Post by eurofed on Apr 3, 2016 13:52:09 GMT
The main idea of this TL is to reverse the classic scenario of an ACW with British intervention to support the Confederacy and place it in a world where the USA includes Canada, the North, and the Upper South, while the British Empire owns the Deep South, the Caribbean, the Southwest, and Northern Mexico. ITTL the slaver colonies rebel against the British Empire when it attempts to enact abolition and Britain blunders into provoking the USA to support the CSA despite its dislike of slavery. I’m going to pick a Seven Years’ War PoD I may use again in the future for more ambitious pro-US (and pro-German) scenarios.
The PoD is a decisive Anglo-Prussian success in the Seven Years’ War due to a combination of greater military success of Prussia, a different alliance alignment of Russia, and a more aggressive British strategy and diplomatic stance at the peace table. ITTL the Prussians were able to achieve a series of rapid tactical and psychological victories against the French that largely discouraged them from active military involvement in Europe. As a consequence, the French mostly focused on the British for the rest of the war and Prussia was able to focus its military resources near-exclusively on the Austrians and their Saxon allies that suffered a series of crushing defeats.
The health of Empress Elizabeth of Russia declined faster than OTL, leading to her early death in the late 1750s, before any real Russian involvement in the war. Pro-Prussian Tsar Peter III took the throne and aligned Russia on the side of Prussia and Britain. Besides taking the field against the Austrians, he started a war against Poland and prepared for one against Denmark (in order to bring Schleswig-Holstein under his control as duke of Holstein-Gottorp). Peter was assassinated in a palace coup after a couple years of reign due to growing opposition to his domestic policies - his foreign policy was perceived as much less unpatriotic than OTL, so he was able to reign longer. His wife Catherine II took the throne, made peace with Austria and France, and dropped plans for a war against Denmark. She continued the conflict with Poland to a victorious conclusion.
Sweden was lured by Russia's withdrawal from the war and a temporary military recovery of Austria to attack Prussia. However Prussia quickly recovered and was able to inflict a decisive defeat on the Austrians and Swedes. The war ended with a decisive victory of Britain in North America and India, of Prussia in Central Europe, and of Russia in Poland. At the peace table, Prussia annexed Saxony, Bohemia-Moravia, Swedish Pomerania, and Royal Prussia. Russia got the equivalent of the First and Second Russian Partitions from Poland. Britain got New France, Florida, Cuba, and Santo Domingo. France ceded Louisiana to Spain as a compensation for its losses, but this was later reversed during the Napoleonic Wars. The war led to a substantial shift of the balance of power between Austria and Prussia, entrenching Austro-Prussian dualism in Germany.
Political changes related to colonial expansion in the Caribbean caused a group of fairly talented British colonial statesmen to be nominated governors of several Southern and Caribbean colonies: e.g. Guy Carleton became governor of South Carolina. They persuaded the British Parliament to give a lenient treatment to the Southern and Caribbean colonies, so South Carolina, Georgia, the Floridas, Cuba, Santo Domingo, and Jamaica remained mostly content with the colonial status quo. They were much less successful with North Carolina due to the effects of the War of the Regulation, so the political situation in NC turned out much like OTL.
The opposite happened in Quebec and Nova Scotia. The British government picked much less talented and tolerant governors for these colonies who antagonized them. Because of the unrest in the Francophone colonies, the British Parliament approved a harsh version of the Quebec Act as part of the Intolerable Acts that imposed various legal penalties on the Quebecois. It only united Labrador with Quebec, while the Hudson Bay's Company got the Indian Reserve and Upper Canada.
As a result, Patriotic unrest in Quebec, Nova Scotia, New England, and the Mid-Atlantic colonies kept growing and they joined the American Revolution, while the Deep South and Caribbean colonies remained largely apathetic. In Europe, the defeated powers’ wish for a rematch of the Seven Years' War, a dispute about the succession of Bavaria, and Poland’s attempt to enact domestic reforms and defend its independence against Russia caused an expansion of the ARW conflict to Europe with pretty much the same alliance alignments of the last conflict. However blunders of British diplomacy caused a partial estrangement of Britain from Prussia and Russia. France, Austria, and Poland suffered a defeat in Europe, but the French and the Spaniards were able to sign a separate peace deal that left them free to support the American revolutionaries.
