Dominion of Southern America - Updated July 1, 2018

[eschaton]

I disagree somewhat with this. I don't think that Australia nor South Africa offer better climates than those available in the DSA (I will concede New Zealand).

Well, I wasn't thinking of Australia as a whole, only the inhabitable regions (no one worth mentioning settled in the Great Desert after all). I'd say coastal New South Wales and Victoria are far superior in climate compared to most of the DSA. Even the warmer cities in Australia (Perth, Brisbane) still don't get as warm as cities in the U.S. South. Plus, winters are much colder in the DSA.

But recall that Portugal still has a colonial holding on South America for those who want to keep their nationality, and while Balkanized, some of those Brazilian splinter nations will be attractive to Portuguese.

The land still held by Portugal is the crappiest, in terms of appeal to settlers though, no?

Maybe, but I doubt people will be thinking "Gee, I should go there since I'll get less sick than other people!"

I was thinking more along the lines of a government official thinking "Hey, these Sicilians and Greeks don't seem to get sick as often as the Welsh, maybe we should send someone to the continent to promote our province."

You lost me on this one - you saying that the English are more or less likely to come to North America ITTL?

I'm saying that as with OTL, the British won't migrate abroad to become factory workers. If they're dirt poor, and want to work in a factory, they can find one right at home. If they migrate, it will be for religious reasons, or political ones, or because they want to homestead or open a factory of their own. Hell, it could even be simple wanderlust. The main thing though is they won't be primarily attracted by industrial jobs in the DSA - Britain will almost certainly be more industrialized, and the capitalist class in the DSA, if they want to use immigrant labor to save money, will turn to some culturally alien immigrants they can pit against the native born.

 

[Falastur]

So are you postulating that the development of tea in North America would be faster or slower?

Faster. I reckon the clipper races will happen as OTL, unless you start playing around with events in India relating to tea, and in this respect nothing will really change. However the major difference is, with the DSA as British property from the beginning, tea planters will have spotted it as prime land from the very outset, whereas under the US government it was a more risky venture OTL due to foreign export complications, the possibility of hostility by the government or the locals, the higher set-up costs and possibility for American platers to receive favourable treatment in a protectionist economy in the south and have the British planters face tariffs and fees all over the place designed to encourage the American businesses to out-compete the British ones - this was the very way that economics worked under the old protectionist system (and indeed elements can still be seen these days). All in all, tea plantations could sprout up much earlier - long before the Clipper Races - entirely due to the fact that the above reasons don't exist, so there's little risk to starting up a tea plantation in the DSA.

Of course, re: what a commenter said a few comments earlier about southern tea not tasting as nice, I doubt that will change at all. It could indeed make for an interesting story indeed, with DSA tea able to reach Europe quickly and for a reduced price - and able to sell direct to DSA markets, too, who presumably will be just as eager buyers as British markets - but with the Indian clippers being slower, more expensive, but a better-tasting flavour. An early example of cheap and low-quality v expensive and high-quality, only for once where both products are British (in Europe from the mid-18th century to about this era as an end-point, European markets had tended to see a contrast between locally-produced but shoddy goods, and expensive, well-made British designs). It could produce some interesting, if minor, characteristics of DSA markets. If the tea-sellers realise that their income comes from selling low-grade tea en masse, they could potentially pioneer ways of producing and selling as much as possible for as low as possible, where in other parts of the Empire they focus on techniques for refining quality - these attitudes could spill over to other industries over time. Or maybe I'm over-exaggerating.

 

[lloyd007]

I think you are both right. Climate is a factor but not the only factor that will drive patterns of immigration. One big butterfly-able factor is that many immigrants flock to a location where they know one or more person who has 'made it'. So wherever your cousin made a decent living farming or trading, that's the place that is most likely to attract you.

