US after losing territory in War of 1812.

Gan

Gan

Banned
Inspired by ScottForschler's thread, I'd like to go in the opposite direction.

What if the US had lost significant territory to Britain during the War of 1812?

Scenario 1: US secedes some of the west territories. http://i.imgur.com/ZHEaGCk.jpg Red areas are those conquered by Britain.

Scenario 2: Britain annexes several northern states, perhaps with whatever territories. http://i.imgur.com/I5nLxIb.jpg

Scenario 3: The US is defeated catastrophically and loses vast amounts of territory. http://i.imgur.com/URVOVJy.jpg

Scenario 4: The US is annexed.

In scenarios 1-3, how does this affect US culturally and politically? Let's assume that it never gets the territories back, either because they fail to revolt against Britain, or they don't join the US again if they do.

In 4 how does this affect the Britain, the world, and the area when Canada is formed? If the former-US manages another revolution, what would be the nature of this reborn US? Can they manage a second revolution?

Also after the 4th scenario, assuming a second revolution either never happens or succeeds, how is the original Revolutionary War viewed by the world?
 

Bavarian Raven

Banned
Scenario one or two would be the most likely - and while increasing canada's power in the long term (assuming they hold onto the territory), would increase tensions between the two countries for two or three decades to come. Assuming nothing major happens in the following two or three decades, the land is Canada's until the present day... :)

Four won't happen. Period. Britain wouldnt want the states back and could not afford the cost of holding them down.
 

Hurrah!Praga!

While America should have lost more than it did in the Treaty of Ghent, these are unsustainable solutions in the long run. Why? - American demographics. America's population doubled every 20 years or so; there are simply not enough Canadians/British soldiers to hold back the Americans. Canada already got lucky once in the war of 1812. America's command system was a mess, and leadership wasn't anyway near what it needed to be to run a war. That and British help let the Canadians hold off a population of 7 million with a hundredth of that number. Long term, an America that wants badly enough to conquer part of Canada, or reconquer its own territories, can do so if its willing to accept British hostility.

What are some ramifications of that? Well, the dream of an American Canada doesn't die out; the odds are at least part of present-day Canada end up American. American colonization of the West may be delayed or cease altogether within present-day America's borders, though given how much the West and South could be separated from the conquered territories, this is by no means certain.
 

eliphas8

Option five for me would be New England secedes as an independent territory after a longer war, leading to a mix of option one and two along with a large indemnity on the part of the US.
 

Tripwire

Anything other than scenario 1 is ASB. Hell, the original thread where the US takes Canada is ASB, but this is even more ASB.

Besides, how in the world would New England go from little engagement in the war to being annexed? In OTL the British Army was able to go briefly inland and burn Washington D.C, but that's a far cry from being able to occupy entire states, much less ones that weren't even particularly adding to the war effort OTL.
 

Darth_Kiryan

Sucrose said:
Anything other than scenario 1 is ASB. Hell, the original thread where the US takes Canada is ASB, but this is even more ASB.

Besides, how in the world would New England go from little engagement in the war to being annexed? In OTL the British Army was able to go briefly inland and burn Washington D.C, but that's a far cry from being able to occupy entire states, much less ones that weren't even particularly adding to the war effort OTL.
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what about a successful secession in this ATL? not total annexation of territory, but still would have british soldiers fighting inland.
 

psychic

This might actually be bad for Canada i.e British North America in the long term.

The Americans are more likely to want revenge in the future and eventually they might just annex the whole thing rather then the territory they lost.
 

BlondieBC

Banned
Effects:


- USA will get serious about its army. Likely reforms of militia system. Much larger standing army.
- A External threat will likely suppress the slavery issue until the external threat is fixed.
- There will be a round two.
- So, if I had to bet, the USA does a round two before 1860's with the UK over some issue.
 

BWeber

Contributors to this thread might be interested in the alternate history chapters in my recent Neither Victor nor Vanquished: America In the War of 1812.

They include:

  • Imaging how the US might have avoided the capture of Washington.
  • Four scenarios based on the length of the Napoleonic Wars in Europe and variations in the quality of US and British generalship.
  • A worst case scenario that alters the role of the military in US politics.
  • An alternate history where the America and Britain avoid the War of 1812, and consequently the rise of Andrew Jackson.
These follow a chapter that looks at Henry Adams' repeated use of his "Had X only done Y" formula to assess alternate outcomes in many of the war battles, and how other historians have discussed these same key decisions.
 

Dathi THorfinnsson

As others have pointed out, my TL does it.

The Brits are not, in any way shape or form, going to annex any significant US population. Almost all the territories, sure. Northern mostly unpopulated bits of eg Maine and NewYork, sure. Probably Louisiana is doable, especially since so many of the population was French and Spanish, not American in 1812. In as little as a couple of years later, louisiana, missouri, most of illinois and indiana would be too heavily populated to take over. But in 1812, those lands are takeable, under the right circumstances.
 

