The ASB's effect on philosophy destroys the very belief in a rational world that allowed Europeans to advance and prosper.
There's an unforeseen irony!
The instrument by which I sought to analyse a point ends up killing the point all by itself.
the world as a whole is likely to be behind a century or so in technology and wealth, and missing some niche crops, just because non European peoples, ideas, and so on made contributions that will be missed.
Would agree with raharris1973 that technological development will be some time behind our world. In part because the loss of trade and knowledge and the lack of resources from most of the world and the need to locate agricultural and mineral resources and settle populations to develop them. Also the basis for a scientific view of the world has been weakened by the event as Atarlost says.
About this, I have some serious doubts. Leaving aside the matter of "
act of ASB fucks up European philosophy forever" for the sake of discussion here, we should compare advantages and disadvantages.
The fact is, when we compare the number of scientific and technological contributions of various cultures post-1400 or so, the West just utterly
dwarfs the rest of the world. This is a process that had already gotten into gear before the 'age of exploration' kicked off. In fact, my whole thesis here is that "Europe's conquest of the world" was the result of Europe having already overtaken all competitors, rather than it being the other way around. If we were to go back a few centuries, it'd be a different story, because for most of its history (even if we count the Greeks and Romans, who included non-European bits in their cultures), Europe played... not even second, but at best
third fiddle. But that did change, and personally, I'd put the credit for that with the Scholastic revolution. Once you get a basically solid intellectual approach to the world, you really
can achieve miracles.
All this suggests to me that while
specific non-Western thinkers from OTL would indeed be missing (and indeed much
missed) in this scenario, the West simply produces way more advances per capita than anyone else. Which means that any losses are more than compensated, in the end. A world with more Westerners, is ceteris paribus, more likely to have more advances than a world with fewer Westerners.
Now... does that "ceteris paribus" hold up? I think that it does, actually, at least when you take the long view. Initially, sure, there's fewer people on the planet, and there are no more Westerners than in OTL. That's a net negative, across the board. But that'll change rapidly. After all, there's, uh... free real estate.
Everywhere. In OTL, the good land is always contested. If you want it, you typically have to kill (or at least conquer) the people already living there. This costs lives. And the "good bits" of the plant are the bits where high-population cultures emerge, so there's loads of people living there. Which means taking those regions tends to cost
lots of lives. Even moving into the best, most fertile bits of North America was a struggle involving any bloody Indian Wars. And that was after over 90% of them had outright dropped dead from disease!
Expanding into uncontested land is a very different story. Inherently easier. It has its own draw-backs, and some initial settlers are going to die due to the elements or the beasties, but it's going to cost a mere fraction of the lives that OTL's violent conquests demanded.
This means that, on the whole, the world's population is going to remain lower than in OTL for a fair bit, but the total number of
Westerners will soon increase compared to OTL. And since the West was, demonstrably, way more of contributor to science and technology than any other civilisation in the history of, well...
ever... this should reasonably be expected to mean that this ATL will soon surpass OTL, when it comes to innovation.
It doesn't matter if there's (say) four times fewer people if the people in question are (again, say) ten times more innovative than anyone else.
What about livestock herds? Left to go feral?
Well it occurs to me that the rapid disappearance of human breathers and farter/belchers [and animal ones if livestock disappear too], plus uncontrolled reforestation and growth of grasses, is going to crash CO2 levels and descend the planet into an ice age starting pretty soon, glaciating the European cradle of science, technology, and industry.
You know those enormous buffalo herds in North America that existed before "the West was won"? Yeah, those were a pretty recent phenomenon. They didn't exist in those enormous during the pre-Columbian days. But when the peple who hunted them and kept their numbers low all started getting a weird cough and then died horribly, the buffalo population went through the roof.
So I don't think we have to worry about an ice age. When man dies off, the number of big, farting animals tends to go up. Both dramatically, and very swiftly. (Of course, those numbers will go way down as humanity spreads out, but since the number of humans is then going up and up and up, this means we don't have to worry about a lack of, ah, "exhausts", either.)
It has been suggested that a factor, if not the primary cause for the Little Ice Age, which had already started by this time was the disruption of agriculture, especially paddy rice cultivation by 1st the Mongol conquests and then the Black Death. With this now expanded much further and not being restored in the short/medium term if at all its likely that this cold weather will be even colder and longer lasting. Hopefully not a full Ice Age or extended spell - a century or more of Ice Age conditions but you could well see civilisation being pushed southwards.
See right above -- I'm not so sure about this.
The whole "[x] caused the Little Ice Age" notion has always been pretty iffy to me, to begin with. Seems to me that it's more of a pretty normal, cyclical thing that's been happening for quite some time. You had a relatively warm period in Europe from about 250 BC to AD 400, then a relatively cool period from about 400 AD to AD 950, then a relatively warm period again from about AD 950 to AD 1250, and -- guess what -- then things started cooling down again. It's more likely to be a natural phenomenon than
one of those suddenly being the result of human action. (As opposed to modern warming, which may well have a natural "basis", but which evidently exceeds the swings of previous eras by a staggering margin. Which strongly suggests an external factor at play -- prime suspect: us -- which wasn't relevant during the earlier climate swings.)