One thing that very well might spur absolutely stupid gargantuan amounts of immigration to the USA TTL is the fact that they have claim to the entire sweep of the most arable land of the Great Plains as well as all those fishing areas on both the Atlantic and Pacific Coasts. This US also has, by my calculation, only slightly less land under its control than Russia. Now granted much of that is tundra or cold forest but I can see a metric ton of people immigrating from Europe, China, and everywhere to own some of that land as they did to a good extent OTL only TTL there is a whole whole lot more arable land that can be given away (and yes the US might have less or equal arable land total but much of the land east of the Mississippi was already occupied).

I can see TTL's Canadian area having triple the population or more of OTL Canada. I also don't see as much of a nativist movement happening if the govn't encourages immigrants to move west (or east in the case of Asian immigrants) simply because the govn't will encourage settlement of the interior.

The mythos of the US as a place to escape the horrors/drudgeries/claustrophobia of Europe or East Asia will be an order of magnitude larger TTL imo and considering how big it was OTL that's saying a lot...

 

[Glen]

The gold rushes on the Pacific Coast of North America had interesting and sometimes contradictory effects on the formation of the first US states on the Pacific. From the beginning of US dominance in the region, the Northwest Company had been the largest force shaping the region, with their virtual monopoly on the fur trade. However, slowly but surely settlers, mainly farmers, did arrive in the region even before the Oregon Gold Rush. The number of farmers increased in the southern portions of the Oregon Territory, spurred by the numbers of miners arriving in the north of the Oregon. While the Northwest Company had traditionally strove to keep mining out of the region, the resourceful company quickly adapted to the situation and became the main supplier of the miners, importing goods and purchasing produce from the settlers to the south of Gray's Island, the Northwest Company's headquarters in the Pacific Northwest. When the farmers to the south agitated for statehood, they did not want the rowdy miners and trappers of the north as part of the new state. Instead they sought to have all the Oregon Territory south of the 48th parallel, west of the continental divide, and north of the 40th parallel. The Northwest Company was more than happy to support the farmers in having the north excluded, as this was seen as useful for maintaining their power there.

However, to the south of the Oregon in American California, the later California Gold Rush had a very different impact. First, American California lacked a large presence like the Northwest Company. And second, there had been very little farming in the region prior to the gold strike. Therefore miners, merchants, and farmers all rushed into the region en masse, and in fact many of the would be miners ended up joining the ranks of merchants and farmers after the first easy gold was taken. Therefore there was not nearly the separation between the groups as there had been in the Oregon Territory. California applied for statehood in the same year as the Oregonians, and while their territorial ambitions were much less than that of Oregon, they did conflict with them, seeking to annex land to California north of the 40th parallel, so as to encompass the entire northern section of the Central Valley.

In the end, Congress granted both applications for statehood, but with reduced borders for Oregon. It also created a new territory north of the state of Oregon, the MacKenzie Territory.

The State of Oregon has its northern border at the 48th parallel (except for the inclusion of the entire Olympic Peninsula), it's eastern border as the 118th meridian, and its southern border at the 42nd parallel.

The State of California has its northern border at the 42nd parallel, and also uses the 118th meridian as its eastern border. It's southern border lies at the international border with the Dominion of Southern America, 36-30.

 

[DuQuense]

Anyone know why it took until the 1880s to get tea growing in the American South?

Tea Plantations are a Capital Sink for the first 10~12 years of setting up, before the first harvest.
After the failure of the 1850's attempt, the British wouldn't sink more capital into them, and it took till the 1880's [Cotton Barron era] for the South to have the spare capital for long term projects.

