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QuantumBranching — Years of Rice and Salt
Published: 2009-11-05 07:38:30 +0000 UTC; Views: 21056; Favourites: 55; Downloads: 131
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Trying to illustrate the final state of affairs in "The Years of Rice and Salt", Kim Stanley Robinson's AH novel in which one of those annoying magically mutated black plagues wipes out Europe, leaving Islam, the Hindus, and the Chinese to fight over the future of humanity.Related content
Comments: 36
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Good map broski. I'm a big KSR and finally got my hands of the book, so far I've enjoyed it. It's definitely filled with his own biases and such, but I'm willing to forgive a lot of that since the scale of the writing and world building is so vast. Really nice map you've done here, I feel like the book gets a bit weaker towards the end but I love the focus on the societies rather than just the leaders. Really helps with the immersion.
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Is the Burmese League, and Burma being the main power in Southeast Asia, canonical in the books?
The maps and descriptions I've found online contradict each other regarding the situation of Southeast Asia in the Years of Rice and Salt-verse. Some have it being China-dominated, others India-dominated, this one has Burma being the dominant power, another map mentions a nation called Mindanao in the RL Philippines. Which is it?
Complicating the matter is that in our timeline, Islam reached the archipelago parts of Southeast Asia. Did that happen in this timeline too? If so, Southeast Asia should have been another battleground in the Long War between Dar al-Islam and the rest of the world. Yet strangely, I've never seen it mentioned.
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Where in the book does it say that the Travancoris colonised Inka?
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Ah, the Years of Rice and Salt. A cool premise, but kind of ruined by the Author's own biases. And; I sincerely doubt that the Native Americans WOULDN'T get screwed over.
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Well, the Aztecs and Incans may have survived as cultures, though there would probably be severe political upheaval with the plagues and all.
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No amount of Buddhism will convert the smallpox virus to nonviolence.
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Agreed. No matter who contacted the Native American's first,the inevitable first contact plagues would still devastate them.
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This is one of my favourite books as well. I started reading it as my birthday present. Or five days before my birthday. I loved it. Could you re-confirm what K.S.R.'s biases in the novel are?
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Pretty cool map; although, the book was too politically correct for my tastes. And; the Interior of North America populated by Scinisized Native Americans with a Norwegian and Chinese Minority, was just liberal wish-fulfillment.
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Well, you have to expect some of that with KSR, that's just the way he rolls - and in the actual book, it's even worse: they aren't particularly sinicized, and if I recall correctly they have conquered the east coast entirely: not sure what happened to the Muslims! (I made up the bit about the Norwegians).
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It's been awhile since I read the book, but I think a New Norway was referenced. Key emphasis on 'think.' But I do remember some Japanese Samurai guy uplifting the Native Americans, sure, things like that have happened in our own timeline; but the Natives are still going to have to suffer from all the diseases from the Old World.
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Yeah, even if a slower colonization process bought them some time, it's unlikely their population would bounce back enough by modern times to count as a major power (even if we make the unlikely assumption that the immense variety of native peoples would somehow create a unified state - there's another racist assumption, that the peoples of North America can somehow be treated as a homogenous entity...)
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I think the idea is more that they managed to form a politically unified entity for diplomatic and military purposes. That's similar to "China" and "The Islamic World," which are both hugely heterogeneous entities, but they still have political reality both in the novel and in real life.
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Not sure you should lump those together: the entity know as "China" has a hell of a lot more political reality in our world than the one called the "Islamic World"...
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It also sounds very politically correct and the Author clearly shows his bias here. While, i'm not going to directly call a Native American Superpower 'ASB;' I will point out that the Native American cultures are just as diverse as say the European, or Asiatic Cultures. A Homogenous entity is a very big stretch; even with Samurai Jack uplifting them. XD
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Mind you, I'm rather liberal myself: I just have little patience for the fluffy Buddhism/magical mystical native Americans segment of the left...
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Ah, i'm sorry if I sounded offensive. And, I defiently agree with you on that. Although, the Aferlife segments were pretty cool.
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I'm almost done reading the book.
This is really cool.
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Wow, that is quite a timeline. Thank you for pointing it out. Sorry for not replying earlier; you've given me a lot of food for thought. My first map/infodump should come soon.