The ARW unfolded much the same way as OTL, except Quebec and Nova Scotia were solid supporters of the Patriots, while the revolutionaries failed to conquer the Deep South and Caribbean colonies or stir them up to their cause. In the end, the 13 colonies (Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Nova Scotia, Pennsylvania, Quebec, Rhode Island, Virginia) won their independence. British North America kept Newfoundland, South Carolina, Georgia, the Floridas, Cuba, Santo Domingo, Jamaica, and the Bahamas.
The USA got Upper Canada, and the territory between the Mississippi and the Appalachian mountains was divided between the USA and the UK at the 35° Parallel North (close to the southern border of Tennessee). Loyalists mostly fled to BNA, substantially reinforcing its political bond with the mother country. The ARW established a considerable amount of fire-forged friendship, trust, and political solidarity between French-speaking and English-speaking colonists, despite religious prejudices and cultural differences.
Poland disappeared from the map, as Russia annexed most of its remaining territory while Prussia got the equivalent of the Second and Third Prussian Partitions. France negotiated a status quo ante deal, while Austria got a lenient peace which allowed it to trade Old Bavaria for the Southern Netherlands between the Habsburg and the Wittelsbach. This happened because Prussia was more interested in further territorial expansion in northern Germany than in grabbing more land from the Habsburg. To accomplish the former it wanted Austrian cooperation to an extensive territorial reform of the HRE which both powers stood to gain from.
Combined Austrian and Prussian pressure ensured the enactment of an extensive mediatization and secularization reform that redrew and drastically simplified the map of the HRE. Germany was essentially consolidated in a few large states, in a way largely similar to the 1815 German Confederation except Prussia had Saxony and Bohemia-Moravia, Austria had Bavaria, and the Southern Netherlands were united to Palatinate.
After the reform, the Habsburg owned Old Bavaria, Franconia, German Austria, Tyrol, and Kustenland, as well as their non-HRE territories in Italy and the Balkans. The Hohenzollern had Brandenburg, Pomerania, Electoral Saxony, Bohemia-Moravia, Westphalia, and Rhineland, as well as Royal Prussia, Ducal Prussia, and their 1795 Polish territories outside the HRE. The Wittelsbach owned the Spanish Netherlands and Palatinate as the state of Burgundy. The Hanover kept their Electorate and ruled as constitutional monarchs in Britain. The Wettin had lost Electoral Saxony in the Seven Years' War, but they were allowed to consolidate the Saxon Duchies in Thuringia into a new state of theirs.
The other notable German states in this new settlement included Oldenburg, Mecklenburg, Schleswig-Holstein, Baden, Wurttemberg, Hesse, Nassau, and the free Imperial cities of Hamburg, Bremen, and Frankfurt. A few other minor states continued to exist as well, but their importance was negligible. The constitution of the HRE was reformed to largely resemble the one of the 1815 German Confederation. The various German states got a variable number of votes in the unitary Reichstag according to their size. The Imperial crown stayed elective, but the Electoral votes were redistributed between the eight most important states (Austria, Prussia, Burgundy, Hanover, Thuringia, Baden, Wurttemberg, and Hesse). Prussia proper and Schleswig became HRE territories. Austro-Prussian dualism made it impossible for the centralization reform of the HRE to go beyond a confederal level.
18th century integration of Bohemia-Moravia in the more centralized and efficient Prussian state prevented the Czech national awakening from happening and caused the area to become largely German-speaking. The Czech became a regional minority within the German nation much like the Sorbs. Much the same way, West Prussia and Upper Silesia became majority German as a consequence of a different partition of Poland.
