March 11, 1641 - Battle of Mborore Leaves no Bandeiras Alive

 

South America was a hotbed of colonial activity in the seventeenth century. Officially the continent was split between Spanish and Portuguese control by edict from the Roman Catholic Church, but the Protestant Dutch made inroads with their own settlements. Striking out from their haven ports, the Dutch acted as pirates, capturing ships and disrupting Portuguese sea traffic. Often cut off from the mother-country, Portuguese Brazil went on its own path of operating plantations worked by thousands of native slaves. With an ever-present need for more slaves, as well as promises of silver and precious stones hidden inland on the continent, adventurers called “bandeiras” made treasure-seeking expeditions. The well-armed bandeiras easily captured natives, the vast majority of whom died on the long journey back to Sao Paulo.

Farther south, a very different path had been ordered by the governor of Spanish Paraguay. Funds and support were dispatched to Jesuit missionaries to establish settlements and evangelize among the native Guarani. Towns were built, and locals readily adopted the European trades, rapidly expanding the economic potential of the region. The missions also offered protection against the slavers since converted natives were technically not to be taken as slaves.

It was not long before the reaches of the Guarani caught the attention of the bandeiras. The Guarani massed near the missions, making for an opportunity to capture masses of slaves in one action. Moreover, the slaves would be valuable in the markets of Sao Paolo and Rio de Janeiro for their skills. Though the bandeiras ignored the laws preventing enslaving Christians, most of the natives followed the law of not carrying weapons. Raids began in 1620, and they increased with such severity that even the natives who weren’t captured fled south, depopulating the region.

The Jesuits and native leaders were determined to fight back. Father Francisco Diaz Tano and other priests traveled to Europe, pressing King Felipe IV to allow natives firearms to defend themselves and Pope Urban VIII to condemn the bandeiras capturing converts. Even before those orders were passed, the governor of Paraguay dispatched reinforcements to the mission defenders and encouraged Guarani to be armed and trained.

Bandeiras parties soon came upon ambushes with well-armed opponents. The hills and forests where natives had been terrified to live now became places of terror for the bandeiras, who were attacked and pursued whenever they were discovered. A group of them took refuge in the remains of a mission near Mborore Mountain that bandeiras had destroyed some time before, and others joined them in an organized defense. More than 4,000 missionaries and Guarani converts marched on the makeshift fort. After a devastating battle, the bandeiras surrendered, pleading with the victors to grant them Christian forgiveness and allow them to flee. Instead, the victors decided swift punishment was due to the slavers and executed them for their crimes.

Months passed in Sao Paulo without word from their bandeiras expeditions to the upper reaches of the Parana River. Rumors trickled back that the natives had begun fighting back, which unnerved the plantations and government, even more so since there were no hard facts to back it up one way or another. The adventurers simply seemed to disappear.

Hard truth did arrive when Father Tano and his fellows returned from Europe with new laws and papal bulls that brought an end to Portuguese incursions into the area. By that point, the Paulistas were happy enough to leave it be.

The Guarani success was a splash that caused ripples all through the continent. Indigenous slavery practically ended within the Spanish realm with numerous uprisings to break the hold of plantation owners. Uprisings took place throughout Brazil, too, sponsored by Jesuits seeking better care and even freedom for those enslaved as well as Dutch adventurers looking to break Portugal’s hold on the region. The economy shifted away from huge plantations seeking cash crops at the expense of workers’ lives to family-run farms and businesses, creating a strong middle class by the eighteenth century. With the arrival of the Industrial Revolution, South Americans were eager to implement modern technology for manufacturing and transport, making the continent one of the major centers of production in the modern world.

 

--

In reality, the defeated bandeiras escaped to Sao Paulo, where they spread the word of the armed uprising. The plantations and government dismissed Father Tano despite his documents from Europe, going as far as banishing all the Jesuits from the capital. Manuel Pires formed up an army of hundreds of bandeiras and thousands of Tupi warriors who marched to destroy the defenders utterly. Waves of bandeiras from Sao Paulo ravaged the region for years before trained armies of Guarani affirmed their defense of the region. The 1750 Treaty of Madrid moved the border westward, resulting in seven years of guerilla warfare until the last of the Guarani were defeated.