 

[thekingsguard]

The gold rushes on the Pacific Coast of North America had interesting and sometimes contradictory effects on the formation of the first US states on the Pacific. From the beginning of US dominance in the region, the Northwest Company had been the largest force shaping the region, with their virtual monopoly on the fur trade. However, slowly but surely settlers, mainly farmers, did arrive in the region even before the Oregon Gold Rush. The number of farmers increased in the southern portions of the Oregon Territory, spurred by the numbers of miners arriving in the north of the Oregon. While the Northwest Company had traditionally strove to keep mining out of the region, the resourceful company quickly adapted to the situation and became the main supplier of the miners, importing goods and purchasing produce from the settlers to the south of Gray's Island, the Northwest Company's headquarters. When the farmers to the south agitated for statehood, they did not want the rowdy miners and trappers of the north as part of the new state. Instead they sought to have all the Oregon Territory south of the 48th parallel, west of the continental divide, and north of the 40th parallel. The Northwest Company was more than happy to support the farmers in having the north excluded, as this was seen as useful for maintaining their power there.

However, to the south of the Oregon in American California, the later California Gold Rush had a very different impact. First, American California lacked a large presence like the Northwest Company. And second, there had been very little farming in the region prior to the gold strike. Therefore miners, merchants, and farmers all rushed into the region en masse, and in fact many of the would be miners ended up joining the ranks of merchants and farmers after the first easy gold was taken. Therefore there was not nearly the separation between the groups as there had been in the Oregon Territory. California applied for statehood in the same year as the Oregonians, and while their territorial ambitions were much less than that of Oregon, they did conflict with them, seeking to annex land to California north of the 40th parallel, so as to encompass the entire northern section of the Central Valley.

In the end, Congress granted both applications for statehood, but with reduced borders for Oregon. It also created a new territory north of the state of Oregon, the MacKenzie Territory.

The State of Oregon has its northern border at the 48th parallel (except for the inclusion of the entire Olympic Peninsula), it's western border as the 118th meridian, and its southern border at the 42nd parallel.

The State of California has its northern border at the 42nd parallel, and also uses the 118th meridian as its western border. It's southern border lies at the international border with the Dominion of Southern America, 36-30.

Not too bad! I would have seen Oregon go maybe a tad more northern though. Any Chance of a North AMerican Map once more states start filing in?

 

[DuQuense]

At a guess I would speculate that it's because the Clipper Races only got into full swing in about 1870, when suddenly tea merchants realised that there were now ships fast enough to mean that it was worth investing in every measure to reduce transportation times

The tea races started in the 1830's and drove the development of the clipper Hull in the 1840's.
By the 1870's whe had the first of the steel keel ships, [wood keels are only good up to 150 or so feet] which lead to the steamer-sailers [up to 300~350 feet]
By the 1890's the clipper was replaced by the super schooners.

3. While the lion's share of Italians will go to the USA as in OTL, the DSA should get a fair number as well. IOTL,

Whe also had a very large number [OTL] go to Cuba. OTL they learned Spanish [like in Argentina] and assimilated.? Wonder if they will pick Spanish or English ITTL?

Italians did settle in New Orleans, for example, and they migrated all over Latin America (particularly Brazil and Argentina)

"They were imported to do the jobs too dangerous to use expensive slaves".

I know that most of the Ice sold in India between the end of the ACW and start of WW 1 came from New England. [Special designed insulated hull schooners ]
There are also stories about teams of slaves cutting pond ice in winter for the Plantation's Ice Houses.
But I have never seen anything about the Deep South's or Antilles Ice Supply. I would assume it to be New England, but would be cautious about that assumption.
?Anyone have better info?

?What happed to the Potato Famine ITTL?

IIRC the first recorded battle between the US Army and the Sioux was in the mid 1820's. Only 20 years before the TC Railroads were proposed. Western Indian History will be Different ITTL.

 

[Nugax]

Hrmm....

I said he was overestimating the effects of bad climate as a deterent, and then the attraction of a good climate in the next sentance - not conflicting!

