In particular we can imagine it might look more similar to how China, India, Africa, etc. turned out, with subjugated local populations serving under foreign imperial governors. The eventual collapse of the empire might then result in most of the Americas being populated by ethnically Native American states.

In a lot of ways, though, the European subjugation of the Americas was the "tutorial mode" for European subjugation of Asia and Africa. Among other things, note that the business end of European colonization of subsaharan Africa and South and East Asia started ~a century after the colonization of the Americas (thanks to proximity, the Middle East and North Africa were much more tightly coupled to European history, and colonization played out differently there). The scramble for Africa and the opening of Japan didn't happen until the mid-late 19th century!

Not sure. China, India, Africa etc were colonized for much shorter periods of time.

One point of comparison would be Ireland. They didn't suffer from colonist-brought diseases, because obviously they had all the same diseases already, but they did suffer a precipitous decline in population.

Another example would be the west coast of Africa, which was similarly colonized from early modernity on.

> but they did suffer a precipitous decline in population.

That was a TIL for me, because I was about to say tat the "precipitous decline in population" only happened in the mid-19th century, i.e. a couple of centuries after Cromwell's campaign (the point where the English power over Ireland really became a colonial one), but then I skimmed through the History section of the Ireland wikipedia page [1] and I read this:

> This control was consolidated during the wars and conflicts of the 17th century, including the English and Scottish colonisation in the Plantations of Ireland, the Wars of the Three Kingdoms and the Williamite War.

and

> Physician-general William Petty estimated that 504,000 Catholic Irish and 112,000 Protestant settlers died, and 100,000 people were transported, as a result of the war.[66] If a prewar population of 1.5 million is assumed, this would mean that the population was reduced by almost half.

Again, I personally had no idea that Ireland's population was reduced by almost half immediately after the English conquest that happened during Cromwell's time, that's kind of gruesome and imo not studied enough outside of Ireland and the UK (I suppose that this subject is studied in there).

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ireland#The_Kingdom_of_Ireland

> estimated 55 million Native Americans died of disease

These estimates vary wildly, by more than a factor of 10.

One large source of error is the accounts by Spanish Conquistadors. They are suspected of greatly inflating the numbers they conquered, in order to boost their prestige back in Spain. It also seems doubtful their censuses were more than just wild guesses.