History Questions Not Worth Their Own Thread VI

[Masada]

Then why didn't the Makassans bother much with Australia? Did they not have enough overpopulation to justify settling it much?

Makassans were quite effective settlers. But I guess in the case of Australia, there wasn't a pressing need to settle. The returns from trade were more than sufficient.

 

[History_Buff]

No, he didn't. Most people date the Makassans move into Australia to the first or second decade of the 1700s. Abel Tasman hit Australia in his 1642 trip. That gives him about a 60 to 80 year edge. The problem with dating Makassan arrival earlier is that it starts to bump up against better documented first contact with Timor and so forth. (If that's a reference to Aboriginals already being there, I apologise).

Yeah, I had the aborigines in mind, if only because I had no idea whether any Indonesian group would have been familiar with Australia.

 

[Krajzen]

It is still incomprehensible for me that Europeans didn't know about Australia for so long despite penetrating Indonesia. Come on, few hundred kilometres from Indonesia which traded with literally half of the world and few hundred kilometres from seafaring Austronesians capable of settling the entire Oceania? What, they colonized Australia 50 000 years ago and then somehow nobody else emigrated here? Nor knew about the entire continent next door? And if people of Indonesia knew about it, it is crazy that no European knew that until ~150 years since establishing Philippines colony and the penetration of Indonesia by Dutch/Portuguese...

16th century. Europe explored Americas, Asia, knows about such far areas as Congo, Argentina, Madagascar, and actually colonizes Indonesia - nobody knows about Australia which is so close (when compared with oceanic trade distances). Despite Europeans being extremely interested in new mythical lands. 9 000 000 square kilometres. I don't kow who was idiot here but someone had to be one - either Austronesian people who travelled through the entire Pacific but couldn't again get to huge continent next door, Indonesian people who did nothing but continental sea trade and thalassocracies next door while never bothered going south, or Europeans simply didn't listening Indonesian people enough to know about Australia... Despite European El Dorado syndrome of seeking for every single mythical land mentioned by locals. And nobody knows or bothers to go to Australia between prehistory and late 17th century. Insane.

Vision of locals knowing about Australia and coexisting next to Europeans for 150 years without ever telling or suggesting them 'hey guys there is huge landmass over here' is bizarre - in the same time French were penetrating Canada, Portuguese Congo and Russians Siberia, with everyone of them also seeking for El Dorado, Eden, Atlantis, african priest - king and northern sea pass over Norway. Extreme distances and environments. Still nobody knows about CONTINENT few hundred kilometres from Makassar cities and oceanic ships.

 

[gay_Aleks]

With no offence to all Australians, but there might be explorers before. It's just that they never returned, due to the huuuge waterless desert that is most of Australia. I'm not really seeing any Dutchmen in the 15th century going around in these deserts.

 

[Masada]

Still nobody knows about CONTINENT few hundred kilometres from Makassar cities and oceanic ships.

It's more like ~1500 kilometers. You also don't seem to have read what I've written at all.

With no offence to all Australians, but there might be explorers before. It's just that they never returned, due to the huuuge waterless desert that is most of Australia. I'm not really seeing any Dutchmen in the 15th century going around in these deserts.

There is no record whatsoever of Dutch penetrations inland. And given that the Makassans were interested in sea cucumbers, there'd be no reason for them to penetrate either. But just to reiterate, there's like no deserts where the Makassans operated. Those are a thousand kilometers inland. From where I'm sitting in Darwin to the outskirts of the Tanami... is 10 hours drive at 100 kilometers. The Dutch did encounter some deserts in Western Australia* but pretty much everything else in the Tropical North is runs from being sort of like the Savannah in Africa to something sort of like Southern India. We even have freaking rainforest in Northern Queensland.

* The Great Sandy Desert just brushes the Western Australian coast.

 

[Flying Pig]

Relatively early maps have Terra Australis Incognita (unexplored Southern land) - they knew that something was there, but hadn't actually mapped it out in any detail.

