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How did Asia and Africa react to the new world?

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IIRC asian cuisine was actually quicker to adopt american spices than european dito.

I do believe there was an ottoman attempt to found a colony in the Guianas? (although IIRC it was more of a private venture that got ahalf-hearted blessing by the sultan) but it was only a couple of dozen people, and like most attempts, failed miserably.

I also seem to remember pirates being quite multinational, including from pieces of the old world you didn't usually expect.
 
Arilou said:
IIRC asian cuisine was actually quicker to adopt american spices than european dito.
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Had to drag this thread back out for the Colombian Exchange talk alone.

I'm a bit of a pepper historian, and although I'm probably both projecting and assuming, it seems clear which cultural cuisines adopted New World ingredients first for the love of the food (and not just as a staple like Ireland).

Spain (sweet and hot peppers, tomatoes, papas), Italy (sweet peppers, tomatoes), and India, Korea, Thailand, and Vietnam (all hot peppers). Japan has a few one-off mild hot pepper/sweet pepper things going on, but nothing I'd say is cuisine-centric. But I can't imagine Spanish, Italian, Vietnamese and Thai food without their New World adoptions.

And then there's France. Not sure what happened there, but cocoa definitely made it into their list. :)

I'd love to read more about who adopted what when and how. As you might be able to tell, I believe that world cuisine is WAY better off for the Colombian Exchange, and I think most of that came from Mexico, which, IMO, may still have the best cuisine in the world when it comes to breadth and depth. It's possible that I have a bit of a cultural bias there, though, since I've spend a LOT of time there. :)
 
Regarding Chinese exploration, I was flipping through channels earlier this week and the History had a show about the possibility of a Chinese settlement on Cape Breton Island. Sounds wacky as hell at first but they did make an interesting case, probably the best thing I've seen on that channel in a long time. No concrete proof that the settlement existed but it did highlight how the Chinese were very much into exploring during the 15th century, with proof of them reaching as far as East Africa. It inspired me to learn a bit more about their explorations.

The ships they sailed on were massive, here is a scale comparison of the Chinese explorer Zheng He's ship compared to Columbus:
zheng_he27s_ship_compared_to_columbus27s.jpg


Allegedly some of these ships would have up to 1000 people on them. There were a couple emperors in the early 15th century who employed great expeditions to discover the world, but their successors put a stop to them due to their high cost. Apparently by 1500, it was a capital to construct a ship with more than 2 masts. Not sure why exactly.
 
Speaking of Ottomans in the New World:

A colony of Greeks from Smyrna came over and settled on the east coast of Florida to attempt I think sugar or Tabaco plantations that did not work out too well and the colony relocated to near St. Augustine. The city of New Smyrna Beach in Florida comes from then.

So there is your Ottomans in the New World :)

Re Asia: Japan for example, was not even done colonizing their own home islands in those days. China too had more land then they had people. Go to the new world and clear cut virgin land for farming? Why? Go to Hokkaido or some interior province of china if you want that.
 
Jokurr said:
Regarding Chinese exploration, I was flipping through channels earlier this week and the History had a show about the possibility of a Chinese settlement on Cape Breton Island. Sounds wacky as hell at first but they did make an interesting case, probably the best thing I've seen on that channel in a long time. No concrete proof that the settlement existed but it did highlight how the Chinese were very much into exploring during the 15th century, with proof of them reaching as far as East Africa. It inspired me to learn a bit more about their explorations.

The ships they sailed on were massive, here is a scale comparison of the Chinese explorer Zheng He's ship compared to Columbus:
zheng_he27s_ship_compared_to_columbus27s.jpg


Allegedly some of these ships would have up to 1000 people on them. There were a couple emperors in the early 15th century who employed great expeditions to discover the world, but their successors put a stop to them due to their high cost. Apparently by 1500, it was a capital to construct a ship with more than 2 masts. Not sure why exactly.
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The actual size and utility of those ships are not certain though, as far as I know. Even if the size is not inaccurate there are some who argue that they were used in calmer waters such as rivers. I've also heard it argued that ships of that size made out of wood are not all too stable, since there's a limit on how big a wooden ship can get and there's a reason why the ships didn't become massive until they were built from metal. So if we are talking about the Chinese discovering America before Columbus then it's probably a bit far fetched, as usual.

I can buy the possibility of some Chinese reaching places like the horn of Africa however. While split up in smaller parts in practice there were naval trade routes from the Arabian peninsula to India and from India to south-east Asia, so if you're determined and decently supplied then sailing all the way doesn't sound impossible.
 
Auxiliary said:
The actual size and utility of those ships are not certain though, as far as I know. Even if the size is not inaccurate there are some who argue that they were used in calmer waters such as rivers. I've also heard it argued that ships of that size made out of wood are not all too stable, since there's a limit on how big a wooden ship can get and there's a reason why the ships didn't become massive until they were built from metal.
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Yes, this.

A ship floating on still, waveless water like a lake or river, or the ocean in a flat calm, can be built very large. But once the wind start to blow and the ocean waves start to rise, you've got problems.