No matter what, though, the fact remains that even if the Little Ice Age was influenced by Genghis Khan's wars, it's not likely to last any longer. We'll simply see in Eurasia and Africa what we saw in Post-columbian America in OTL: the rapid return of vast herds across the land, now that their most dangerous natural enemy -- again: us -- has been removed from their habitat. And they'll be farting and belching along happily, no doubt.
There is going to be some significant disruption of trade, most especially of luxury goods from the east, spices, silk etc. This is likely to be a significant blow to some areas, probably especially the Italian trading cities such as Venice, Pisa, Genoa etc. who will also have suffered the losses of any people and ships in the affected areas when the event happens. There is silk production in Europe, especially in Greece so the capability hasn't been lost totally but the level will drop which could be very handy for the reviving Byzantine empire that's likely to occur.
Certainly there will be areas hard-hit. Of course, others will thrive because of the same factors.
Given that its only European Christians who have survived there's going to be a distinct danger that many groups, especially the primary clerical groups will see it as a sign of divine approval which is likely to prompt religious extremism to heighten. Since there are still two distinct groups, the Catholics and Orthodox [along with the Armenians who follow their own path] there could well be clashes as the former especially is likely to deem it necessary to demonstrate its superiority by calling for action to suppress the Orthodox areas. This could well get political and economic support when it comes to the potential wealth that the Greeks especially might seem to have although it will be some time before Anatolia is really populated again and also a unified government.
It quite possible that the Reformation would be delayed, although the underlying problem of widespread corruption in the Catholic church is still present and could well get worse in the short term. Plus its appetite for power could be boosted by the event, which is likely to cause tension with secular powers. I would expect that the strengthened position of the Papacy would mean more clashes with the HR emperor.
I rather like the idea of this whole set-up sort of accidentally revitalising the whole Investiture Controversy, and that whole clash pretty much taking the place of the Reformation. There's real potential for some interesting effects down the line, there.
It could well be that Columbus gets ignored here as with not only their own Muslims disappearing but it also becoming clear pretty quickly that those in N Africa have also disappeared then its likely that Spain would be more interested in settling the N African coasts, plus possibly getting to the holy lands before anyone else, especially any Orthodox groups.
If he does get to sail west he will find no signs of life other than some overrun farms so its likely that, presuming he manages to return, no further missions will go west from Spain. Provided the weather doesn't deteriorate too badly then the Americans might start getting settled as a result of fishermen using the Grand Banks and some possibly seeking water and other resources leading to small settlements in Newfoundland and some explorers spreading out from there.
I'm inclined to think Columbus gets no funding here, but that the big discovery of the Americas isn't delayed by all that much. Advances in nautical tech will just have their natural consequences, I think. Probably, as you say, fishermen doing a bit of exploring first. It's pretty easy to imagine that the Northern Europeans, who are mostly cut off from the initial land-claiming in Eurasia, will enjoy their own "wave" of expansion in the Americas.
Not sure whether the Portuguese would continue their exploration down the African coast although since
Bartolomeu Dias found the Cape of Good Hope in 1488 and suspected it was the southern point of the African continent they might decide it gave them a way to reach south and east Asia and hence bypassing the Med. However of course this is less attractive in the short term at least as there is no one to trade with and it would be a long, long process of findings sources of wealth - such as the spice islands which are a long way off still - and then settling them with your own populations.
They will also have an issue with their island of Madeira as their black slaves used to work the plantations have suddenly disappeared. Likely they will bring in white labour, probably convicts or serfs to work the land but it will take some time.
I think a lot depends on who gets Egypt and control over the Red Sea. If one power controls that and is firmly entrenched, then rivals have a vested interest in going around the Cape.
In the east provided there aren't successful crusade type attacks I would expect a Byzantine empire to re-emerge based on Constantinople although its likely to face local challenges from Bulgaria, possibly Serbia and then whoever gains control of the western Ukraine - very likely either Poland or Muscovy/Russia. Provided they aren't overwhelmed I could see the Greeks ending up spreading into Syria and securing the Palestine area although western Europeans might secure Egypt before them which could be a massive area of influence and conflict. Egypt as well as its agricultural wealth provides a possible short route to the east, although where settlers would go from there, there are many options.
Egypt will be an obvious golden goose, yes. If religious motivations play a big role, claiming the Holy Land may also be Serious Business. (Although I wonder what the religious effects of just finding it empty will be. No Jerusalem, no Bethlehem, just... nothing there. Christendom remains, but its cradle is gone.)
Russia however could end up going down the Volga which could lead to them landing in N Persia - which OTL was briefly held by Russia under Peter the Great - than heading further east. Its a much easier route to a warm water port - if they can't get past Constantinople - via the Persian Gulf than going all the way to the Pacific. Although fur traders might well still push that way, possibly with settlers being moved in in small numbers initially to actually do the trapping and provide local food and other supplies. Its possible that such settlements, since they would be so far from a central authority which is looking southwards, could be a lot more independent and individualistic and especially so once they reach far enough to get more habitable lands such as parts of N China and Japan. You could see a couple of centuries down the line the start of independent 'Russian' states outside the control of Moscow that over time become substantial powers in their own right.
Those are some interesting possibilities!
My thinking was that Persia would be pretty hard to traverse, and taking the "steppe highway" may just be more attractive when it comes to expansion. If someone is thinking long-term, though, the value of pushing towards the Indian Ocean instead may be recognised.
