AHC: Canada absorbs British and French Caribbean

I think this would require a WW2 era POD. At the minimum the Dominion of Canada should add the following territories in the post-war period:

- Newfoundland
- St. Pierre & Miquelon
- Bermuda
- Antigua and Barbuda
- The Bahamas
- Barbados
- Dominica
- Grenada
- Jamaica
- Saint Kitts and Nevis
- Saint Lucia
- Saint Vincent and the Grenadines
- Trinidad and Tobago
- British Honduras
- British Guyana
- Anguilla
- British Virgin Islands
- Cayman Islands
- Montserrat
- Turks and Caicos
- Dominica
- French Guiana
- Guadeloupe
- Martinique
- Saint-Barthélemy
- Saint Lucia
- Saint Martin

Bonus-points if you can include Suriname and the Netherlands Antilles.
 
British capitulation to the Nazis (near ASB, but whatevs). British loyalists flee to Canada, which takes de facto control of not only British holdings in the Western hemisphere, but french ones too.

That's about all i can think of.
 
I think this would require a WW2 era POD. At the minimum the Dominion of Canada should add the following territories in the post-war period:

- Newfoundland
- St. Pierre & Miquelon
- Bermuda
- Antigua and Barbuda
- The Bahamas
- Barbados
- Dominica
- Grenada
- Jamaica
- Saint Kitts and Nevis
- Saint Lucia
- Saint Vincent and the Grenadines
- Trinidad and Tobago
- British Honduras
- British Guyana
- Anguilla
- British Virgin Islands
- Cayman Islands
- Montserrat
- Turks and Caicos
- Dominica
- French Guiana
- Guadeloupe
- Martinique
- Saint-Barthélemy
- Saint Lucia
- Saint Martin
Bonus-points if you can include Suriname, the Netherlands Antilles, Curaçao, and Aruba.


After France falls to the Nazis and a successful {The Nazi invasion plan that shall not be named} knocks Great Britain out of the war, US troops move to secure French and British possesions in the Carribbean and turn over their civil administration to the government of Canada.
 
I think the best POD is a slightly nastier WW2 where the Free French never emerge as a serious force and Vichy becomes an active co-beligerent with the Nazis. An over-stretched Britain hands over it's New World territories to Canada to rid itself of the burden, while Canada and Britain invade and Canada occupies the French New World territories. The Dutch territories might also be occupied at the same time.

The harder part would be holding onto the French territories post war, but this could be justified if France was seen as more culpable / not a co-equal ally post-war. Then something has to be done to keep the larger and more independence-minded British territories (Jamaica, Trinidad & Tobago, etc.) from wanting independence from Canada at some point.

edit -- I think it would be necessary to integrate both the British and French Caribbean for it to be salable in mainland Canada in order to maintain the linguistic balance: just swallowing the West Indian Federation wouldn't go down well at all in Quebec.
 
Here's my few eggs. The West Indies Federation is merged with Canada successfully as per the proposal. When WWII starts, the creation of Vichy France prompts Canadian forces to occupy the French West Indies and other French colonies. They don't return it to them once the war is over.
 

Cook

Banned
I think this would require a WW2 era POD.
Start earlier. Canada wanted Bermuda at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919. It wasn’t an unreasonable request considering Canada’s commitment to the Western Front; that the largest Dominion in the Western Hemisphere should inherit some of the old British Empire possessions.
 
Here's my few eggs. The West Indies Federation is merged with Canada successfully as per the proposal. When WWII starts, the creation of Vichy France prompts Canadian forces to occupy the French West Indies and other French colonies. They don't return it to them once the war is over.

The WIF was created in 1958. But out of all of them the only real nation interested in joining was British Honduras.
 
Canada wanted the Anglo Caribbean in 1919 for what purpose? Did 1920s Canada really want millions of black citizens?

This only seems plausible to me if these territories are forced on Canada (e.g. after WW2).
 
Canada wanted the Anglo Caribbean in 1919 for what purpose? Did 1920s Canada really want millions of black citizens?

This only seems plausible to me if these territories are forced on Canada (e.g. after WW2).
It wanted them to gain status, markets, and influence.
They wouldn't be a direct part of the dominion more like colonies, similar to Australia gaining control of various Pacific Islands during the same period.
 

Cook

Banned
similar to Australia gaining control of various Pacific Islands during the same period.
German New Guinea. Australia already had Papua. New Zealand got the German Pacific islands south of the Equator. Japan got everything north of the Equator.
 
The Caribbean is a lot more civilized/developed than New Guinea or Fiji. I think there'd be a much earlier and stronger push for either independence of integration into Canada as provinces.
 
Carinada or Canabbean?

It seems every few years there are dreams rumours or threats that some island or group of islands in the Caribbean are considering joining Canada.For any number of reasons it usually comes to nothing.
My personal choice would be just to annex Cuba, then we could pack all our dag nabbed socialist brethren down there and they'd leave the rest of us alone for a while.

In a more serious response to your inquiry, I would think that to acquire the French possessions it would probably have to be in conjunction with a Vichy type Government actually declaring war on the allies in the war. Another option would be a Fascist or Communist France at war with the empire in their own right, or any number of English / French wars through the first part of the 20th Century.

.... or maybe all us old British Empire Loyalist types took more than just a passing offence to some critter named De Gaulle giving his 'Vive le Quebec...' speech on his state visit in 1967 or when ever it was that he was here.