Russia spent the rest of the 18th century up to the French Revolution engaged in a series of victorious wars against the Ottoman Empire that allowed it to gain Southern Ukraine, Crimea, Yedisan, Budjak, and Moldavia. Austria largely gave up contesting the rise to power of Prussia after its 1770s defeat, getting content with the dualist status quo in Germany. It re-oriented its territorial ambitions on Italy and the Balkans. It exploited the engagement of the Ottomans against Russia to attack Turkey and conquer central Serbia and Wallachia.
The inefficiencies of the Articles of Confederation soon drove the evolution of the USA into a federal union. The US Constitution was mostly similar to OTL, except for a few differences due to the presence of the French-speaking colonies and the lesser number of southern states that mostly strengthened the Federalists and weakened pro-slavery interests. These differences included: the Constitution forbade the federal government to establish an official religion or language or to interfere in the "domestic institutions" (read civil law in French-speaking states) of the states (harmless concessions to make the Quebecois feel secure in the USA); the Bill of Rights included Madison's proposed amendment ("No state shall violate the equal rights of conscience, or the freedom of the press, or the trial by jury in criminal cases.") and banned "excessive" punishments (a wish for additional checks on possible abuses of federal and states' powers); the Congress was empowered to give economic subsidies (stronger Federalists got away with more of Hamilton's economic ideas); the President got a line-item veto for appropriations (a balance to the latter); the Constitution banned Atlantic slave trade and did not include any Fugitive Slave Clause or Three-Fifths Compromise (weaker slaveholding states); judicial review had explicit sanction (stronger Federalists).
The USA followed an evolutionary path quite similar to OTL, except it became considerably more Federalist and progressive. Slavery was banned in the Western territories by the federal government soon after its establishment and gradually abolished by the states in the 1790s-1800s. Most slaves were sold into the BNA and an equivalent of the 13th Amendment was ratified soon afterwards. There was substantial political support for generous federal and state investment into internal improvements (first canals and roads, later railroads). As a result, America industrialized and settled its western territories more or less a decade earlier than OTL, and the Canadian region got significantly more population and economic development. British North America developed into a planter slaveocracy much like OTL; English-speaking and Spanish-speaking colonists largely merged together, as did Loyalist settlers and the Civilized Tribes. The main exception to the latter were the Seminoles that got into trouble with white settlers and colonial authorities because of their antislavery attitudes and were brutally crushed.
The PoD is a decisive Anglo-Prussian success in the Seven Years’ War due to a combination of greater military success of Prussia, a different alliance alignment of Russia, and a more aggressive British strategy and diplomatic stance at the peace table. ITTL the Prussians were able to achieve a series of rapid tactical and psychological victories against the French that largely discouraged them from active military involvement in Europe. As a consequence, the French mostly focused on the British for the rest of the war and Prussia was able to focus its military resources near-exclusively on the Austrians and their Saxon allies that suffered a series of crushing defeats.
The health of Empress Elizabeth of Russia declined faster than OTL, leading to her early death in the late 1750s, before any real Russian involvement in the war. Pro-Prussian Tsar Peter III took the throne and aligned Russia on the side of Prussia and Britain. Besides taking the field against the Austrians, he started a war against Poland and prepared for one against Denmark (in order to bring Schleswig-Holstein under his control as duke of Holstein-Gottorp). Peter was assassinated in a palace coup after a couple years of reign due to growing opposition to his domestic policies - his foreign policy was perceived as much less unpatriotic than OTL, so he was able to reign longer. His wife Catherine II took the throne, made peace with Austria and France, and dropped plans for a war against Denmark. She continued the conflict with Poland to a victorious conclusion.
Sweden was lured by Russia's withdrawal from the war and a temporary military recovery of Austria to attack Prussia. However Prussia quickly recovered and was able to inflict a decisive defeat on the Austrians and Swedes. The war ended with a decisive victory of Britain in North America and India, of Prussia in Central Europe, and of Russia in Poland. At the peace table, Prussia annexed Saxony, Bohemia-Moravia, Swedish Pomerania, and Royal Prussia. Russia got the equivalent of the First and Second Russian Partitions from Poland. Britain got New France, Florida, Cuba, and Santo Domingo. France ceded Louisiana to Spain as a compensation for its losses, but this was later reversed during the Napoleonic Wars. The war led to a substantial shift of the balance of power between Austria and Prussia, entrenching Austro-Prussian dualism in Germany.