 

[Nugax]

One thing that very well might spur absolutely stupid gargantuan amounts of immigration to the USA TTL is the fact that they have claim to the entire sweep of the most arable land of the Great Plains as well as all those fishing areas on both the Atlantic and Pacific Coasts. This US also has, by my calculation, only slightly less land under its control than Russia. Now granted much of that is tundra or cold forest but I can see a metric ton of people immigrating from Europe, China, and everywhere to own some of that land as they did to a good extent OTL only TTL there is a whole whole lot more arable land that can be given away (and yes the US might have less or equal arable land total but much of the land east of the Mississippi was already occupied).

I can see TTL's Canadian area having triple the population or more of OTL Canada. I also don't see as much of a nativist movement happening if the govn't encourages immigrants to move west (or east in the case of Asian immigrants) simply because the govn't will encourage settlement of the interior.

The mythos of the US as a place to escape the horrors/drudgeries/claustrophobia of Europe or East Asia will be an order of magnitude larger TTL imo and considering how big it was OTL that's saying a lot...

I strongly disagree - the Canadian plains are not amiable to settlement until improvement in farming techniques, and are likely to be rail roaded much later. Look at how long it took the americans to lay the Northern pacific routes - they added the next tier north every twenty years or so, without the driving Canadian need and British wallets I don't see the Canadian north being railroaded till 1900-10. And at that point you'll see the shift away from small farmers moving to the land as productivity increases - the American great plains reached their population peaks in the 1890s after all!

Why on earth would the Americanising the Canadian plains give triple their population numbers - when that would be more than twice the people per square kilometer than the Dakotas and Montana managed in the OTL? Sure lots will go to *Alberta for the oil, but thats the 1950s onwards.

 

[Julius Vogel]

The British had a devil of a time creating a viable and useful imperial tea growing and preparation industry in India OTL and I would imagine they would in this timeline too, whether they try in India, DSA or Malaya.

IIRC a lot of the trouble Britain initially had was technological - how to transport the right kind of viable tea plants or seeds in useful quantities to India from inland China, which took a lot of experimentation. Then they had to find viable plantation sites, then develop local expertise sufficient to prepare the crop in such a way that European consumers would recognise as tea worth buying. The East India company put a huge amount of time, effort and money into this OTL and I imagine there would be no easy way to short cut that process. Once the Empire has this internal expertise though, I can imagine a sufficiently determined person could replicate it in the DSA

 

[eschaton]

Ironically, the best place for the British to grow tea is not in the DSA, but Hispaniola. Cuba is mostly flat, while Puerto Rico and Jamaica, while montane, don't quite reach ideal tea elevations.

It should be noted Tea can grow in colder climates, provided winters aren't cold. Hell, it can grow in Cornwall. The flavor isn't the best, and the yield is much lower however. Thus, I can't think of anywhere reasonable to grow Tea in the mainland of the - even the Southern Appalachians and Ozarks get too cold, and California has the elevation, but is lacking in moisture.

 

[eschaton]

I strongly disagree - the Canadian plains are not amiable to settlement until improvement in farming techniques, and are likely to be rail roaded much later. Look at how long it took the americans to lay the Northern pacific routes - they added the next tier north every twenty years or so, without the driving Canadian need and British wallets I don't see the Canadian north being railroaded till 1900-10. And at that point you'll see the shift away from small farmers moving to the land as productivity increases - the American great plains reached their population peaks in the 1890s after all!

Why on earth would the Americanising the Canadian plains give triple their population numbers - when that would be more than twice the people per square kilometer than the Dakotas and Montana managed in the OTL? Sure lots will go to *Alberta for the oil, but thats the 1950s onwards.

I'd tend to agree here too. With the exception of Vancouver and the most productive parts of Southern Ontario, settlement of *Canada will proceed more slowly. It's one of the reasons I think much of Canada is going to end up Francophone ITTL - no one else will really want the land, but the Quebecois, with their incredibly high birthrates, will be migrating west. I think northern Ontario and Manitoba will probably be mainly Francophone, for example.

 

[tubby.twins]

The State of Oregon has its northern border at the 48th parallel (except for the inclusion of the entire Olympic Peninsula), it's western border as the 118th meridian, and its southern border at the 42nd parallel.

