[Capsicum]

Originally Posted by Acajack

I often think about this.

The Europeans were present in an imperialistic way all over the world at one point.

But for a variety of reasons they didn't send legions of European settlers everywhere. Only to certain parts of the world.

Obviously North America was destined to have some measure of European influence, but what if it had been just limited to influence? With almost no settlement of Europeans?

What would a North America demographically dominated by aboriginal peoples be like? (Like Africa and Asia largely are today.)

Originally Posted by someone123

They actually did try more of a shotgun approach early on. Scotland for example sent settlers to Panama at one point. But tropical diseases killed almost all of the settlers and livestock. European agricultural methods were unproductive.

The only heavily European settled areas are the ones kind of like Europe in terms of natural environment. Canada, US, NZ, Australia, South Africa, Argentina, and higher altitude parts of countries like Mexico. Generally the Spanish-speaking tropical countries have a high percentage of aboriginal ancestry. Spanish settlers in these areas had extremely high mortality rates. It was considered a death sentence if you got sent to a tropical jungle (convenient for, say, French political prisoners sent to Guyana; you could pretend you were only exiling them).

Even the Southern US was marginal because of malaria and other diseases, which is why they ended up with a plantation economy based on African slavery.

Very noticeable on this map.