manifest! Throughout the early decades of the 17th century, the Council of the Indies rpeatedly sought to control the volume of silver coin carried from Acapulco by the returning galleon and actually legislated against Chinese silks and ceramics as threats to Spanish textiles and earthenware (Majolica). Further, control was extended against the Piruleros, coastal vessels sailing from Peru to Acapulco. In modern parlance, the commerce would be called the "luxury trade" and repeatedly knocked heads with Spanish sumptuary laws and coinage control. Interestingly, the fact that only a single ship was permitted to cross the Pacific from Manila spurred the development of the largest cargo vessels ever built by Europeans prior to the 18th century!

 

However, the tone set here follows the erroneous parameters given the voyages of Zheng He, which were imperialist in nature and directed toward the Muslim Indian Ocean periphery. When coupled to the nonsense over the pacific nature of the Chinese, it becomes just too much bilge water! The Chinese were far from pacifist in their history and in the 2nd through 7th centuries exactly as fierce as any of their contemporaries elsewhere. Just the manner in which Zheng He became an imperial eunuch to the Yongle emperor should cure anyone of this fantasy. Anthropologists long speculated as to the possibility of some Chinese voyager knowing the maritime passage across the northern Pacific from Asia to North America but the premise of a 1421 venture is more than improbable.

If China did make a foothole and hit the Rockie Mountains, would they be prepared to cross them and continue to conquer?   I am not sure they would

main condition to rule the states?!?Who do control it?