ManintheField

Banned
Dathi THorfinnsson said:
As others have pointed out, my TL does it.

The Brits are not, in any way shape or form, going to annex any significant US population. Almost all the territories, sure. Northern mostly unpopulated bits of eg Maine and NewYork, sure. Probably Louisiana is doable, especially since so many of the population was French and Spanish, not American in 1812. In as little as a couple of years later, louisiana, missouri, most of illinois and indiana would be too heavily populated to take over. But in 1812, those lands are takeable, under the right circumstances.
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Nitpick: There weren't really any un-settled, un-populated parts of Northern New York at the time of the War of 1812.

Really, taking territory from an already incorporated state is complicated, especially this early in US history. Maine is probably the only serious possibility, and it's going to have serious political ramifications even then, although those are probably going to be limited to an earlier, more sour divorce of the province from Massachusetts and entry into the Union as a state.

You need a really, really clear and total victory over the US to do more. Imagine what it would take to get France to cede Brittany to someone.
 
Dan1988

Dan1988

Sucrose said:
Besides, how in the world would New England go from little engagement in the war to being annexed? In OTL the British Army was able to go briefly inland and burn Washington D.C, but that's a far cry from being able to occupy entire states, much less ones that weren't even particularly adding to the war effort OTL.
Click to expand...

Sometimes real history is ASB. During the War of 1812, Block Island served as a refueling point for the British. It could serve as a potential base if the British were willing enough to go for New England, maybe even a good chunk of Long Island as well.
 

Tripwire

Dan1988 said:
Sometimes real history is ASB. During the War of 1812, Block Island served as a refueling point for the British. It could serve as a potential base if the British were willing enough to go for New England, maybe even a good chunk of Long Island as well.
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It's the "going for" New England part that is ASB. The British do not have some sort of massive conscripted army, and weren't interested in the war enough to embark on a years-long campaign of taking cities to try and force the annexation of some significant territory anyway. Again, it's pretty ASB that the US could take Canada, and all of Canada's major settlements are within 50 miles of the US border. At this point places like New England and New York have a high enough population that it would almost be like proposing to occupy and annex Brittany from France.

Not to mention that if you're trying to win a war, invading the regions that are the least involved and which hold no special strategic significance doesn't make much sense, unless you want your army bogged down in fighting they could have otherwise avoided entirely.

OTL the British hit one of the areas it would be most sensible to hit, the capital, and then they left rather than trying to hold territory.
 

Hurrah!Praga!

Sucrose said:
It's the "going for" New England part that is ASB. The British do not have some sort of massive conscripted army, and weren't interested in the war enough to embark on a years-long campaign of taking cities to try and force the annexation of some significant territory anyway. Again, it's pretty ASB that the US could take Canada, and all of Canada's major settlements are within 50 miles of the US border. At this point places like New England and New York have a high enough population that it would almost be like proposing to occupy and annex Brittany from France.

Not to mention that if you're trying to win a war, invading the regions that are the least involved and which hold no special strategic significance doesn't make much sense, unless you want your army bogged down in fighting they could have otherwise avoided entirely.

OTL the British hit one of the areas it would be most sensible to hit, the capital, and then they left rather than trying to hold territory.
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I'd have to agree; Britain doesn't have the manpower and power projection necessary to subjugate major American population centers during the Napoleonic Wars. The sparsely populated western territories? Sure - even Detroit. But population centers are by and large outside of British reach. New Orleans, which was practically in the middle of nowhere outside of the Mississippi, managed to resist conquest, so New York and New England should be right out.
 

Tripwire

Hurrah!Praga! said:
I'd have to agree; Britain doesn't have the manpower and power projection necessary to subjugate major American population centers during the Napoleonic Wars. The sparsely populated western territories? Sure - even Detroit. But population centers are by and large outside of British reach. New Orleans, which was practically in the middle of nowhere outside of the Mississippi, managed to resist conquest, so New York and New England should be right out.
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Additionally the British see the war as a distraction and it serves little strategic interest for them. At most, they would have liked to have taken both sides of the Great Lakes. The British didn't even want to try and entirely block off US western expansion, as they thought that as long as the US kept expanding west, it would remain a sparsely populated raw-material exporting country, and would not develop into a manufacturing or naval rival.

The only thing the British were really, really interested in during the War of 1812 was protecting Canada. That was about it. If they could humiliate the US and dissuade them from ever messing with them again, that would be a bonus, but they weren't looking at somehow getting massive swaths of territory south of the Lakes, much less pieces of the actual US.
 
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