Scottish America

[Pursuivant]

Depending on which voyage Columbus failed to return from, and when in the 16th century Scotland rediscovered America, there might have been several effects on the American Native population:

1) Caribbean natives - and possibly others - are fully aware of just how nasty the Europeans are. (Columbus's accounts of his voyages read like the transcript of a trial for crimes against humanity.) Later European explorers might be massacred on the beaches as they land.

2) Epidemics started by Columbus's crew might have fully decimated the native populations. Much of the historical 16th and early 17th c. colonization of North America was aided by the fact that settlers could often occupy deserted Indian sites. For example, accounts of the Mayflower colony mention Indian villages which had been wiped out by plagues. Part of the native acceptance of the Pilgrims and similar groups was due to the fact that they didn't have the manpower to fight them off, and needed allies.

3) On the other hand, perhaps limited exposure to epidemics gave the natives a chance to gain more immunity than they had historically. That means big, healthy populations of natives who, man for man, were superior to the settlers. (Contemporary accounts describe the Indians as being taller, healthier, and more robust than the average European. Archeological evidence bears this out. The 15th to 17th centuries were a rotten time to be an inhabitant of Western Europe.)

4) Consider that Scottish/French settlement of North America might not be that much different from the historical French settlement patterns in Canada. Lacking the manpower and sailing routes to the Caribbean, the Scots might have contented themselves in building commercial empires based on beaver fur, cod, and timber products like pitch in Northern North America. They could easily found a thriving colony of "New Scotland" in Eastern Canada, with further settlements along the St. Lawrence River, founded by men with surnames like MacDonald, MacKenzie, McGill, McGillivray, and Ramsay.

[Astromancer]

Originally Posted by tbone

But there'd also be differences, like Spandex kilts and Haggis McNuggets.

I'll leave.

Both of these are perfect for Halloween. ;-)

[Astromancer]

Originally Posted by Daigoro

If you're positing alternative history, is there any reason not to posit alternative geography as well? Just locate another set of gold deposits in the Atlantic seaboard.

And don't forget the Templars! Maybe Scottish Templar descendants started looking for the remains of the missing Atlantic treasure fleet and ended up colonising New England instead.

There is even gold in New England. It is radioactive and loaded with arsenic, so deadly two different ways, but it is gold.

[AlexanderHowl]

Well, it is easier in the 16th century to sail to Canada from Scotland by way of the Azores and the Caribbean due to the nature of the currents, so they will likely set up trading concerns in the Caribbean. They would need to resupply in the Algonquin territories for the trip back to Scotland though, you would likely have large trading towns in what is now New Jersey though, which could evolve into a Scottish version of Gotham in later centuries. Since there would be no particular need for Native American slaves (without the Spanish sugar plantations in the Caribbean, the demand for Native American slaves and, later, African slaves is minimal), there would not be the wars to provide such slaves for European slavers, so the Native American tribes would be less ravaged by war when they are being ravaged by disease, allowing them to potentially recover.

With the assistance of the French, I think that the Scottish could keep the Spanish out of the Caribbean long enough for the natives to acquire resistance to European diseases and trade for enough European weapons to prevent the Spanish from conquering them. With the naval technology improving enough by the 17th century that directly sailing from Scotland to Canada becomes easier than the more indirect route through the tropics), there would be more interest in establishing new trade markets in North America. As the fish from the Scottish and French owned fishing fleets, likely manned by Native Americans hired on for trade goods, the French could circumvent their traditional dependence on English fisheries.

With growing wealth from their trade with the Native Americans, and with the military support of France, the Scottish would likely wrest control of Ireland from the English. England would find itself surrounded and marginalized by the Franco-Scottish Alliance and would likely find itself invaded by the wealthy Franco-Scottish Alliance during the late-16th century to free the English Catholics from the tyranny of the English Protestants. Without the wealth of the Americas pouring in during the 16th century to supports its military endeavors, the Spanish Hapsburgs would be hard pressed in their own conflicts against the French and may economically collapse as it fights wars on every front.

Depriving the Spanish (and, by extension, the Portuguese) of the Americas may have massive consequences for the entirety of European. A wealthier Franco-Scottish Alliance may wrest control of Ireland from the English and control of the Lowlands and Italy from the Spanish Habsburgs and may result in the Catholic invasion of England. The Protestant Reformation may be stymied in Western Europe, even extinguished entirely, removing the necessity of allowing Protestant minorities to colonize North America.

While the Europeans would still be nasty, they would likely attempt trade with the Native Americans rather than slavery, genocide, and conquest, allowing for stronger nations to form by the 17th century. While the clients of the Aztec would likely trade for European weapons and overthrow their overlords, they would likely do so as trade allies of a Franco-Scottish Alliance attempting to create a trade route to Asia rather than the brutal conquest of the Spanish. By the 18th century, you would likely have dozens of strong Native American nations trading with the Europeans, with the Franco-Scottish Alliance controlling Panama as part of their route to Asia.

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by tbone

… Haggis McNuggets.

I've had something like that. Good haggis is a fine food, but this was dreadful.

[smurf]

Colombus found the South Americas where John Cabot (1497) found - New Foundland, and in 1499 João Fernandes Lavrador went to Greenland and sighted Labrador.

Between the 16th and 17th centuries there was a bit of tooing and froing between the Crowns of Europe. It is possible to cram it in an alternative history or just try and play out the one already written.

It would be possible to play the farmers, curing Cod and trading furs but it just so happens that there is no algience to a Flag but maybe to a church?

[AlexanderHowl]

Cabot did not start to fund his exploration until 1494, after he failed to build a bridge in Seville and after he would have heard of Columbus's successful journey (he was a colorful character who seemed more con man than explorer in retrospect). It was probably Columbus's success that made Henry VII willing to sponsor Cabot's expedition. There is nothing preventing Cabot from going to Scotland though to appeal to James IV when he would fail with Henry VII in this timeline and, even if he failed to secure funding, he may have inspired folk who would have attempted the expedition after James IV died in battle.

[Astromancer]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

Well, it is easier in the 16th century to sail to Canada from Scotland by way of the Azores and the Caribbean due to the nature of the currents, so they will likely set up trading concerns in the Caribbean.

If you use sails it always was, and will continue to be. The trade winds haven't changed in millennia either. So, any path from Scotland to the Americas will go through the Caribbean. A Scots colony on Bermuda would be highly likely.

If anyone sets up plantation agriculture in the Caribbean the Scots would sell them cod fish. Cod was the protein source that fed the West Indies. If the Scots control the Cod supply they have a stranglehold on the wealth of the West Indies.

[Donny Brook]

This is not as fanciful as you may think. Or maybe it is.

Henry Sinclair, Earl of Orkney

[Kax]

another change that could involve the Scots: Calvinists accept all of the Puritan refugees from Europe and they don't go to America except as individual emigrants.