 

[Plotinus]

I don't know if they knew there was something there - it had always been an assumption since antiquity, that there must be landmasses in the southern hemisphere to balance the ones in the north.

 

[History_Buff]

I don't know if they knew there was something there - it had always been an assumption since antiquity, that there must be landmasses in the southern hemisphere to balance the ones in the north.

Yeah, I've read a couple books on Cook and Vancouver, and the whole 'there must be a hidden continent to balance out all the land' theory seems to have been pretty prevalent. They also seemed to assume it was wondrous land of rich merchant people, even though nobody had ever seen or heard of it.

 

[Masada]

Blame Marco Polo for that.

 

[Krajzen]

Masada - while I know that northern Australia is... Not the best place to colonize the thing which baffles me the most is lack of any knowledge about Australia till Cook (?), despite numerous far oversea voyages in this area...

 

[Masada]

Except that's not the case at all! Cook wasn't the first at all. I've actually already talked about Abel Tasman whose 1644 trip mapped much of Northern Australia. The issue is that the Dutch kept their charts secret. This worked rather well. In the case of the British, the existence of Australia was, more or less, proved when a dude called Alexander Dalrymple gained access to Spanish records taken from Manila in 1752. A Spaniard called Luis Váez de Torres had hit Australia but just thought it was just part of Papua New Guinea. Dalrymple ignored all that and declared that this had to be a new continent. It was his work and writings that prompted the Admiralty to give Cook his secret orders to find Australia. Dalrymple was also hilariously wrong in just about every particular:

The number of inhabitants in the Southern Continent is probably more than 50 millions, considering the extent, from the eastern part discovered by Juan Fernandez, to the western coast seen by Tasman, is about 100 deg. of longitude, which in the latitude of 40 deg. amounts to 4596 geographic, or 5323 stature miles. This is a greater extent than the whole civilized part of Asia, from Turkey to the eastern extremity of China. There is at present no trade from Europe thither, though the scraps from this table would be sufficient to maintain the power, dominion, and sovereignty of Britain, by employing all its manufacturers and ships. Whoever considers the Peruvian empire, where arts and industry flourished under one of the wisest systems of government, which was founded by a stranger, must have very sanguine expectations of the southern continent, from whence it is more than probable Mango Capac, the first Inca, was derived, and must be convinced that the country, from whence Mango Capac introduced the comforts of civilized life, cannot fail of amply rewarding the fortunate people who shall bestow letters instead of quippos (quipus), and iron in place of more awkward substitutes.

(As you can see he also knew about part of Tasman's 1664 trip but didn't know that much about it).

The rather more interesting question, as you might have guessed by now, is why the Dutch never settled Australia. The answer is twofold, (1) the VOC was always short of manpower and didn't colonize anyways and (2) Indonesia was rather more attractive to prospective empire builders because it had locals to enslave and/or tax.

 

[Traitorfish]

"The Incas came from Australia" has to be my new favourite Weird History Theory.

 

[Masada]

The "Polynesians migrated to Central America" theory has already been argued for.

 

[cybrxkhan]

"The Incas came from Australia" has to be my new favourite Weird History Theory.

I'm keeping this one archived for future use when I develop my world history conspiracy timeline.

 

[Cutlass]

The "Polynesians migrated to Central America" theory has already been argued for.

Them and the Romans.

 

[gay_Aleks]

Them and the Romans.

That would only mean that the Greeks came from Tasmania. Or New Zealand.

 

[Masada]

Tasmania.

 

[Kyriakos]

Not even close. We came from the Sirius star system

 

[r16]

no , you didn't .

as for this Southern Continent , do ı read correctly that the Europeans are trying to export iron and similar high tech products ? And writing ? Or is it a case of the first Inca forced to make do with handicaps that included lack of alphabet and smelters ?

 

[gay_Aleks]

Not even close. We came from the Sirius star system

And now you're using Earth as a base to invade Alpha Centauri?