The State of California has its northern border at the 42nd parallel, and also uses the 118th meridian as its western border. It's southern border lies at the international border with the Dominion of Southern America, 36-30.

I like this version of Oregon! But shouldn't "western" actually be "eastern" ?

 

[Glen]

I like this version of Oregon! But shouldn't "western" actually be "eastern" ?

First, thanks for joining the discussion!

Second - you are absolutely right! I have corrected.

 

[Glen]

Well, I wasn't thinking of Australia as a whole, only the inhabitable regions (no one worth mentioning settled in the Great Desert after all). I'd say coastal New South Wales and Victoria are far superior in climate compared to most of the DSA. Even the warmer cities in Australia (Perth, Brisbane) still don't get as warm as cities in the U.S. South. Plus, winters are much colder in the DSA.

Maybe than most of DSA, but the parts than are equivalent represent more total area.

The land still held by Portugal is the crappiest, in terms of appeal to settlers though, no?

Noticed that, did you...

I was thinking more along the lines of a government official thinking "Hey, these Sicilians and Greeks don't seem to get sick as often as the Welsh, maybe we should send someone to the continent to promote our province."

Did that happen OTL?

I'm saying that as with OTL, the British won't migrate abroad to become factory workers. If they're dirt poor, and want to work in a factory, they can find one right at home.

Fair enough.

If they migrate, it will be for religious reasons, or political ones, or because they want to homestead or open a factory of their own. Hell, it could even be simple wanderlust. The main thing though is they won't be primarily attracted by industrial jobs in the DSA - Britain will almost certainly be more industrialized,

All of that seems reasonable.

and the capitalist class in the DSA, if they want to use immigrant labor to save money, will turn to some culturally alien immigrants they can pit against the native born.

Don't know that that's as clear, but though I don't think it will be planned, there may be some of that regardless.

 

[Astronomo2010]

a nwew map of the USA would be good to show the expansion and grow of the USA.

 

[Eurofed]

I strongly disagree - the Canadian plains are not amiable to settlement until improvement in farming techniques, and are likely to be rail roaded much later. Look at how long it took the americans to lay the Northern pacific routes - they added the next tier north every twenty years or so, without the driving Canadian need and British wallets I don't see the Canadian north being railroaded till 1900-10. And at that point you'll see the shift away from small farmers moving to the land as productivity increases - the American great plains reached their population peaks in the 1890s after all!

Why on earth would the Americanising the Canadian plains give triple their population numbers - when that would be more than twice the people per square kilometer than the Dakotas and Montana managed in the OTL? Sure lots will go to *Alberta for the oil, but thats the 1950s onwards.

I'd tend to agree here too. With the exception of Vancouver and the most productive parts of Southern Ontario, settlement of *Canada will proceed more slowly. It's one of the reasons I think much of Canada is going to end up Francophone ITTL - no one else will really want the land, but the Quebecois, with their incredibly high birthrates, will be migrating west. I think northern Ontario and Manitoba will probably be mainly Francophone, for example.

I disagree in that I see no valid reason why TTL Canada should not get at least the same development as the northernmost row of US states, and both somewhat more popolous than their OTL counterparts. The USA are still going to get a very large amount of European immigration thanks to its immigration-friendly policies and social mobility, the focus of its internal development is necessarily going to be oriented more northward than OTL USA (so northern routes shall be built earlier than OTL), so northern states are going to be filled more than OTL. The Eastern cities are going to hold only so much immigration. I agree that the Francophones shall a substantial component of the western immigration, but that shall create political pressure to build infrastructure in the northern territories which shall hence attract more European immigrants.

 

[Venusian Si]

The USA are still going to get a very large amount of European immigration thanks to its immigration-friendly policies and social mobility, the focus of its internal development is necessarily going to be oriented more northward than OTL USA (so northern routes shall be built earlier than OTL), so northern states are going to be filled more than OTL. The Eastern cities are going to hold only so much immigration. I agree that the Francophones shall a substantial component of the western immigration, but that shall create political pressure to build infrastructure in the northern territories which shall hence attract more European immigrants.