1424 - Zheng He Sails Northeast

After five extraordinary voyages, the legendary Treasure Fleet of China was ordered to stay in port by the Yongle Emperor in 1421. His campaigns against the Mongols and Yuan to the north for the last decade had stretched the military thin, and it did not seem wise to dispatch another expensive expedition despite the promising reward of spices, animals, and trade routes with foreign ports. Now the fleet would serve as garrison in Nanjing, which was its official title, and its admiral, Zheng He, would be tasked with local duties while one of his commanders, Hong Bao, delivered ambassadors back to their home countries in what would be considered a sixth voyage.

While capable and respected in court, Zheng He was a member of the eunuch faction, which met with increasing friction the Confucianist civil servant faction. As the Yongle Emperor’s health faded, a secret plan was hatched among the civil servants to dispatch Zheng He out of court so they could be closer to the emperor’s son, who was not so enthused by the extravagant treasure ships or the wonders they brought back to China. Originally they intended to send him on a diplomatic mission to Palembang in Indonesia, but an idea was hatched to send him into unexplored waters in hopes he might not return for many years. Cleverly winning over support from the military faction and gaining the emperor’s ear, they concocted the plan to send Zheng He along the coast northward in supposed hope of finding allies on the far side of the Mongols.

Zheng He left in the early spring of 1424 with a much smaller, sturdier fleet than he usually led. After obligatory visits to the courts of Sejong the Great of the Joseon dynasty in Korea and Shogun Ashikaga Yoshikazu in Japan, the fleet moved on northward. Islands became increasingly bare stone and ice, but human life could be found even there. Zheng He traded with Ainu and Aleut in the northern Pacific, noting the vast capabilities of fishing and the potential for introducing manufactures.

At the Bering Strait, ice made travel impassable, so Zheng He continued eastward in hopes of finding a northeast passage that could take him to kingdoms beyond the Mongols as potential allies. The coast unfortunately turned southward, but Zheng He pressed on. He mapped and traded with more groups along the coast, revealing thickly wooded lands and extensive bays. Once past an enormous peninsula in desert lands, the fleet came to the complex city-states of the Toltec. An overland journey brought them to the growing Aztec Empire, fierce warriors with obsidian blades and a relatable respect for jade. The Aztecs stated that they had no knowledge of the Mongols or even the distant Europeans at the western end of the Silk Road. In fact, there seemed to be another sea to the east of their empire. Though disheartened by finding the mandate impossible to complete, Zheng He was excited to see that the Aztec stores of gold were seemingly as infinite as the emperor’s and that they were eager to trade for iron weapons and cannons.

Zheng He returned to China in the fall of 1425 to learn that not only had the Yongle Emperor died, but so had his son, the Hongxi Emperor. The new Xuande Emperor was much more excited than his father about the expeditions, and the tobacco, wild animals including jaguars and colorful birds, and immense piles of gold prompted him to order another voyage. This next voyage established trading posts with tribes along the Pacific to supply the route to the Aztec as well as exploring farther southward, which led to contact with the formidable and wealthy Incan Empire. Chinese interest in this new-to-them world grew even more when an upriver expedition from the Great Golden Bay discovered immense gold fields.

As government-controlled maritime trade dwindled through the fifteenth century, private commerce expanded widely. The middle class grew with merchants and manufacturers, leading to organized companies beyond the normal Confucian family order. New philosophy came to the population, which encouraged expansion and growth, expanding Chinese influence westward to counter European expeditions. China became the unquestioned center of world affairs even though political turmoil would change its governance over time.

On the eastern side of the ocean, populations faced bitter plagues from the disease exchange, prompting Chinese physicians to introduce variolation to immunize against smallpox and medical research analyzing contact that would lead to a germ theory. Populations largely recovered by the time of European arrival from across the Atlantic, where settlers only made footholds in the larger native nations who had adapted not only with biological resistance but also to warfare with firearms.