A small ship can climb the wave in front, balance on its peak, then slide down into the trough. It'll get very wet on deck, but it should survive:

images


If the ship is too long, however, then the front of it will be climbing one wave while the back is still on the crest of the wave behind - and the centre will be unsupported. A wooden ship could snap in half like a dry twig. Even if it doesn't, the constant strain and flexing of the hull will cause the seams to split and it will start leaking.

In practical terms a wooden seagoing ship can only be made about 80-100 metres long. Any larger than that and they become deathtraps on anything but dead calm waters.

In 19th century Europe they invented methods of bracing wooden hulls internally that allowed a few extra metres; but ships much longer than 100m had to wait for the introduction of iron and steel.
 
Patricky said:
I wonder if the sails really looked like that on the real ship.

They look very nice. Almost steampunk even.
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Yes, that's a standard Chinese junk rig, still in use today. It's actually a low-tech solution: the battens stiffen the sail meaning you can use cheap-quality material for the sail itself, instead of having to weave heavy-duty non-stretching canvas.

Advantages of the rig are that it's very easy to use even for untrained crews, and it can be reefed easily - that is, making the sail area smaller or larger to adjust your speed. The sails also work well in strong winds. However, the disadvantage is that in light winds the heavy, flat sails are very inefficient, and they also make it difficult to tack or sail against the wind, so the ship is not very manoeuvrable.

Looking at that model, I also have to question how small the sail area is compared to the size of the hull. If the model is accurate, I think the ship would lumber along, wallowing like a pregnant whale. Columbus's ship might be smaller, but it could literally sail rings around Zheng He's ship. It could also survive a storm at sea which would wreck the Chinese ship, as I said in my previous post.
 
To be fair, we know that Chinese junks were sailing as far away as Kolkata for centuries before Europeans began trading in earnest by sea, so variants on the junks were sufficiently ocean-capable for merchants to willingly risk their goods on them. The Song Dynasty literally built its fortune on junks, though that was much before the "biggest compensation for Imperial 'lack'" that was Zheng He's Treasure Fleet. That said, and as Auxiliary notes, there's actually quite a bit of dispute on how big the treasure ships (the largest junks ever built, and exceptional circumstances in themselves) actually were, ranging from 420'/130m long to 200'/60m long (if they had particularly out-sized rudders to ensure keel stability, extrapolating from the rudder posts - the only pieces of the treasure ships to survive - will naturally result in overestimation of their keel length). There's also some dispute on whether the greatest of Zheng He's ships were ever used outside the Yangtze River, for precisely the reasons outlined. Most junks would have been far smaller, no more than twice the size of La Niña, though I must admit that it is true that other reports (de Conti, during his journeys through the Spice Islands) have mentioned 2000 ton junks of the east that used cross-hull, water-tight bulkheads for compartmentalization against damage along with multiple decks below the waterline to maintain stability in storms.

As far as seaworthiness is concerned, they did boast some innovations that made them more effective. One neat trick was that the hulls of these behemoths in particular apparently included holes above the waterline at the prow; in part, it would go through waves instead of over them, which was presumably intended to mitigate bowing of the keel due to stormy weather. I'm not sure how effective that would be; it feels a bit to me like intentionally flooding forward compartments would only cause it to manoeuvre even worse than such designs usually did. I think the sail size on that ship is a bit smaller than one would find on many junks as well, though the mast count is accurate; if anything, junks tended to have a problem with a high sail plan that pushed their center of gravity upwards, with the result being an increased potential for capsizing. That ship was never designed for warfare, though, since it lacks the extended decks of the fuchuans, which I would posit is another point in the favour of a rivergoing design - oceanfaring junks would have needed to worry about Japanese pirates by the time the Treasure Fleet was built.
 
Apparently a rudder post that was unearthed in Nanjing lines up in direct proportionality with the reports of the largest of the Treasure Ships. Chances are it sailed along the Yangtze river to show off the imperial glory of the Emperor.

Even then, the ships that Zheng He would've used to sail to Africa are still very large in comparison to most European ships of the same time period. Not to mention the total size of his fleet was huge. I have to say I love the look of the ships, very intriguing deisgn. I wish I knew more about Chinese history.

An intersting paper I found.
 
Culise said:
To be fair, we know that Chinese junks were sailing as far away as Kolkata for centuries before Europeans began trading in earnest by sea, so variants on the junks were sufficiently ocean-capable for merchants to willingly risk their goods on them.
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You need not traverse the ocean to go from any given chinese port to Calcutta.
 
