The Norse-settlement counterfactual redirects Iberian expansion toward India and Southeast Asia. One objection to sending Spanish conquerors to India concerns disease and sanitation. A panellist points out that India already shares the Old World's diseases, so their arrival would have less devastating effects than in the Americas. That qualification is accepted, though disease would remain a problem. The discussion then returns to a commercial aim: finding routes around Ottoman-controlled trade and profiting from the bypass.
Notable Point · 2:35:29-2:36:26
Spanish expansion into India faces a different disease environment
The counterfactual distinguishes disease effects in India from those in the Americas and links Iberian expansion to the search for trade routes around Ottoman control.