this post was submitted on 15 Oct 2025
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It really makes you ask the question, what if. What if the sickness that ravaged the continent before the colonists came hadn't happened? There's a reason the continent wasn't settled by Vikings first. Colonizers were truly the ignominius btutalistic cherry on top.
Well, the Viking settlers were a handful of outcasts with marginal skills and no pressing economic motivation other than timber, who were difficult to resupply.
But yeah, had disease not ravaged the Americas, it's likely that the process of colonization would have looked very different, even if the technological disparity remained great. Pre-modern societies don't just 'bounce back' from massive population drops like that, it takes centuries - centuries the Native polities didn't have with European colonizers breathing down their neck.
They also had also had a really small colony (Greenland) as a starting point to send expeditions from, and a rather small homeland (Iceland).
There's a reason the 15th century Basque and Breton fishers didn't colonize the Americas either despite often visiting it. This was a difficult and costly project that necessitated significant investments. Even France failed like half a dozen times, losing most of its colonists to the long cold winter each time, before starting to be successful with the Port-Royal, Tadoussac and Québec colonies.
The Irish population still has not recovered from the 1850's potato famine
I think that then North America would look like central and South America, in terms of demographics.
While South America would look like east and south-east Asia.