The Year is 1600, and the world is in for a shift...

[Fifty]

What would happen if in the year 1600, the landmass of Portugal and the landmass of China, with all their constituent people, switched places geographically on earth? Ignore the geological problems associated with this, I just want to know what would happen HISTORICALLY. Would Hitler still have gained power? Would America have still risen to dominance? Would the Crusades still have happened?

Thanks.

 

[holy king]

wouldnt china form a landbridge from spain to the americas?

 

[BCLG100]

Well i presume then that Spain would have been an unbeatable world power as now it had all of Chinese lands under its control plus the land formally portuguese would be nominally under their control as it wouldnt be hard for the Empire to crush the Chinese on the iberian peninsula.

 

[raketooy]

wouldnt china form a landbridge from spain to the americas?

It wouldn't if we don't rotate it. It might form a bridge if we rotated it 20 degrees clockwise, but I am not sure.

 

[Cheezy the Wiz]

Maybe he means forcing all of China into the space of Portugal, and stretching Portugal out to fill all of China. In which case, Potrugal-China just got a whole lot hillier

 

[Bill3000]

If by crusades you mean "crusades to conquer the chinese heathens", then yes

 

[scy12]

For starters millions of people would die due to lack of food. A war with neighbors if they where able to make such one from the Chinese would be more than possible.

 

[Arwon]

In 1600 Spain and Portugal were in personal union under Felipe II.

So suddenly they'd have a strong presence in East Asia to round out the presence in the Americas and elsewhere.

I have no idea what China was doing historically then, but I'd guess they'd be stronger than any particular European power and maybe stronger than all of them.

 

[cybrxkhan]

China was not in good health at the time... but when it would get back to good health... then Europe better watch out.

 

[BCLG100]

1600 the chinese Ming empire was slowly declining under the Wanli emporer, iirc the 17th century saw the surpassion of the Chinese by Europeans in terms of dominance.

 

[alex994]

If the landmasses, along with the people just swapped places, people in the "New" China wouldn't die because all the stuff they had in China would come with them too! Massive armies of conscripts overrunning the small professional European armies too maybe

 

[Tee Kay]

1600 the chinese Ming empire was slowly declining under the Wanli emporer, iirc the 17th century saw the surpassion of the Chinese by Europeans in terms of dominance.

Well, China (under the Manchus) was still in good shape until the late 18th century in fact. Chinese industrial output still surpass European around 1800. The decline was a mixture of weak political will, internal rebellion and scientific stagnation.

China in the 1600s was declining, true, but it's still quite powerful relative to other parts of the world. It's navy, sucks but its economy is still quite sound.

 

[BCLG100]

Well, China (under the Manchus) was still in good shape until the late 18th century in fact. Chinese industrial output still surpass European around 1800. The decline was a mixture of weak political will, internal rebellion and scientific stagnation.

China in the 1600s was declining, true, but it's still quite powerful relative to other parts of the world. It's navy, sucks but its economy is still quite sound.

The economy was doing ok until 1600 and that was only because the Wanli emporer took an interest in it. Thats even if you count his constant confiscations of his officials property and wealth. Whilst the war in Korea successfully drained the state of quite a bit of cash. By the end of his reign the empire was in disarray with little silver left. The empire which had survived for 300 years fell in 20 following the end of the Wanli emporer, a sure sign that something was amiss. Decline was a result of all of them things but crucially a declining economy which most affected the peasants and the Manchu's rose.

 

[classical_hero]

This is a hypothetical situation and as such it really does not belong in this forum.

 

[Dachs]

I have no idea what China was doing historically then, but I'd guess they'd be stronger than any particular European power and maybe stronger than all of them.

Nah, the later Ming Empire sucked. They got beat up by a second-rate barbarian confederation and couldn't even keep a series of peasant uprisings down. Rome did better than that...

Massive armies of conscripts overrunning the small professional European armies too maybe

I see your Yuan Chonghuan with my Albrecht von Wallenstein and raise you Gustav II Adolf, Maurits van Nassau, and Henri IV. On a slightly different note, alex, imagine the effects of hundreds of millions of new Catholic converts from "Nova Cathay"...

This is a hypothetical situation and as such it really does not belong in this forum.

Where else would it go? It's too historical for OT, and I don't know if the NES subforum works either. Besides, random weird althisting has been done here before.

 

[zjl56]

Ming China was already in serious decay and was being constantly invaded. It wouldn't take Spain, who is at its peak of wealth, to finance serious revolts within the Chinese empire. The Manchus evidently had a rather easy time destroying the Ming due to outright corruption in the Chinese military, the Spanish would have easily been able to repeat that event.

 

[Cheezy the Wiz]

The best part about this thread is that you guys are treating Fifty's question as if it were serious

 

[warpus]

China would be really good at soccer and Spanish people would eat lots of rice?

 

[Cheezy the Wiz]

China would be really good at soccer and Spanish people would eat lots of rice?

You've never had Spanish Rice before?

 

[Tee Kay]

Ming China was already in serious decay and was being constantly invaded. It wouldn't take Spain, who is at its peak of wealth, to finance serious revolts within the Chinese empire. The Manchus evidently had a rather easy time destroying the Ming due to outright corruption in the Chinese military, the Spanish would have easily been able to repeat that event.

Indeed, there were a lot of defections to the Manchus. Wu Sangui is the most famous of them. They were promised promotions and riches if they defected, and most saw that the collapse of the Ming was only a matter of time (and in fact at the time of Wu Sangui's defection Li Zicheng was already in Beijing establishing his own dynasty). In fact, after the Manchu conquest south China was ruled by the Three Feudatories, virtually independent territories under the control of Ming generals who defected (until their failed revolt later in the century).