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What? No epically exhaustive travel guide? Awww. No, just kidding, your answer was plenty insightful to one with relatively little experience in non-Western history. The Hodenosaunee federation is undoubtedly wooly-eyed liberal wish-fulfillment, but to be honest, I go rather wooly-eyed over your own maps. How do you make them?
I've been considering my own alternate history--or, rather, geography. In any case, the map can be found in my scrapbook. At risk of wearing out my welcome, I'd very much like to hear your thoughts on how such a world would progress, and evaluate my own (no doubt misguided) impressions:
Australia (Aodaliya) would have three main regions: a strong empire in the Murray-Darling basin, various tribes and empires to the north, and a strategically significant Tibet/Tawantinsuyu in the mountainous west.
I can't imagine much contact with China early on, but I'm sure that it would become significant by early to mid Roman times. I wonder at this point if Rome would be more interested in China or Aodaliya (or both), and how this would affect later European expansion--I suppose it would just heighten their urge to get to the Orient.
Meanwhile, would competition in Aodaliya/China/Japan spur them to send their own Columbus around the same time as OTL Columbus? I imagine that most expeditions would fail, but Japan and New Zealand do seem tantalizingly close to the Americas. I also get the distinct impression that technology will progress faster than OTL.
Thanks!
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Rather different geography: I think you've just derailed the Polynesian colonization of the Pacific, for one thing. And are the locals Malays/Austronesians (Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines...)or something else?
Probably contact comes with India pretty early: Hindusim reached SE and Maratime Asia before Chinese culture did (see, Khmer empire and its predecessors). Roman traders sometimes got as far as India, and might well carry back tales of Aodaliya, but the Romans had a big trade in silk going with China - what would Aodaliya export that they would be interested in?
Technological progress may be faster - the addition of another major center of world civilization increases the number of ideas, and SE Asia, with the cross-currents of Chinese, Indian and Aodaliyan civilization, will be an interesting place. As for Japan, they're a good way north by sea, and may not interact that much with Aodaliyan civilization. Much depends on what sort of maratime tradition the Aodaliyans develop - the Chinese could have had ther own "age of discovery", but failed to see profit in it - and whether they develop some sort of religion(s) with a missionary impulse. They could end up, like India and China in our world, fairly self-contained...
Here's someone else's attempt to make a believable Australian civilization with our Australia's geography. Be warned, the detail level is a bit intimidating for the novice alternate historian.
[link]
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Very nice map--the lack of one in the book always bugged me. Tell me, how does this compare to your personal thoughts about how a European-less world would evolve.
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Well, for one thing, I think technological progress would be slower - neither the Islamic nations nor the Indians nor the Chinese had the sort of preconditions for scientific and industrial development Europe had by the 1600s. I'm not saying that they wouldn't eventually develop scientific thinking (Chinese scholars in the Manchu period were sorta nibbling around the edges of the notion of experimental proof, and once you have printing, it's harder to outright lose knowledge), and the discovery and colonization of the Americas by someone was highly probably before the 20th century, but matching and surpassing our TLs scientific developments by 2010 seems unlikely.
Also, Unified Islam vs China? Hoo boy. The Islamic world was already too vast and varied to be unified by the 14th century, and a theoretical Islamic colonization of the Americas and an empty Europe would just make things worse.
The native American interior-of-north-America superpower seems like wooly-eyed liberal wish fulfillment, too: germs is germs, whether they are Chinese or Muslim ones, there is going to be a demographic catastrophe. Possibly an independent Mexican Native American state might become a major power by the 20th century - as a Muslim state. If the Chinese are involved, well, sinicization by flood-o'-immigrants is an ooold Chinese tradition.
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The Travencori League had weakened Muslim power in Firanja and had helped Houdenosaunee keep independent.
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Hm, hadn't remembered that - thanks. Still doesn't explain why the Chinese didn't move east more, and they are going to get whacked by Old World disease regardless: even under the best circumstances, they simply aren't going to have enough people to play a "US"- equivalent role.
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They don't. Travencore is this world's equivalent U.S.
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Sorry, not entirely clear: I meant the role they played at the end of the Long War, I agree that by the end of the book Travencore definitely seems to be the most energetic place economically (but would that really be the US? 
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I think many Houdenosauneese probably had Japanese blood from refugees who fled when China invaded Japan. But you're right, they still would not be that strong.
I don't think the nations are exact duplicates of ours.
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Ok thanks - I forgot about that
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Welcome, it is a lot of info to remember anyway.
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