PC. New Zealand with a population of 60 million
- Thread starter WILDGEESE
- Start date
I think its technically possible, the land could probably support at the very least 15 million people.
However, its also technically possible that a coin will flip heads infinite times in a row.
What I mean is: where are all these immigrants going to come from? The u.s. and Canada, southern south america, and even Australia suck up 99% of the possible immigrants that there is. Considering that there's absolutely no way to butterfly that, as New Zealand is one of the most isolated placed in the world, I'm calling asb.
It *could* be possible, but New Zealand would have to become very much like Japan, agriculture wise, if so-I think 15-20 million is a more realistic maximum for a self-sufficient (or at least mostly so) New Zealand.
You aren't doing that without either nuclear apocalypse or much more agricultural Maori, it's almost Sealion-levels of ASB. You'd also need a Maori-wank at that, since they both arrived late and were starting from a fairly low population base. Since nuclear apocalypse is a pretty cliche way to answer these threads, let's see what a Maori-wank would look like.
The Maori arrive with more domesticated animals (chickens, pigs). At the same time, Polynesian contact with South America is more lasting and permanent (maybe Galapagos and/or Juan Fernandez is settled by Polynesians). Potatoes make their way to New Zealand/Aotearoa no later than 1400 through trade routes. Let's add a cultivar of quinoa too. At the same time, the trade routes encourage the Maori to make trading voyages of their own, and they somehow pick up Chinese and Japanese crops while there (most things beside rice should be perfect). This creates a quickly growing population filling up the available space of Aotearoa (and sadly wiping out many of its native animals in the process). These voyages also bring epidemic disease back to Aotearoa, establishing it in the islands early on. Many die, but the survivors gain some resistance against future epidemics which they previously didn't have.
Violent fighting amongst Maori iwis and colonisation (European, Asian? Use your imagination) leaves modern Aotearoa unified, but a fairly poor nation. This leads to even more massive population growth through the late 19th and 20th century. But good economic policies and development turn Aotearoa into a rapidly developing nation, attracting significant immigration from elsewhere in Asia and South America. Despite protests from some, immigrants make up a rapidly growing part of Aotearoan society, a country that numbers around 60 million people spread over two densely populated islands and several smaller, more marginal islands.
The Maori arrive with more domesticated animals (chickens, pigs). At the same time, Polynesian contact with South America is more lasting and permanent (maybe Galapagos and/or Juan Fernandez is settled by Polynesians). Potatoes make their way to New Zealand/Aotearoa no later than 1400 through trade routes. Let's add a cultivar of quinoa too. At the same time, the trade routes encourage the Maori to make trading voyages of their own, and they somehow pick up Chinese and Japanese crops while there (most things beside rice should be perfect). This creates a quickly growing population filling up the available space of Aotearoa (and sadly wiping out many of its native animals in the process). These voyages also bring epidemic disease back to Aotearoa, establishing it in the islands early on. Many die, but the survivors gain some resistance against future epidemics which they previously didn't have.
Violent fighting amongst Maori iwis and colonisation (European, Asian? Use your imagination) leaves modern Aotearoa unified, but a fairly poor nation. This leads to even more massive population growth through the late 19th and 20th century. But good economic policies and development turn Aotearoa into a rapidly developing nation, attracting significant immigration from elsewhere in Asia and South America. Despite protests from some, immigrants make up a rapidly growing part of Aotearoan society, a country that numbers around 60 million people spread over two densely populated islands and several smaller, more marginal islands.
What about giving New Zealand/Aotearoa a similar history to Madagascar? The current population of the latter is around 22 million. Maybe have early colonization/discovery by an Indonesian empire, who imports laborers from the Indonesian archipelago, New Guinea, and Melanesia?
Yeah, you would need to have a very different early medieval era I think, in SE Asia in order to make this happen.
Does the SE/E Asian crop package even work well enough for NZ climate and soil? NZ has huge amounts of rather marginal high country land, marginal for European agriculture and I would imagine the same is true for Asian. IOTL it is mainly pastoral, forestry and now recreational in the last 30 years (it is usually very pretty).
Also, NZ is a long way from everyone. That is less of an issue with 19th century sailing technology and economies but it does rather make it awkward to arrange for mass migration, as opposed to what the Polynesians did.
Send thousands of people every year for many years would be necessary to have any hope of getting such a population and so you would need a lot of big, long range ships. If such a facility existed I would imagine there would be very many butterflies. Like an early discovery of the Americas.
Does the SE/E Asian crop package even work well enough for NZ climate and soil? NZ has huge amounts of rather marginal high country land, marginal for European agriculture and I would imagine the same is true for Asian. IOTL it is mainly pastoral, forestry and now recreational in the last 30 years (it is usually very pretty).
Also, NZ is a long way from everyone. That is less of an issue with 19th century sailing technology and economies but it does rather make it awkward to arrange for mass migration, as opposed to what the Polynesians did.
Send thousands of people every year for many years would be necessary to have any hope of getting such a population and so you would need a lot of big, long range ships. If such a facility existed I would imagine there would be very many butterflies. Like an early discovery of the Americas.
No, you don't. All you need is an initial starter population, the right crop package(s) and time.