 

--

In reality, Zheng He went to Palembang. Though documents at the time show that the Treasure Fleets turned strong profits, later ministers condemned them as wasteful and destroyed much of the archives about them. Some researchers suggest that Chinese ships did, in fact, visit the Americas, such as Gavin Menzies describing a voyages Zhou Man and Hong Bao mapping much of the continents' coasts. In 1980, John Furry of Natural History Museum of Northern California stated he had found a submerged shape in Sacramento River bearing a resemblance to a Chinese junk and that core samples judged the ship’s building at roughly 1400.

April, 1483 - Muhammad XII Captures Lucena

The Iberian Peninsula had been in turmoil for centuries. Dominated by Muslim rule since the Umayyad invasion in 711, Christian kingdoms in the north sought an aspirational Reconquista to liberate the whole land to Christendom for seven hundred years. By the fifteenth century, only the Emirate of Granada was still under Muslim authority, yet the Christians were slowed by periodic infighting between the major kingdom of Portugal and the twin Spanish kingdoms of Castile and Aragon. The Muslims, too, faced infighting in 1482 when Muhammad XII overthrew his father during yet another war sparked by raiding in 1481 to end the Truce of 1478 put into place during the War of Castilian Succession.

The war initially went well for Granada with the king’s brother-in-law, al-Zagal, in competent command of the southern forces. The king’s son proved overly ambitious and overthrew his father with courtly intrigue in 1482 and soon wanted victories to match his uncle’s at Loja breaking the Christian siege and winning battles in the hills. Muhammad marched on Lucena and besieged it. Lights in the towers altered nearby Cabra to come to Lucena. Nervous, Muhammad considered withdrawing, but a letter to his uncle advised him to defeat one and then the other as he had manipulating opponents at court.

Muhammad feigned a retreat, prompting the Cabrans to take up pursuit and the Lucena defenders to charge out of their defenses. As the two Christian armies became entangled, the Granadan forces turned about and formed ranks. Unable to organize a protected retreat and confused with the different towns’ soldiers literally bumping into one another under different commanders’ orders, the Christian armies were struck down. Those who made it back to Lucena were far too few to defend the town, which was captured the next day. Cabra fell soon afterward as Granadans pushed forward.

War dragged on and on. The Castilian fleet circled Granada, but the forces under Muhammad’s eager leadership moved quickly at lifting any siege that could be laid on land while raiding parties kept much of the Christian forces at home. Even more frustrated than the rulers was the Italian navigator Cristoforo Colombo, who went by the Latin Christophorus Columbus as he sought financial backing for a scheme to sail west across the Atlantic to reach Asian markets. In the 1480s, he had approached John II of Portugal with the idea, which was dismissed as his calculations of the Earth’s circumference were too small as well as Portugal’s monopoly on African and Indian Ocean trade granted by the Pope. Columbus then approached Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain, who were intrigued by the idea of sailing around the Portuguese, but they were too busy with the war. To keep Columbus from moving on, they gave him a salary and kept him in Spain for several years. By the 1490s, Columbus was disappointed enough to sail for France, where he again ran into a block as Charles VIII’s court had just invested in the First Italian War. Columbus then tried England, where he discovered there was already an expedition planned by another Italian, Giovanni Caboto, whom the English called John Cabot.

While Columbus slinked back to Spain to live on his salary, Cabot made sail in 1496. He had scraped together funding from Bristol shippers who also hoped to compete with Lisbon, bankers from Florence, and the court of Henry VII, who granted him £50. Cabot’s first outing failed to find land in the rough waters of the North Atlantic against the prevailing current. He sailed again in 1497, finding land and staking a claim for England. Though he met no natives, his crew did see two figures running in the trees and recovered an unstrung, red-wooded bow.

Europe marveled at the discovery, and Spain balked at the idea of English claims. Having already lost trade routes to Portugal, Spain (backed by France) appealed to Rome so they could buy time until the Granada War was over. Pope Alexander VI decreed in a bull that all lands discovered west of 30° latitude up to the Indian Ocean would be held in “Christian common,” meaning no extensive claims could be made and trading posts could only be established with papal permission.

