Settling Antarctica

Question

For certain reasons, a large coalition of wealthy nations sees it as necessary to colonize a small part of a continent about the size of Antarctica which is centered around the North Pole. With a technological level similar to that of the 15th century, what would this coalition need to do to make this possible and how large of a population could they hope to sustain granted that they're able to provide frequent provisions via ships.

Answer 1

Sure

Humans can live almost anywhere, if you can waive the need to be self-sustaining. Being in the middle of Sahara is fine if somebody else keeps paying the bills for water delivery. You can have artificial lakes and gardens. As long as somebody pays the bills.

Likewise being in sub-zero is not a real problem if somebody else pays for the import of food, fuel, clothing, tools, building materials and almost all other goods.

So the main requirement is then simply that there needs to be lots of money available to make it happen. And there needs to be a reliable supply of more funding to sustain it.

And just to be clear : we are talking about lots of money here. With 15th century technology everything would be less efficient and more expensive than today and colonizing Antarctica would not be that trivial even today.

Population

Since the colony is not self-sustaining the population is that needed to do whatever the colony was founded to do. Plus population working to reduce the need to import things such as fishermen (food supplement), coal miners (if coal is available, to reduce need to import fuel), hunters (food, fuel, clothing) and so on. Plus population providing support services such as administration, construction, medicine, entertainment, cooking, transport (lots of people would work on the docks) and so on.

So just start with population needed for the actual purpose, which I do not know, and build on that. This has the added benefit that it resembles the process of how the colony would grow overtime, so you can get some idea of that as well, if you bother to think about how it evolves.

PS

I am not sure if you wanted specific details about the buildings and clothing and so on.

Answer 2

Not possible

I agree with L Dutch's answer, but feel that it's worth addressing some of the specific issues in a little more detail.

Hello darkness my old friend

In summer, colonists will have trouble sleeping without thick curtains, but in winter they are going to be really in the dark. Here you can find some details of how many hours of daylight, twilight (two types) and full darkness there are for various months at a number of Antarctic bases. This has some serious implications for both activities and resupply - with no electric lighting and centuries before the hurricane lantern would be invented in the mid-nineteenth century, colonists and resupply vessels would be severely limited in the illumination options available. Outdoor illumination would be basically limited to candles in glass boxes which would only illuminate a few metres away.

Crops and food

Crops cannot be grown in Antarctica. There are a few species of moss and fungi around Antarctica's volcanoes, but even assuming similar volcanic activity on a similar Arctic continent, this would not allow crops for humans to be grown. There have been suggestions that a large transparent dome could be built to enclose crop-growing areas in Antarctica if colonisation were not prohibited under the Antarctic Treaty System, but such a feat of construction is well beyond 15th century abilities and would be challenging even today.

With no locally grown food, the colonists would be relying on preserved food transferred by their resupply ships (see below). Food preservation techniques in the 15th century were relatively primitive, canned food was a long way in the future. Lack of medical knowledge and ability to preserve some foods also led to frequent nutrient deficiency diseases, such as scurvy which affected many sailors but was not understood until the 18th century. The colonists are likely to suffer from and eventually die of various deficiencies even if resupply could get to them...

Arctic navigation

As noted in the Wikipedia entry on the Arctic climate:

Much of the historical exploration of the Arctic was motivated by the search for the Northwest and Northeast Passages. Sixteenth- and seventeenth-century expeditions were largely driven by traders in search of these shortcuts between the Atlantic and the Pacific. These forays into the Arctic did not venture far from the North American and Eurasian coasts, and were unsuccessful at finding a navigable route through either passage.

Despite the high desirability of locating a passage to allow navigation to the north of North America or Europe / Asia, it was only in the 1850s that the Northwest Passage was first navigated successfully, while the Northeast Passage was only confirmed as being navigated in 1878-9. Sea ice, adverse weather and reliance on sails and oars for propulsion defeated all previous attempts, despite countries such as Britain passing an Act in 1745 offering a £20,000 prize for discovering the Northwest Passage.