Political changes related to colonial expansion in the Caribbean caused a group of fairly talented British colonial statesmen to be nominated governors of several Southern and Caribbean colonies: e.g. Guy Carleton became governor of South Carolina. They persuaded the British Parliament to give a lenient treatment to the Southern and Caribbean colonies, so South Carolina, Georgia, the Floridas, Cuba, Santo Domingo, and Jamaica remained mostly content with the colonial status quo. They were much less successful with North Carolina due to the effects of the War of the Regulation, so the political situation in NC turned out much like OTL.
The opposite happened in Quebec and Nova Scotia. The British government picked much less talented and tolerant governors for these colonies who antagonized them. Because of the unrest in the Francophone colonies, the British Parliament approved a harsh version of the Quebec Act as part of the Intolerable Acts that imposed various legal penalties on the Quebecois. It only united Labrador with Quebec, while the Hudson Bay's Company got the Indian Reserve and Upper Canada.
As a result, Patriotic unrest in Quebec, Nova Scotia, New England, and the Mid-Atlantic colonies kept growing and they joined the American Revolution, while the Deep South and Caribbean colonies remained largely apathetic. In Europe, the defeated powers’ wish for a rematch of the Seven Years' War, a dispute about the succession of Bavaria, and Poland’s attempt to enact domestic reforms and defend its independence against Russia caused an expansion of the ARW conflict to Europe with pretty much the same alliance alignments of the last conflict. However blunders of British diplomacy caused a partial estrangement of Britain from Prussia and Russia. France, Austria, and Poland suffered a defeat in Europe, but the French and the Spaniards were able to sign a separate peace deal that left them free to support the American revolutionaries.
The ARW unfolded much the same way as OTL, except Quebec and Nova Scotia were solid supporters of the Patriots, while the revolutionaries failed to conquer the Deep South and Caribbean colonies or stir them up to their cause. In the end, the 13 colonies (Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Nova Scotia, Pennsylvania, Quebec, Rhode Island, Virginia) won their independence. British North America kept Newfoundland, South Carolina, Georgia, the Floridas, Cuba, Santo Domingo, Jamaica, and the Bahamas.
The USA got Upper Canada, and the territory between the Mississippi and the Appalachian mountains was divided between the USA and the UK at the 35° Parallel North (close to the southern border of Tennessee). Loyalists mostly fled to BNA, substantially reinforcing its political bond with the mother country. The ARW established a considerable amount of fire-forged friendship, trust, and political solidarity between French-speaking and English-speaking colonists, despite religious prejudices and cultural differences.
Poland disappeared from the map, as Russia annexed most of its remaining territory while Prussia got the equivalent of the Second and Third Prussian Partitions. France negotiated a status quo ante deal, while Austria got a lenient peace which allowed it to trade Old Bavaria for the Southern Netherlands between the Habsburg and the Wittelsbach. This happened because Prussia was more interested in further territorial expansion in northern Germany than in grabbing more land from the Habsburg. To accomplish the former it wanted Austrian cooperation to an extensive territorial reform of the HRE which both powers stood to gain from.
Combined Austrian and Prussian pressure ensured the enactment of an extensive mediatization and secularization reform that redrew and drastically simplified the map of the HRE. Germany was essentially consolidated in a few large states, in a way largely similar to the 1815 German Confederation except Prussia had Saxony and Bohemia-Moravia, Austria had Bavaria, and the Southern Netherlands were united to Palatinate.
