Talk:Spanish Scourge (Papatlaca)

From Alternative History

[edit] Some Musings on The Effect on Europe

• Almost certainly the Almohads, with Ottoman support, would have re-taken Spain.

• Spanish gold and the power of Phillip I and II propped up the Habsburgs, who were the tyrant family of Europe from the early sixteenth century until the Thirty Years War. In ATL, the Habsburgs would have remained one noble family among many. There would not have been a Thirty Years War.

• If mortality rates declined as the disease spread (does anyone know if this is realistic?), it would have left Skandanavia, the Ottomans and Persia a lot less damaged than Western Europe. Given the timing, this would probably have resulted in a real Swedish Empire which had some durability and might have lasted a century or more. Overall, Europe would have been dominated by the East rather than the West well into the Eighteenth Century. However, I'm not sure that this assumption of a spread gradient is realistic, see below.

• I would expect the Dutch, with their close commercial ties to Spain (leading to conquest in the early sixteenth century OTL) and high population densities would be among the most devastated.

--Josh

The Netherlands in the end of the 1400's begin 1500's was not very well developed that only happend in the 1600's. They came only in Spanish posesion in 1549. At this time it was Burgundian. Amsterdam was in this time only a small village and growed only in the 17th century in the Dutch Golden Age.--H2o-s 11:53, 24 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Almohads... I had to look these guys up. But it looks like they were wiped out in the 13th century, so they can't play a part in this timeline.

I'm thinking that the Ottomans would focus on Hungary, taking Buda, Pest, and Vienna. Someone would attack and take Granada and perhaps other parts of Spain (but I don't know exactly who). Southern Italy up through the Papal States are also at risk but I don't yet know who the aggressor would be. France and Spain (or what's left of Spain) could also go to war. There could also be some Reformation based conflict in Norther Europe. --AirshipArmada 19:03, 27 Jun 2005 (UTC)

[edit] How Plagues Spread: Unevenly?

Looking at some historical plagues, such as the Wikipedia articles on the Spanish Flu and Smallpox shows that in real history pandemics spread unevenly. Particularly, this quote on the Spanish Flu is telling:

"While it usually only infected less than 1/3 of the population in most places and killed only a fraction of those infected, there were a number of towns in several countries where the entire population was wiped out."

One would expect the spread of Papatlaca in Europe to follow a similar "randomness". We could hypothesize that:

The large Southern and Western port cities would be hit first. So, Madrid and the other Spanish ports, followed by London, Amsterdam, Nice, Venice, Genoa, Cadiz, Naples, etc. The disease would have spread inland from there and made odd leaps as it was spread by single carriers to new locations (ironically the black death was sometimes spread by messengers warning of the disease; we'd expect the same here). The last port cities to be affected would be those in the ectreme North (Copenhagen, Trondheim, Wend, etc.) and East (Odessa, Istanbul, Acre, Alexandria) which did not have a lot of direct sea trade with the Southern ports. It would be largely a matter of chance, for example, whether Papatlaca reached Odessa first by sea or overland, although sea is more likely.

Madrid is not a port... and given the timing might well not even become an important city in Spain: Madrid was chosen as capital by Philip II for his mild weather. Burgos, Valladolid and Toledo in Castile (neither a port), Zaragoza, Barcelona and Valencia in the Aragonese Crown, (but back then, America was a Castile only enterprise) were more important in the not yet officially unified Spain. — Carlos Th (talk) 03:37, 28 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Picking more nits. . . "back then, America was a Castile only enterprise". . .Things changed when Ferdinand became high royal guy of Castile: From the time of discovery to 1505 non Castilians could go to the New World only with permission of a special royal licence - and not very many folks got that licence. After 1506 the restrictions were loosened to also favor Aragonese. --AirshipArmada 13:45, 30 Jun 2005 (UTC)

The date of arrival of the disease would have no direct bearing on its lethality. Instead, we'd expect a random distribution based on genetic predisposition, reactions, environment, and timing. Given that the first factor would be far more localized in medieval times than modern, we could expect odd circumstances like, say, the entirety of West Flanders being wiped out while Antwerp suffers only minority casualties. These differences would re-draw Europe as mostly unharmed principalities invaded their devastated neighbors.

For example, if Polish casualties were high and Swedish not, Sweden would probably have conquered Poland. At opposites, if Papatlaca wiped out most of the Swedish royalty, then Poland could have successfully pressed its claim to Swedish inheritance. And so on.

The only way in which areas hit by the disease later would have suffered lower casualties would be if knowledge of treatment had spread first. However, given medieval European approaches to medicine in general, I find it far more likely that the disease would have greatly outpaced any effective treatment plans.

Arab knowledge of medicine was far superior to European, as was Arab hygene. So it is possible that casualties in the Ottoman Empire, Persia and the Almohads might have been significantly lower than in Europe. This would certainly have changed the balance of power. For example, we might expect in this timeline that the Ottomans successfully conquered Vienna. Of course, if middle eastern peoples turned out to be especially vulnerable to the disease, all bets are off.

--TheFuzzy

Yes, the spread of disease at a granular level is random. But if you step back and look at large areas and larger spans of time then the spread of the disease can be mapped in broad strokes. Here is a map of the OTL spread of the Black Death Black_Death_Map. Ignore the arrows and other details and just look at the bands of color. That's the kind of map I was going for.

Wow! Cool map. --TheFuzzy 02:17, 28 Jun 2005 (UTC)

No peoples are more at-risk from papatlaca than any other. European medicine was so poor that it is reasonable to assume that nations with Arab medicine would fare better. Diseases which mutate rapidly often become less dangerous over time (example: RNA Viruses such as influenza). But papatlaca does NOT mutate rapidly - that is why an acquired immunity lasts a lifetime. However, there are other factors which makes the overall mortality go down from 1520 to 1525.

- The first areas hit tend to be areas of dense population. These people suffer more during the first wave because they are more dependant on a failing infrastructure (more craftsmen, fewer farmers). They also suffered more because the spread of disease in these dense areas is very rapid and there are no healthy individuals to help tend to the sickly.

- Papatlaca sometimes spread just as fast as word of the disease, but this was very often not the case. Many communities had the opportunity to take some precautions before the disease hit their area.

- The areas which were first hit by papatlaca tried a large variety of treatment methods. Word of which methods worked (and which did not) could travel to regions not yet suffering. --AirshipArmada 19:00, 27 Jun 2005 (UTC)