Putting all this together, a colony would be completely dependent on external resupply of food (missing key nutrients), fuel (for heat), fuel (for illumination), replacement building materials and everything else they need. However, reliable external resupply was beyond the abilities of the vessels of the day, regardless of how well motivated the sailors might be.

Answer 3

Of course this is possible. You do not even need 15th century technology

The Inuit managed to survive in polar and sub-polar climates for thousands of years. They did not have 15th century technology, nor were they rich.

However, there are reasons why there were Inuit in the Arctic and not in the Antarctic. The setting that you have in the case of the antarctic is utterly hostile and you have quite a number of problems, detailed below.

Problems

1. Resources. As pointed out by other answers, it is difficult to obtain food, building material, and other resources for an economy in a frozen wasteland. Most of the resources would have to come from hunting and fishing (animal hides, fish, meat, whale oil, ...)
2. Scurvy. Diet consisting nearly exclusively of fish and meat is poor in Vitamin C and causes scurvy. Seafarers and Greenland Norse learned this the hard way. Apparently it is possible to find limited quantities of Vitamin C in raw fish, raw meat, kelp. This is how the Inuit survived without being afflicted by scurvy in pre-modern times, but the Norsemen for instance, in spite of being in contact with the Inuit, failed to adapt to that.
3. Getting there. Since you want a continent in the Arctic, I assume it should be reasonably isolated, surrounded by water, just like Antarctica. This leads to strong and dangerous currents. It is very unlikely that you will normally be able to approach the continent in ships built with 15th century or similar technology.
4. Darkness. As pointed out by other answers.
5. Cold. A circumpolar current like around Antarctica prevents heat exchange with warmer waters. This means that your continent will be really cold, like Antarctica, and you will not have warmer nicely habitable places along its shorelines similar to the Arctic on our world (Greenland, Northern Canada, Iceland, Northern Norway, Northern Russia, Northern Alaska).
6. Pride, traditions, etc. You want the settlers to be from the richest countries. I am afraid, given the challenges involved being rich is more likely to prevent you from succeeding, since you 1. have other options, and 2. are convinced that you are the pinnacle of the human race and are doing everything right. This leads to similar mistakes to the ones committed by the Greenland Norse. They tried to raise cattle in Greenland. It didn't work out in the long run. The most stunning aspect is that they were in contact with the Inuit, who showed them how to live successfully in the Arctic, but they completely failed to adapt to any of this.

How to get human settlements in the Arctic with 14th century technology

• Don't make your continent isolated like Antarctica. Crucially, you should not have a circumpolar current. This will solve your problems 3 and 5 above.
• Don't let rich people settle your continent, but rather poor people. If possible, slowly migrating there over hundreds of years so they can learn how to adapt to the conditions and the cold and the darkness and the difficulty to find a Vitamin C rich diet without getting scurvy etc. This will solve your problems 2, 4, 6, and partly 1. Also note that once you have a place settled by poor nomadic groups like Inuit, your rich countries will have a much stronger reason to go there (for conquest, trade in, say, whale oil, hides, and walrus tusks, etc.)
• Have some big animals inhabiting the continent and the waters surrounding it. The land animals would be carnivorous animals since you have little vegetation. But there#s no reason not to have polar bears feeding on your seal and penguins. This will partly solve your problem 1.

There are probably other solutions too.

Answer 4

With a technological level similar to that of the 15th century, what would this coalition need to do to make this possible

The only thing they can do is wait a few centuries.

Greenland was abandoned during that period, while it was occupied by European settlers since about 900 c.e.

The demise of the Western Settlement coincides with a decrease in summer and winter temperatures. A study of North Atlantic seasonal temperature variability during the Little Ice Age showed a significant decrease in maximum summer temperatures beginning in the late 13th century to early 14th century — as much as 6 to 8 °C (11 to 14 °F) lower than modern summer temperatures.

And that was Greenland, still more livable than the actual pole.

Even in present days we haven't managed to settle at the poles. We have scientific bases, true, but they entirely depend on supplies from motherland. If they were left on their own, they wouldn't survive more than few months.