After the reform, the Habsburg owned Old Bavaria, Franconia, German Austria, Tyrol, and Kustenland, as well as their non-HRE territories in Italy and the Balkans. The Hohenzollern had Brandenburg, Pomerania, Electoral Saxony, Bohemia-Moravia, Westphalia, and Rhineland, as well as Royal Prussia, Ducal Prussia, and their 1795 Polish territories outside the HRE. The Wittelsbach owned the Spanish Netherlands and Palatinate as the state of Burgundy. The Hanover kept their Electorate and ruled as constitutional monarchs in Britain. The Wettin had lost Electoral Saxony in the Seven Years' War, but they were allowed to consolidate the Saxon Duchies in Thuringia into a new state of theirs.
The other notable German states in this new settlement included Oldenburg, Mecklenburg, Schleswig-Holstein, Baden, Wurttemberg, Hesse, Nassau, and the free Imperial cities of Hamburg, Bremen, and Frankfurt. A few other minor states continued to exist as well, but their importance was negligible. The constitution of the HRE was reformed to largely resemble the one of the 1815 German Confederation. The various German states got a variable number of votes in the unitary Reichstag according to their size. The Imperial crown stayed elective, but the Electoral votes were redistributed between the eight most important states (Austria, Prussia, Burgundy, Hanover, Thuringia, Baden, Wurttemberg, and Hesse). Prussia proper and Schleswig became HRE territories. Austro-Prussian dualism made it impossible for the centralization reform of the HRE to go beyond a confederal level.
18th century integration of Bohemia-Moravia in the more centralized and efficient Prussian state prevented the Czech national awakening from happening and caused the area to become largely German-speaking. The Czech became a regional minority within the German nation much like the Sorbs. Much the same way, West Prussia and Upper Silesia became majority German as a consequence of a different partition of Poland.
Russia spent the rest of the 18th century up to the French Revolution engaged in a series of victorious wars against the Ottoman Empire that allowed it to gain Southern Ukraine, Crimea, Yedisan, Budjak, and Moldavia. Austria largely gave up contesting the rise to power of Prussia after its 1770s defeat, getting content with the dualist status quo in Germany. It re-oriented its territorial ambitions on Italy and the Balkans. It exploited the engagement of the Ottomans against Russia to attack Turkey and conquer central Serbia and Wallachia.
The inefficiencies of the Articles of Confederation soon drove the evolution of the USA into a federal union. The US Constitution was mostly similar to OTL, except for a few differences due to the presence of the French-speaking colonies and the lesser number of southern states that mostly strengthened the Federalists and weakened pro-slavery interests. These differences included: the Constitution forbade the federal government to establish an official religion or language or to interfere in the "domestic institutions" (read civil law in French-speaking states) of the states (harmless concessions to make the Quebecois feel secure in the USA); the Bill of Rights included Madison's proposed amendment ("No state shall violate the equal rights of conscience, or the freedom of the press, or the trial by jury in criminal cases.") and banned "excessive" punishments (a wish for additional checks on possible abuses of federal and states' powers); the Congress was empowered to give economic subsidies (stronger Federalists got away with more of Hamilton's economic ideas); the President got a line-item veto for appropriations (a balance to the latter); the Constitution banned Atlantic slave trade and did not include any Fugitive Slave Clause or Three-Fifths Compromise (weaker slaveholding states); judicial review had explicit sanction (stronger Federalists).
The USA followed an evolutionary path quite similar to OTL, except it became considerably more Federalist and progressive. Slavery was banned in the Western territories by the federal government soon after its establishment and gradually abolished by the states in the 1790s-1800s. Most slaves were sold into the BNA and an equivalent of the 13th Amendment was ratified soon afterwards. There was substantial political support for generous federal and state investment into internal improvements (first canals and roads, later railroads). As a result, America industrialized and settled its western territories more or less a decade earlier than OTL, and the Canadian region got significantly more population and economic development. British North America developed into a planter slaveocracy much like OTL; English-speaking and Spanish-speaking colonists largely merged together, as did Loyalist settlers and the Civilized Tribes. The main exception to the latter were the Seminoles that got into trouble with white settlers and colonial authorities because of their antislavery attitudes and were brutally crushed.