Herbert West said:
You need not traverse the ocean to go from any given chinese port to Calcutta.
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Ah. I know hugging the coast works to get there, but simply hugging the coast doesn't protect you from coastal monsoons or other storms, in or out of season. I know that sailing seasons in this era were largely governed by the monsoon season, which controlled prevailing winds, but I suppose I was making too much of an error in conflating the requirements for both brown-water and blue-water sailing. I suppose I read too much into StephenT's discussion on ocean-faring capabilities and extrapolated it too far, since the Treasure Fleet itself was an Indian tour as well. Mea culpa, I guess. ^_^
 
Culise said:
Ah. I know hugging the coast works to get there, but simply hugging the coast doesn't protect you from coastal monsoons or other storms, in or out of season. I know that sailing seasons in this era were largely governed by the monsoon season, which controlled prevailing winds, but I suppose I was making too much of an error in conflating the requirements for both brown-water and blue-water sailing. I suppose I read too much into StephenT's discussion on ocean-faring capabilities and extrapolated it too far, since the Treasure Fleet itself was an Indian tour as well. Mea culpa, I guess. ^_^
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But the Indian Ocean Trade routes from Bengal to Somalia (or thereabouts to thereabouts) are nothing new, and we know that those routes were traversed by ships with very nice regularity. There was even some trade in wood going on, so you can imagine the volume (as in cubic meters) of shipping merrily going to and fro. And we also know that those ships were a lot smaller and nimbler than the imaginary "China is bestest, so its biggestest" Treasure Fleet ships. Those ships have no business being outside coastal waters, and they definitely were not deep ocean worthy. They could not be.
 
Herbert West said:
But the Indian Ocean Trade routes from Bengal to Somalia (or thereabouts to thereabouts) are nothing new, and we know that those routes were traversed by ships with very nice regularity. There was even some trade in wood going on, so you can imagine the volume (as in cubic meters) of shipping merrily going to and fro. And we also know that those ships were a lot smaller and nimbler than the imaginary "China is bestest, so its biggestest" Treasure Fleet ships. Those ships have no business being outside coastal waters, and they definitely were not deep ocean worthy. They could not be.
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Ah. I didn't argue those in particular were. I even explicitly stated that there was significant doubt on whether they were ever used outside riverine trade, for precisely the reasons given earlier. Not all junks were the size of the treasure ships; far from it. That term covers a broad range of ships, for use on rivers or seas, encompassing a wide range of sizes from Zheng He's treasure fleet to not much larger than Spanish caravels. For all the modifications made to increase their survivability, however, I would never assert that a junk was ocean-capable in the same way as a galleon, even the best-designed of the lot. At the most, they would only leave coastal waters in relatively enclosed areas like the Yellow Sea or, by the time of the Japanese Invasions of Korea, the East China Sea.
 
Culise said:
Ah. I didn't argue those in particular were. I even explicitly stated that there was significant doubt on whether they were ever used outside riverine trade, for precisely the reasons given earlier. Not all junks were the size of the treasure ships; far from it. That term covers a broad range of ships, for use on rivers or seas, encompassing a wide range of sizes from Zheng He's treasure fleet to not much larger than Spanish caravels. For all the modifications made to increase their survivability, however, I would never assert that a junk was ocean-capable in the same way as a galleon, even the best-designed of the lot. At the most, they would only leave coastal waters in relatively enclosed areas like the Yellow Sea or, by the time of the Japanese Invasions of Korea, the East China Sea.
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Well... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Junk_Keying

This sailed from China to the United States and Britain, so I'm pretty sure if the fleet wanted to reach Europe or America even it could have, which is good enough for me.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e8/KeyingFullArticle.jpg
 
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Patricky said:
This sailed from China to the United States and Britain, so I'm pretty sure if the fleet wanted to reach Europe or America even it could have, which is good enough for me.
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In 1846? Are you sure a ship built in a European treaty port in the 19th century would have used the same construction techniques as Zheng He's treasure ships?

To be fair, though, people have crossed the ocean in all sorts of unlikely craft. Viking longships, Polynesian canoes, Thor Heyerdahl's reed-bundle and balsa-wood rafts. The question isn't whether it's possible to cross the sea, but whether it's a risk that a sane person would be willing to take...
 
StephenT said:
In 1846? Are you sure a ship built in a European treaty port in the 19th century would have used the same construction techniques as Zheng He's treasure ships?

To be fair, though, people have crossed the ocean in all sorts of unlikely craft. Viking longships, Polynesian canoes, Thor Heyerdahl's reed-bundle and balsa-wood rafts. The question isn't whether it's possible to cross the sea, but whether it's a risk that a sane person would be willing to take...
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I don't see where it says it was built in a European port.
 
StephenT said:
In 1846? Are you sure a ship built in a European treaty port in the 19th century would have used the same construction techniques as Zheng He's treasure ships?

To be fair, though, people have crossed the ocean in all sorts of unlikely craft. Viking longships, Polynesian canoes, Thor Heyerdahl's reed-bundle and balsa-wood rafts. The question isn't whether it's possible to cross the sea, but whether it's a risk that a sane person would be willing to take...
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It is far smaller than Zheng He's treasure ships, so it almost certainly did not, except in a general sense. Keying was a three-masted, 800-ton displacement ship with a length of less than 50 metres. The smallest regular junks of Zheng He's treasure fleet that I've found listed was five-masted and just over 50 metres. My comment was a blanket assertion on all junks, however, which Keying was sufficient to disprove.
 
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