But why would the immigrants themselves prefer OTL Rupertsland to the American Great Plains if they had the choice? Sure the land is cheaper, but the lack of the proper tech is really going to discourage people when there's easier land to deal with down south.

On the other hand though, I do agree that parts of Canada like Manitoba could probably be more populous by default if the United States keeps up its currently much more generous immigration program than OTL's.

Also, could we see some Native American Majority States (like what was attempted with Sequoyah) set up in original Canada? Perhaps as a form of compromise?

 

[Glen]

Faster. I reckon the clipper races will happen as OTL, unless you start playing around with events in India relating to tea, and in this respect nothing will really change. However the major difference is, with the DSA as British property from the beginning, tea planters will have spotted it as prime land from the very outset, whereas under the US government it was a more risky venture OTL due to foreign export complications, the possibility of hostility by the government or the locals, the higher set-up costs and possibility for American planters to receive favourable treatment in a protectionist economy in the south and have the British planters face tariffs and fees all over the place designed to encourage the American businesses to out-compete the British ones - this was the very way that economics worked under the old protectionist system (and indeed elements can still be seen these days). All in all, tea plantations could sprout up much earlier - long before the Clipper Races - entirely due to the fact that the above reasons don't exist, so there's little risk to starting up a tea plantation in the DSA.

Interesting reasoning.

Of course, re: what a commenter said a few comments earlier about southern tea not tasting as nice, I doubt that will change at all. It could indeed make for an interesting story indeed, with DSA tea able to reach Europe quickly and for a reduced price - and able to sell direct to DSA markets, too, who presumably will be just as eager buyers as British markets - but with the Indian clippers being slower, more expensive, but a better-tasting flavour. An early example of cheap and low-quality v expensive and high-quality, only for once where both products are British (in Europe from the mid-18th century to about this era as an end-point, European markets had tended to see a contrast between locally-produced but shoddy goods, and expensive, well-made British designs). It could produce some interesting, if minor, characteristics of DSA markets. If the tea-sellers realise that their income comes from selling low-grade tea en masse, they could potentially pioneer ways of producing and selling as much as possible for as low as possible, where in other parts of the Empire they focus on techniques for refining quality - these attitudes could spill over to other industries over time. Or maybe I'm over-exaggerating.

This is definitely one possibility. I shall keep it in mind...

 

[Glen]

One thing that very well might spur absolutely stupid gargantuan amounts of immigration to the USA TTL is the fact that they have claim to the entire sweep of the most arable land of the Great Plains as well as all those fishing areas on both the Atlantic and Pacific Coasts. This US also has, by my calculation, only slightly less land under its control than Russia. Now granted much of that is tundra or cold forest but I can see a metric ton of people immigrating from Europe, China, and everywhere to own some of that land as they did to a good extent OTL only TTL there is a whole whole lot more arable land that can be given away (and yes the US might have less or equal arable land total but much of the land east of the Mississippi was already occupied).

Probably a bit exaggerated, though I appreciate the enthusiasm and the comments!

I can see TTL's Canadian area having triple the population or more of OTL Canada. I also don't see as much of a nativist movement happening if the govn't encourages immigrants to move west (or east in the case of Asian immigrants) simply because the govn't will encourage settlement of the interior.

This too I think is not likely, though perhaps there will be some government encouragement for northern settlement once the more southerly USA 'fills up'.

The mythos of the US as a place to escape the horrors/drudgeries/claustrophobia of Europe or East Asia will be an order of magnitude larger TTL imo and considering how big it was OTL that's saying a lot...

Maybe, maybe - the flip question to that will be how horrible will Europe be ITTL compared to OTL...

Thanks for the comments and your patronage!