Would Napoleon be interested in restoring French control of Quebec?
L’Aigle Triomphant: A Napoleonic Victory TL
- Thread starter KingSweden24
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He's probably entertaining the thought but I doubt he has the withal to see it become reality.
A more interesting thought for me is whether Nappy tried to set up a settler colony in somewhere like Australia, New Zealand or Patagonia, all of which had some sort of French interest IOTL (even if the latter was just some weird dude who tried to make himself King of Patagonia).
Britain for now has the ships to stop any settler colony like that. Napoleon has more luck in North Africa.
A Year Without Summer
A Year Without Summer
The agricultural hardships of 1816 are, for the most part, long-forgotten to general history but at the time were a severe crisis that tested the post-Aix order. [1] Historians now trace the climatic anomaly to the eruption of Mount Tambora in the British East Indies the previous April (along with a number of smaller previous eruptions), thrusting a cloud of ash and dust into the atmosphere that dimmed the sun and dramatically cooled the Northern Hemisphere for much of the following year, not only preventing a proper summer growing season but also ashy snow and strange fogs. Rainfall was abnormally higher, and massive floods - particularly on the Rhine - wiped out entire farms and towns, and the clammy, cold conditions made conditions ripe for particularly severe typhus epidemics, which struck the damp British Isles disproportionately hard. Coming at the tail end of several years of lean crops, food shortages erupted across much of Europe, triggering an important demographic episode as the worst famine to strike the continent in the 19th-century occurred.
While contemporary art captured the dismal time eloquently, the impact of the Year Without Summer was mostly on helping supercharge two important population shifts that would accelerate and compound in the Napoleonic world. The first was a general move to the cities. With farms struggling, young men and women - particularly those not born first - migrated to cities that early on could not absorb them that quickly. Work was scarce, as was food, and violent crime skyrocketed, as did prostitution and burglaries. In Cologne, food riots forced city leaders to flee under cover of night; in Warsaw, curfews were imposed to prevent unrest. But though 1816 was an hour of misery, these new arrivals to the cities triggered a wave of urbanization across west-central Europe, particularly in France, that would help jumpstart the continental Industrial Revolution. The other major change triggered was a major rise in emigration, either to the Americas, or in the case of the Dutch fleeing some of Europe's most impoverished hinterland [2] to the Cape. The postwar emigration boom, as birth rates jumped and Europe's population grew enormously, can be traced back to the strange summer of 1816. (Of course, many emigres found their way to a North America experiencing the same bizarre climatic episode, but those who arrived in Brazil saw no such events and Rio de Janeiro thus for many years earned a reputation for sunshine and plentiful land that the United States did not).
In addition to the demographic and economic changes triggered by 1816, it also helped introduce another one - state interventionism. In France, Napoleon ordered tangible aid be made to those without food or work, inaugurating a Bureau des Pauvres which worked to alleviate cases of dire poverty, whether it be coordinating food shipments throughout the country or dispatching the unemployed to build housing on the periphery of the cities for new residents. Compared to modern social welfare schemes, the Bureau des Pauvres was fairly threadbare in structure and in assistance, but by the standards of the day, it was a revolutionary innovation and another step on the path of revolutionizing the relationship between government and citizen already underway in France and, soon enough, the rest of Europe...
[1] I'll preface this, though, that Europe economically and demographically is much better off ITTL without all the fighting between 1808 and 1814 that bled the continent IOTL, especially France. So the post-Napoleonic calamity that struck an exhausted continent is nowhere near as severe.
[2] The post-Napoleonic Netherlands outside of Amsterdam/Rotterdam were some of the poorest parts of Europe
Nice chapter, may France and all of Europe get through this difficult time. Nice thing Napoleon did, basically starting proto-Social Services. Can't wait for the next chapter.
Decent chance that classical liberalism as we know it only really exists in the UK as opposed to being the dominant ideology for the 19th Century.
Thanks!
Napoleon's a hard person to pin down by the standards of modern ideology - I'd say he lands somewhere around a classical liberal by 19th century standards and that still puts him way to the left of the Holy Alliance that defeated him in 1815. I would personally say he's a post-revolutionary developmentalist, FWIW, which makes him practically moderate by 1800 France standards.
Really what we're likely to see here is a considerable acceleration of certain 19th century trends, even if popular democracy is not one of them.
Is it just the Portuguese that are heading to Brazil or are other Europeans going there too? Same question applies with the Dutch and the Cape Colony.
All of Europe is pretty meh, Ireland and England have it worst
Bit of both, though the Dutch flow to the Cape is much more proportionately ethnic than that to Brazil
The bureau des pauvres might have truly cemented the Bonaparte dynasty on the french throne for good in the eyes of the peoples.
When the crisis will be over Napoleon will be busy whit urban work to cope with the influx of peoples in cities. A lot of them are unsanitary and it will put a lot of peoples to work too as well as leaving his mark on the french empire and erase the last scars of revolution and wars.
When the crisis will be over Napoleon will be busy whit urban work to cope with the influx of peoples in cities. A lot of them are unsanitary and it will put a lot of peoples to work too as well as leaving his mark on the french empire and erase the last scars of revolution and wars.
I can't remember if France has any colonies where they could settle people.
I don't know, maybe north africa, the piracy in the mediteranean won't be tolerated for much longer and with french better demographic it might be enought to frenchify the region.
I really don't know where France would get a settler colonies at this point.
Very good chapter, hopefully France can continue growing in population the same way Germany and Britain did and avoid the demographic stagnation it went through otl, also, I'm sure Nappy making what's essentially the first social services will be ruthlessly exploited by his own propaganda.
Also, with Brazil getting it's first share of immigrants coming in, I can imagine a lot of them coming not only from Iberia, but also Catholic Germany, Austrian empire (especially Hungarians and Croats) as well as Poles and Baltics fleeing Russian persecution, probably Jews too since Pedro is already being groomed for taking ownership (or even doing things in his father's place given João's indecisive nature) and despite making Catholicism the official religion of Brazil, the first official synagogue was open during his reign as well as the fact he didn't have any sort of animosity against them, we could see Brazil actually have a significant Jewish population.
Also, with Brazil getting it's first share of immigrants coming in, I can imagine a lot of them coming not only from Iberia, but also Catholic Germany, Austrian empire (especially Hungarians and Croats) as well as Poles and Baltics fleeing Russian persecution, probably Jews too since Pedro is already being groomed for taking ownership (or even doing things in his father's place given João's indecisive nature) and despite making Catholicism the official religion of Brazil, the first official synagogue was open during his reign as well as the fact he didn't have any sort of animosity against them, we could see Brazil actually have a significant Jewish population.