Which according to your own view, would have stuck together like glue, having the same culture.
No, not at all. My argument is that either religious or cultural commonality across geography tends to be a requisite for state formation, it is not the only one that is needed however.
Ahem. Let's see, from memory: Switzerland, United Kingdom, South Africa, Malaysia, India....
The United Kingdom was founded as a Protestant power. When they tried to incorporate Catholic Ireland into the mix it had to be done down the barrell of a gun.
South Africa was founded as a state down the barrell of a gun by the British. That it didn't split up afterwards isn't evidence that all the ethnic groups would have voluntarily come together without force.
Singapore and Malaysia split from each other due to Malay-Chinese division.
India, in case you didn't know, had the most violent and bloody partition along religious lines in world history.
Switzerland is the only one you've got a case for, and this was a strictly confederate system where all the power was at the local level, and where each individual canton would not have been a viable state on its own. Quebec is.
Typically because the reling elite screwed up bad.
This seems like a pretty poor explanation for the sheer number of events that happened. And typically, the "screw ups" of the ruling elite were because the ruling elite also shared the nationalist sentiment of the masses. The basic problem is that people inevitably think of the other group as different, and then suffer from group biases.
This is the age where constitutional guarantees were being *invented*.
Indeed, so what motivation would the Quebecois have to trust these guarantees against a people that have called them "papists" and "slaves, and regularly tried to push them off land in the Ohio country? Particularly when the system of government they've been used to was arbitrary monarchy.
Counterexample: the Catholic minorities in the 13 Colonies had lived undisturbed for a fairly long time, and the Patriots showed no sign of moving to kick them out (the way they did with Loyalists).
I actually think the linguistic cultural division is a bigger one than the religious split. But the worry is not about being kicked out (they're too numerous for that to happen) but in being forced to having to accept English law and possibly an established church, either from central authority, or from immigration from the South changing the voting demographics in Quebec.
To loot the possessions of your exiled neighbor is hardly a commendable behavior, but in a reversed position, French colonists would have done the same.
Yes, I agree the French would have done the same! That's the sort of division I'm talking about!
Following this line of reasoning, it is a miracle that states like the USA and Switzerland arose at all, and anything beyond the city-state level ever formed, since particularism must always triumph.
Switzerland was tiny cantons that stuck to their own affairs with no real power at the central level for centuries, mainly because they were inviable states on their own. The USA did not exactly have an easy time forming and staying together. It certainly had pretty major divisions over handing over tax to fund infrastructure some of them did not have a need for, but at least it had a common culture and language to understand each other.
If you are arguing that Quebec could come into an extremely loose arrangement similar to the old Swiss Confederacy or the Articles of Confederation, then that's something I could accept. But they wouldn't accept anything more centralised than that, even if they were judged to have failed.
What use have nation-states ? Quick, let's go back to Middle-Ages Communes, since decentralization always works so much better. One wonders why mankind ever bothered to evolve societies more complex than the tribe.
Largely because one King built an army and forced everyone else to be in the same state. Or in the latter part of history, because people that spoke the same language felt part of a common community.
In pretty much all cases, French settlers in an American Canada would get first cut of settlement in the region above the Great Lakes, and they can leverage their political weight as a regional block into getting investment for the development of the Canadian states.
I'm talking about West of the lakes so they don't get encircled. Can you really imagine the English states accepting settlement limited below the 49th parallel out to the Pacific? Would they accept limits on movements between states so Quebec isn't threatened by Anglo immigration? Why would they prefer to be a small power having to lobby for investment rather than deciding all policy for themselves? "Investment" in this time generally means railways and canals - what need would Quebec have for that given their already navigable river and lake systems?
European colonial powers, one of them they just finished fighting off, of course.
Quebec would know the USA would fight to stop a colonial power trying to reestablish itself to the North. That's true with or without its independence.
One wonders how the USA have missed so far to descend into a free-for-all civil war between the various ethnic and religious communities, then, and why the only one they had was fought about another kind of difference entirely.
Firstly, because those minorities quickly assimilated to Anglo language and culture. Secondly, the ethnic and religious communities did not have contiguous geographic area like Quebec had. The main people in US territory that did were the Native Americans, who got pushed aside and put in reserves. Another example is the Anglos in Mexico, who pretty quickly pushed for separation.
Of course, post-state formation, it's harder for a viable minority state to occur, because it has to overcome status quo bias, and the threat of force from the central authority, but we don't have those problems here. If Quebec is conquered by the USA by force, and then is kept in the union for 50 years, I could accept they then might have reluctance to leave - but there would certainly be constant squabbling about it, like in Canada.
Anyway, I'm starting to seriously doubt this discussion would go to a productive end, given how much radically our opinions on the supposedly irresistible might of particularism diverge. I cannot share your apparent ardent belief in all-powerful Balkanization for a moment, which I realize goes beyond the specific historic case of early North American colonies.
I'm not arguing for Balkanization - I'm arguing for the absence of Yugoslavisation in the first place. You seem to be under the belief that the North American colonies were naturally unified and it takes powerful forces to split them up. In fact, the reverse is true. In OTL it took a hell of a lot of effort to bring them together above all the obstacles. I simply don't believe those bringing together forces are larger than the obstacles in the Quebec case.
Fair enough if you don't think either of us has much to add to the discussion that hasn't already been said. Enjoyed debating with you.
