Personally, I hate Rowling's assertion that there are only 11 schools. The math just doesn't add up, but then Rowling is admittedly terrible at all things having to do with numbers.

If the UK and Ireland combined have enough students for 1 school, then the US should have several and countries like India or China should have possibly dozens.

Also, having the 1 US school in Massachusetts doesn't make sense in at least one regard. It's one of the most densely populated states in the country, 3rd out of 50. If you want to use something on the East coast to make it older, then Vermont would be much more fitting.

But as the country grew & expanded West, a school in the Rockies would make a lot more sense. Some place like Wyoming would have plenty of room to hide a remote school.

I could see Canada having two schools just by itself. The French Quebecois would have to have their own school as separate as they consider themselves.

 

US should have very low magical pooulation actually.

 

Why?

 

Well, the magical population is a very small percentage of the whole, and it is not as if Native Americans had a big population to begin with. Wizards wouldn't have as strong incentive to immigrate, so the disprolortion between populations would be even bigger. Additionally as Rowling mentions, NA was very unhospitable to wizards, one of the reason being puritans and stronger anti-magic attitudes among muggles. Salem led to big emigration wave and made immigration even smaller.

Though now I see that Rowling said that this evened out.

Doesn't exactly makes much sense in context of what she wrote earlier.

 

I'm not sure where you get the idea few would immigrate. There would be a lot of people looking to escape the crushing bureaucracy of the Ministry of Magic and even more looking to find a place away from prying muggle eyes found in the ever ore populous Europe. What puritans want matters little as they have no hope of doing anything to a witch or wizard bar a small child.

 

Would the magical population of the Americas have been devastated by the Columbian exchange like the muggle one was? I don't remember what Pottermore says about this, if anything. Though IIRC the area of today's continental US had a relatively low population compared to Central America anyway.

 

It's not 11 schools. It's 11 well known prestigious schools, like Harvard or Oxford.

And many nations did not exist in the past or tended to be divided. India was rarely united, until recently. It could explain why they do not have a prestigious school.

China could be against Muggle-borns for all we know and only favors the rich 'pureblood' types of learning. It would fit the Chinese culture. For most of their history, who you were mattered much more than what you knew.

As for America, you could have the majority of witches and wizards be part of different native tribes, and thus they learn magic within their own group. One large school for only 'western' wizards makes sense.

I will admit I prefer Alexandra Quicks author's America over Rowling.

 

What?

It matters as far as hostile muggles limit the number of wizard-muggle marriages.

 

The History of Magic book that Harry was reading in Prisoner of Azkaban portrayed the witch trials as utterly futile. Even if the puritans knew wizards existed, they really knew nothing about them and could not do anything about them. Even wizards who were caught and bound could easily escape. The way it's depicted, there was really nothing that a little town in Colonial Massachusetts could have done if wizards decided to Imperius them, slaughter them wholesale, or come into their houses every day to put their left shoes on their right feet and their right shoes on their left feet.
That said, I highly doubt the History of Magic books are objective.

 

You know, funny enough, I actually wrote, but never published, what was basically a nearly 10,000 word essay that was a response to @Taure's topic on New Info from Pottermore he made a few months back (which I never finished when I realized it was getting way too bloated), which dealt with this issue and why there would be a Magical New Spain, based on both actual history as well as using evidence from Rowling's various responses on Pottermore and elsewhere.

Anyways, one of the possible conclusions I came up with, to summarize part of the essay that dealt with this topic as much as I can, was that the general average Native American wizarding population was possibly filled with mostly weak wizards and witches (at least compared to European Wizards and Witches that is) due to the lack of wands meaning that the magic they could generally accomplish was quite limited, and that the majority of the power of the Native American wizarding community was likely monopolized/centered around their most powerful wizards and witches, who I speculated may have even served as magical chiefs, Aztec Emperors, Mayan Priests, medicine men/women, etc, as they would be able to have much more fine control and be able to do quite a bit more with wandless magic. Anyways, I speculated that these wizards and witches would perhaps have effectively served as the line of defense for the Native American Wizardings, and most importantly, I speculated that they may even have also been the ones who would have acted as healers for the Wizarding Community (hence why I brought up medicine men) due to the likely complexity of the healing spells which may be needed, which meant they would have been needed to cure any muggle diseases that might effect the wizarding population.