Though the coast and major rivers of the Americas were thoroughly explored over the next century by sailors like Corte-Real and Vespucci, there were few efforts of settlement beyond merchants living with tribal communities eager to trade. Most of the economic interest in the western hemisphere was in fishing on the Grand Banks and raiding to capture slaves. The raiding parties caused coastal natives to organize defenses and determine which ships belonged to which nations. A complex and constantly changing system of alliances grew during the Age of Exploration, and native peoples had formed recognized nations that remained unconquered through the Age of Empire such as the French-allied Montagnais-Naskapi-Objiwe, the Iroquois-led Algonquin Alliance, the Five Tribes of Great Florida, the Maya, the Orinoco Peoples, and the Tupi.

--

In reality, the Siege of Lucena was a disastrous defeat for Muhammad XII, known as Boabdil to the Castilians. The army of Granada was destroyed and Boabdil was captured, giving Ferdinand a tool to sow division into the country as al-Zagal became Muhammad XIII. Over the next decade, the Spanish forces captured Granada and completed the Reconquista begun centuries before with Boabdil being released to formally surrender Granada. Ferdinand and Isabella reached out to Columbus just as he was planning to leave for France and made good on promises to fund his expedition in 1492.

Guest Post: The Kaiser's Final Broadcast

 This post first appeared on Today in Alternate History, inspired by Eric Oppen and Jeff Provine.

 

Dungavel Estate, Scotland,  15 May, 1941

Inevitably, given their direct involvement in WW1, the military plan for the forthcoming invasion of the Soviet Union was the main topic of a private conversation between two great German has-beens: the exiled Kaiser and the former Deputy Fuhrer. They were living on the Duke of Hamilton's property for the same reason: their opposition to another veteran of that earlier conflict, Adolf Hitler. As a man they could never hope to replace, they had thrown away what remained of their tarnished reputations in order to stop his insane dreams for the German Reich.

Still being something of an unapologetic narcissist, Wilhelm had relished the chance to broadcast propaganda on German channels for the BBC. He proposed to interview his fellow German as a guest several days later in what would prove to be his final broadcast. He died of a pulmonary embolism on 4 June, 1941, at the age of 82.

Given the Kaiser's long record of accidental mis-statements, this Final Broadcast was a considerable risk; however, Churchill was keen to benefit from his questionable decision to provide him with asylum. The fearless Hess took the opportunity to reveal details of some stunning espionage: that the Red Army outnumbered the Germans and their allies 1.4-to-1 in infantry and artillery, 2.6-to-1 in aircraft, and stunningly more than 3.8-to-1 in tanks.

This revelation backfired disastrously, having the unforeseen effect of Hitler calling off Operation Barbarossa in favour of a renewed attempt to conquer Great Britain. This was facilitated by the Quisling-like machinations of the Duke of Hamilton whose goal was to bring Edward VIII back from Bermuda and put him on the throne. But, with the notable exception of capturing the ring-leaders Hess and Churchill, Hitler's invasion of Britain quickly turned into a quagmire of resistance and sabotage of nearly every public work. Although he briefly held Western Europe in his grasp, the Allied counter-attack through Africa enabled Britain to be liberated by the D-Day landing at Devon, June 6, 1944. Churchill himself would re-appear from his imprisonment in Spandau Prison, following televised trials for war crimes including the area bombing of Germany.

Thanks to the bizarre chain of events occurring in May 1941, much of the continent would remain occupied, not to be liberated until 1987. The Red Army swept across Europe, meeting with American and British allies after they had taken Berlin and continued toward the Western Front, spreading as far as France and Italy. A new generation of Western leaders encouraged the Soviets to relinquish their control of Europe as soon as order could be maintained, but Stalin decided to stay.

An Iron Curtain fell from East France to North Italy and across the Soviet Balkans, an empire that looked to expand through the Middle East, Africa, even Latin America, and absorb Chinese Communism into the Soviet-led World Community. Any opposition to the world superpower had to be covert, such as escapes across the Swiss border and arming of Afghan guerillas, as no nation could stand against Stalin's legacy until it eventually collapsed into corruption and civil war.

Author's Note:

In reality, the Kaiser declined an offer from Churchill of asylum in Britain, preferring to remain at Huis Doorn. Meanwhile, Hess died in Spandau Prison in 1987 the year we date the Soviet collapse in this timeline.