Populations in New England and Quebec, for instance, grew at about 3% / year, which works out to a doubling every 25 years or so, or 16 fold/century.
Assume 1000 people as a starter population, say, you could have 1 million in 10 doublings (250 years), 4 million in 300, 64 million in 400 years (assuming no resource limitations, which is silly.)
But a small starting population can generate those numbers easily if given the means and chance to grow.
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Now, your biggest single problem is likely crop packages. The closest areas with high yield agriculture are tropical, which would be marginal in North Island and useless in South Island.
You really want something like this, have a North Indian or Chinese or Japanese ship loaded with seed crops be blown to New Zealand about the year ... 500AD. Ah, right, that rules out Japanese.
How you get a ship with all those crops and a viable population all the way to New Zealand is a real, real problem.
Loyal retainers flee China with the Sui dynasty heir, trying to make it to ?? the Philippines to regroup and retake China, and a monster storm drives them directly to New Zealand? ???
Darn close to ASB, but not quite there.
What do you mean like Japan agriculture wise?
Japan isn't exactly a model of agricultural efficiency.
I still don't think the population is going to grow that smoothly - NZ had quite a lot of migration pre WW2 and it still grew slowly because it was hard and expensive to convince people to move, even harder to keep them there.
Well, it's easy enough for NZ to sustain 60 million people. The hard part is, well, getting people there.
I think the best way of achieving this is to have the Aztec Empire successfully repel the Spanish attack; as a result, Lima, not Mexico City, becomes the Spanish Empire's main seat of power in the Americas.
Crossings of the Pacific from Lima lead to Australia and New Zealand, due to ocean currents. ANZ are discovered circa 1600, and generally develop in much the same way that the Philippines did in OTL.
There are a few details to be worked out, of course - for instance, what can New Zealand offer to make it a valuable colony for Spain? - but I think this approach could plausibly give NZ a very high population by the present day.
I think the best way of achieving this is to have the Aztec Empire successfully repel the Spanish attack; as a result, Lima, not Mexico City, becomes the Spanish Empire's main seat of power in the Americas.
Crossings of the Pacific from Lima lead to Australia and New Zealand, due to ocean currents. ANZ are discovered circa 1600, and generally develop in much the same way that the Philippines did in OTL.
There are a few details to be worked out, of course - for instance, what can New Zealand offer to make it a valuable colony for Spain? - but I think this approach could plausibly give NZ a very high population by the present day.
No conquest of the Aztecs means no Spanish conquest of Peru (at least not with OTL's dates), and that means no Lima.
Isn't Japan quite mountainous though?
For historical reasons I think 60 million in NZ is far fetched but geographically I'm not sure it's unfeasible?
Judging by the amount of arable land, I would think 60 is unfeasible; even 45 is pushing it if you ask me.
If NZ had a similar number of people per square km of arable land as the UK, then it would have 16 million people, not 60. A massive deforestation project to clear land for farming might increase this to ~20-25, but not much farther I think. For it to have 45 million people, it would need to have a Japanese kind of person-to-farmland ratio.
If NZ had a similar number of people per square km of arable land as the UK, then it would have 16 million people, not 60. A massive deforestation project to clear land for farming might increase this to ~20-25, but not much farther I think. For it to have 45 million people, it would need to have a Japanese kind of person-to-farmland ratio.
Technically (by this worldbank measure http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/AG.LND.AGRI.ZS ) New Zealand has twice as much arable land as Japan once you correct for area. Of course, arable does not necessarily mean "will grow the highest-food-value-per-acre" crops.
That statistic is agricultural land, which includes pastoral and "permanent crop" (cocoa, coffee, rubber) lands, which inflates the food output of Mongolia, Saudi Arabia, and New Zealand. Looking at the World Bank Statistics, Japan has eight times the arable (used for "non-permanent" crops) of New Zealand, and 14 times the land under cereal cultivation.
I think 15 - 20 million would be achievable, but we would have to alter how we build our cities. Strict boundaries, high rise construction and devolution of industry & services from Auckland, as opposed to the current method of urban sprawl and industrial/service centralisation into Auckland & Christchurch. This will prevent loss of farm land to housing, while protecting our remaining wild lowland and wetland areas.
Considering an earlier p.o.d., very few tropical foodstuffs grow here, even the kumara (sweet potato) will only grow in the North Island & the north of the South Island. What you need is for the Polynesians to bring back the potato, as well as the kumara, from South America and for them to successfully introduce the pig (an ecological disaster in the making) into Aotearoa. The potato will grow nearly anywhere in New Zealand. No-one knows why pigs and chickens weren't introduced by Polynesians, they definitely had them when they colonised these islands. Perhaps they just failed to survive the voyage (eaten or lost at sea?).
Considering an earlier p.o.d., very few tropical foodstuffs grow here, even the kumara (sweet potato) will only grow in the North Island & the north of the South Island. What you need is for the Polynesians to bring back the potato, as well as the kumara, from South America and for them to successfully introduce the pig (an ecological disaster in the making) into Aotearoa. The potato will grow nearly anywhere in New Zealand. No-one knows why pigs and chickens weren't introduced by Polynesians, they definitely had them when they colonised these islands. Perhaps they just failed to survive the voyage (eaten or lost at sea?).
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