The reason I bring that up is because I came to the conclusion that the Native American Wizarding Community most likely would have been caught completely off guard and been ill prepared to fight off said muggle diseases. Using a quote by JK Rowling on Pottermore, where she confirmed that wizards can in fact get muggle diseases but that said diseases are easily curable. After analyzing her quote a bit in the essay I wrote, I eventually came to the conclusion that in order to cure a muggle disease, it is likely that a magical healer would first need to know what exactly is they are trying to cure first and how to cure it. Mainly this is because, as has been established, there does not seem to be simply one single spell or magical fix it for all muggle diseases, hence why there are Wizarding Hospitals. So based on all that, and the likelihood that these diseases effecting them would have been ones they had never faced before, the Native American Magical community would likely have been put at a unfortunate complete loss, as they would have struggled to find out how to cure themselves as they were dying by massive numbers. It would have been a likely unique situation in terms of magical history where a entire wizarding community would have found themselves devastated by muggle diseases (I also speculated that this may also have served as a extra cause in the anti-muggle attitude that exists in the Americas). This further led me to the point that if these powerful Native American wizards and witches died for these same diseases themselves, it would have further hurt potential recovery for the Native American Wizarding population, perhaps even coming to the point that they would have been forced to rely on European Wizards and Witches for help.

So as I pointed above, I think that yes, the Colombian Exchange would have very likely have been completely devastating for the Native American Wizarding population, and that's all without bringing up what was suppose to be the other part of my essay, which if I had completed it, would have addressed the fact that Colombian Exchange would have likely also been culture devastating for the Native American Wizarding Community. By that I mean that the Native American Wizarding Muggleborn Population likely would have been slowly assimilated by the incoming European colonialism (mainly muggle European's, but also possibility European wizards and witches) into more European style of thought, thereby slowly usurping power from the remaining Native American Wizarding population not raised under the European yoke. Many Native American muggleborns in New Spain for example (I bring that up specifically as that was what the main point of the topic was centered around) would suddenly be raised under Spanish Christian beliefs and traditions, and may have possibly been taught in a European style (i.e. using wands) by any European Wizards and Witches which came along.

So yeah, that basically a short summary of an essay I never finished writing on the subject. But if you want an even shorter summary, the answer is very likely yes, the Colombian Exchange would most likely have been extremely devastating to the North American Wizarding Population.

 

The Norse were said to first reach America. With magic, it might be easier achieved once navigated. So low level trade and travel accross the pacific before the large scale expeditions are set. With the witch hunts and the spread of Christianity, I could se magical folk setting out for new territories.

 

Gotta say that there have will have been a number of magical schools/libraries etc. that have been destroyed due to some wars, calamities, infighting etc.

Some of these could be:-
Alexandria - Egypt
The Platonic Academy - Athens
Takshila, Pushpagiri or Nalanda - India
Daigakuro - Japan

Well it's kinda hard to believe the there haven't been any global conflicts between Magi prior to the rise of Grindelwald.....
Added to the fact that several wizards/witches have designs of dreams of world conquest, domination and the like, it's hard to believe that every single school or temple of magic has survived to date.

In reference to this...I find it hard to believe that the Vatican which condemn's magic and brands them as 'heretics' would host a school of magic but hey.....that's just my opinion.

Additionally it isn't out of the realm of possibility for there to be specialized institutions for higher learning of magic....for example an institute dedicated solely to the study of Transfiguration, Elemental Magic etc. etc. so schools like Hogwarts and Ilvermony would be like prep school and these institutes the actual colleges.