Olmec Rope-and-Pulley

By 1500 BC, the Olmec (“Rubber People”) civilization flourished on the southern end of the Gulf of Mexico. Settling in the lowlands, the Olmec captured the constantly flowing waters of the river bottoms to create a system of agriculture that produced substantial yields of maize, beans, and potatoes. Villages built on higher ground had ready access to the forest for hunting and gathering as well as fishing. With surplus food from agriculture, the culture grew to include craftsmen, especially stoneworkers that carved masks, statuary, and figurines in jade and basalt. Trade expanded in demand for obsidian for tools and luxury goods while Olmec philosophers discovered principles of writing and the mathematical concept of zero.

The Olmec were masters of the Mesoamerican ballgame that would be played for millennia, if not originating it themselves. The game consisted of a 4-1 rectangular walled court with the middle area narrowed to half the width of the end zones. Players worked to move solid rubber balls to score, in some games using on their hips, in others their hands, feet, or even paddles. Later, stone rings were installed into the walls as potential goals.

It was over one of these stone rings that workmen repairing a cracked wall threw a rope to create a rudimentary pulley. The Olmecs were well familiar with levers and inclined planes for construction and transporting huge stone blocks, but workmen grew frustrated attempting to move stone in the narrow central field of the ballcourt. By rolling a rope over the rounded edge of the ring, the workers lifted stone much more easily. They soon adapted a portable system, which proved even more effective with the pulley installed on an axle. Pulleys made quarries more efficient and capable of digging deeper before having to go to a new site. They also improved farming, allowing for faster loading and unloading from boats at docks. Demand for better ropes brought together new methods of spinning and laying with rubberized strands.

During the fourth century BC, a series of earthquakes and volcanic eruptions devastated the eastern range of the Olmec community. Rivers became silted, stymying the flow and turning rich farmland into stagnant swamps. Many Olmecs left, seeking better lands to settle, while others struggled on reduced resources. With limited manpower in the areas where water still flowed, workers sought to capture the work of the flow to boost their ability to lay rope and grind grain. At first, belted ropes with wooden drags were dropped into the rivers, where they would were raised up and made into a circuit by a series of pulleys. Within a few generations, the water-ropes gave way to waterwheels that powered early factories.

Following Olmec recovery, the dispersed peoples resumed communication by boat using pulleys to draw up sails for travel over longer distances. Trade and wars continued over centuries as the Olmec formed up a complicated relationship between other nations such as the Maya on the northeastern peninsula, the Mixtecs to the southwest, and the Aztecs to the northwest. Olmec ships traveled through the Caribbean and up and down the Atlantic and Pacific Coasts with trade goods and cheap manufactures. A few larger exploratory vessels even followed the warm Gulf Stream current across the North Atlantic to western Europe.

Olmec traders soon became an important arm of European trade routes, exchanging manufactured cloth and rubber for metal tools with Icelanders, Scots, Irish, Normans, Spanish, and Moors. The contact spurred Moorish traders to sail west with wares of their own, establishing a circular trade route that would eventually be eclipsed by European nations. The exchange introduced numerous new crops, medicines, and materials to both sides of the Atlantic, but it also caused a disease exchange that required centuries for recovery after introduction.

European attempts at colonization were sporadic in the Western Hemisphere, focusing mainly on the northern and southern ends outside of the expansive sphere of Mesoamerican influence. While other areas such as Peru, Mississippi, the Great Lakes Confederation, and Pomo grew up to outpace it in industry, the Olmec heartland remained the trade center of the West. The world, too, saw the Olmec land as a trade center serving as a valuable gateway to Asian markets across the isthmus. Olmec art and fashion stand out as one of the major styles recognizable on every continent with headdresses and vibrant skirts with high belts worn even over other cultures’ styles of trousers or robes. Leagues around the planet compete for the coveted Globe Cup in ballgame, the most widely played sport in the world.

 

--

In reality, there does not seem to be archeological evidence of pulleys in Mesoamerican cultures. The Olmec population declined for reasons not fully understood, but its artisans left behind numerous relics, including pyramid complexes, ballcourts, and carvings.