Sometimes you're trying to justify things existing in your world, and you come up with a single explanation that covers a bunch of results and it is elegant and feels satisfying.
Sometimes you're trying to justify things existing in your world, and you come up with a single explanation that covers a bunch of results and it is elegant and feels satisfying.
In my alternate history world (see my profile), I wanted to let African and American cultures thrive, not be colonised by Europe.
I wanted transatlantic contact to be contact between equals: West Africans + East Americans + far West European barbarians (distinct from the imperial core in Central Europe) all come together and ally... it's not exactly a lovefest but they see their common interest and create technology-transfer and confederation.
In actual history, one reason America was wiped out was the West lacked immunity to smallpox.
Then I learned a little-known historical tidbit (learned it on Hexbear iirc).... Africans had knowledge of smallpox inoculation! Therefore, if Africans were respected allies that crossed the Atlantic (not slaves), they could bring the Americans smallpox immunity:
So in the alternate history, in the 1490s Europe crosses the Atlantic and rounds Cape Bojador, and a multi-ethnic confederation initiates contact with the Native Americans. It brings the knowledge of smallpox immunity to them, because that's a technology several Old World Cultures (but not white Europeans) had.
By making Africans equals in transatlantic contact, that simultanæously justifies why Americans weren't decimated by smallpox.