A Romani or Jewish like Chinese population in Europe

[Otto Kretschmer]

Really not sure if this topic belongs here xD But it might count as conworlding

What circumstances could lead to emergence of a Jewish or Romani like ethnic group in Europe except of Han Chinese origin?

How could they get to Europe?

What would their typical occupations be?

How would they look culturally? Any chances for them to be literate with the knowledge of Hanzi?

[Richard W]

Isn't this a history question? There are many Chinatowns in countries inhabited by Europeans.

As to occupation, I'd suggest traders with a tendency to fast food - typically Chinese food or fish and chips in the UK.

In this day and age, they're pretty well integrated, and I don't know how well they'd retain a Chinese language and writing. There is weekend schooling for Chinese in places, but coverage may be limited. One does hear tales of Chinese with a NE English accent being unintelligible to grandparents, so the loss of the language would not surprise me.

[Travis B.]

Another thing to note that in some countries like the US, people of Chinese ancestry have become analogous to Jews some decades back in that they have become treated as a so-called "model minority" which at the same time has never truly integrated, with negative results for them. (Consider affirmative action programs which see there as being "too many" Asians in higher-ranking schools and like.)

[Otto Kretschmer]

The population has to be in Europe by 1500 AD but the earlier the better.

[Travis B.]

The population has to be in Europe by 1500 AD but the earlier the better.

Thing is, that doesn't make any sense. Do you want to invoke teleportation?

[zompist]

Many Asian nations have a class of Chinese residents, mostly urban merchants or laborers. They appeared in the Americas by the 1600s (in Mexico City and Lima, at least). The Ming treasure fleets famously reached India and East Africa. (They reached the latter about 50 years ahead of the Portuguese.)

It's not impossible that these might have reached Europe, but... well, Europe is a long way away, and before the 1500s was poor and backwards. If you were going to do business, you'd probably pick a richer area, like the Ottoman Empire.

[Travis B.]

Many Asian nations have a class of Chinese residents, mostly urban merchants or laborers. They appeared in the Americas by the 1600s (in Mexico City and Lima, at least). The Ming treasure fleets famously reached India and East Africa. (They reached the latter about 50 years ahead of the Portuguese.)

It's not impossible that these might have reached Europe, but... well, Europe is a long way away, and before the 1500s was poor and backwards. If you were going to do business, you'd probably pick a richer area, like the Ottoman Empire.

It might work if you put the Mongol Empire and the Yuan dynasty earlier so the Ming dynasty and thus the Ming treasure fleets can start earlier and make Europe prior to the 1500's wealthier so as to attract Chinese traders.

[zompist]

It's not impossible that these might have reached Europe, but... well, Europe is a long way away, and before the 1500s was poor and backwards. If you were going to do business, you'd probably pick a richer area, like the Ottoman Empire.

It might work if you put the Mongol Empire and the Yuan dynasty earlier so the Ming dynasty and thus the Ming treasure fleets can start earlier and make Europe prior to the 1500's wealthier so as to attract Chinese traders.

I mentioned the treasure fleets because they show how far the Chinese could get, but I don't think they're a model for what Otto wants— they were what we'd now call a projection of Chinese power, but not really an economic venture.

Making medieval Europe richer is the sort of alt-history change that is far more involved than it first looks. The whole thing about Europeans of that era is that they had needs. They wanted spices, gold, silver, porcelain, silk, and slaves. The Portuguese were making money as soon as they hit Guinea.

The Chinese had no great needs— about all they wanted from the rest of the world was horses (from Central Asia) and silver. They had plenty of cheap labor at home and so didn't need slaves. Europe could have been quite a bit richer (say, Byzantine-level) without making it more worthwhile to visit and trade with, at such a distance. And if you start to give Europe a monopoly on some valuable resource, that changes the Europeans' own motivations.

The one niche I can see the Chinese fulfilling is finance and trade, competing with the Jews. After all, that's much of what they did in Asia.

Finally, I'd note that if you have Chinese actually trading in Europe, that eliminates a lot of the reasons for European exploration and settlement. You don't have to go west to find India and China if India and China are coming to you. (And if they can make it west, Europeans could make it east, far earlier and more successfully than in our timeline.)

[Richard W]

One possible route is as administrators in the Mongol Empire, but you may have to bend history a bit. The Mongols did have Chinese units.

[Man in Space]

The Mongols did have Chinese units.

This proved problematic in their games of Civilization V, when those could not be stacked.

[Moose-tache]

Here's a scenario:
In the aftermath of the fall of Northern Song, refugees (really disposessed nobles, merchants, and their slaves) fled west across the Silk Road, quickly reaching the Middle East. After serving as mercenaries in various conflicts including the Second Crusade, they took part in a joint conquest of Egypt with the Ayyubid dynasty, converting to Islam and becoming a small but powerful part of the Ayyubid elite. After the Mamluk take over, there was a concentrated effort to suppress ethnic Chinese, causing a diaspora into the Maghreb, the Seljuk Sultanate, and southern Europe, especially the Kingdom of Sicily and various Adriatic powers like Venice, Hungary, and Rashka. By this point "Chinese" culture consists of a handful of variations on Egyptian cooking, a heavily Arabized descendant of late Middle Chinese, and a raucous blend of clothing styles. East Asian religion, literature, marriage practices, and architecture are mostly lost. In the Balkans Chinese Muslims are tolerated, but in Italy and the HRE there are subsequent diasporas as local pressure increases from place to place. Some refugees end up as far north as Krakow.

[Otto Kretschmer]

One hypothesis about the Romani is that they are descendants of soldiers - the Romani language has rich native vocabulary regarding military matters the word for a non Romani person means a civilian in related Indo Aryan languages