The British colonies would have only turned up it the Germans had been successful with an invasion of the British Isles resulting in the complete destruction of the state, government and the people's will to resist. At the same time Britain's conquerors would have to be in a position where they would not be in able to challenge the Canadian take over.

Near as I can tell from past attempts to pull something like this off even on an individual level, the catch usually is one of the following two options:
#1. The colony is so poor and backward that we don't want them
or
#2. They are rich and stable enough that they don't want us!

for it to be successful Canada would probably have to find a sort of middle class, closet socialist, slightly-holier-than-though, beer drinking hockey fanatics tucked away in the corner of the Caribbean somewhere ... if something like that was out there it just might happen.
 
OK, I'll bite.

Pre-WW1: In the late 19th century, there had been proposals for Jamaica (which, up until OTL Jamaican independence, contained the Cayman Islands and the Turks and Caicos Islands as dependent parts of the colony) and Barbados to join Confederation. To satisfy the "post-1900" name of this board, let's say that those two are successful before 1914. That's 5 OTL Caribbean countries taken care of.

Interwar: At the Paris Peace Conference (and for some time beforehand), Canada becomes insistent on handing the BWI over to Canada, most likely as LoN Mandates. Eventually, Lloyd George agrees, but Bermuda is adamant in their refusal to join Canada; in Newfoundland's case, they are already independent and prefer to be that way - due to the pre-WW1 POD, the disaster that was Beaumont Hamel is largely avoided, so at the end of WW1 most of those Newfoundlanders who served at the Front survived. A larger population in TTL, which would be seen as a miracle, means that much of post-WW1 Newfoundland history, such as the Commission of Government and its history as part of Canada, is butterflied out of existence. As such, nobody in Newfoundland wants to be part of Canada, even with Newfoundland's economic dependence on the rest of North America. For the most part, though, those two are outliers.

From here, two paths can be chosen. The first path is the most obvious, which ignores the butterfly effect - i.e., WW2 still happens as in OTL. Another path would be France electing the Action Française (or similar groups) to power, which could partially butterfly away WW2.

Path No.#1: No Free French arising due to the butterfly effect means that once Vichy France is created, Canada begins fighting for France's Caribbean territories. Once gained, they are put under effective Canadian occupation for the rest of the war. The same also holds for Newfoundland vis-à-vis Saint-Pierre et Miquelon (literally in this case, as the archipelago is just a stone's throw). As it turned out, however, Canada's occupation of the French Caribbean was such a refreshing (and liberating) change that after WW2, much of the French Caribbean clamor to join Canada. Under this proposal, Guadeloupe, Martinique, and French Guiana become separate provinces, but Guadeloupe also has Saint-Martin and St. Barth as dependencies (similar arrangement as per Jamaica; in OTL this was also the case as well for the French Overseas Region of Guadeloupe, however since 2008 - IIRC - those three are now separate French overseas regions). The liberated French are forced to agree. Saint-Pierre et Miquelon, however, chooses to remain part of France.

From there, things get more interesting. Between the 1930s and 1950s, Canada's LoN Mandates make petitions to become part of Canada, which Canada obliges (with the consent of the UK and the LoN). As before, though, Newfoundland and Bermuda remain outside of Canada's orbit - Newfoundland as an independent Dominion, and Bermuda as a Crown Colony of the UK. However, in the 1960s, protests and violence erupts between the various communities in Bermuda. One of the demands amongst the disadvantaged Black community is to have Bermuda part of Canada (marking a shift from pre-WW1, when it was White people having Jamaica and Barbados part of Canada), which eventually becomes the case. This leaves Newfoundland and Saint-Pierre as the lone holdouts.

In the case of Newfoundland, there's good reason to keep independent - the prospects of oil being found nearby leads to explorations during the 1950s into the 1970s (though some work began in WW2 in TTL), with production commencing during the 1970's. By then, Saint-Pierre had been making noises for some time to join Newfoundland - usually, though, those noises fell on deaf ears in France. During the 1970's, though, Saint-Pierre goes crazy about it, so France was forced to work on that; it was not, however, until 1984 that Saint-Pierre became part of Newfoundland - even then, Saint-Pierre retained a special status within the Dominion. (By this point, Newfoundland and Canada are essentially the only countries in the Commonwealth which maintain the use of "Dominion" in its name and in everyday usage.)

During the early 21st-century financial crisis, though, even Newfoundland wasn't immune - indeed, things became so bad that (more due to political manipulation on both sides than anything else) Newfoundland eventually became the last province to join Canada. Not surprisingly, Newfoundlanders are not happy with this, and in TTL, there is currently a major movement in Newfoundland to secede from Canada and become its own country again.

Path No.#2 I'll elaborate on later.

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@stewicide: Canada wanted the BWI at the Paris Peace Conference for one simple reason. To sum it up - why should Australia have much of the UK's and defeated Germany's stuff in the Pacific and we are left with absolutely nothing similar, even though we are the oldest Dominion? In other words, using the precedent of Australia to try to force Britain to hand over all her Caribbean colonies to Canada. At this point, I should make a point that, despite popular belief, Bermuda and the Bahamas are not considered to be part of the Caribbean - especially in Bermuda's case, when they are in the middle of the North Atlantic.

However, one should not discount pre-WW1 proposals from some of them, particularly - as I've noted in my little scenario - Jamaica and Barbados, both of whom were very serious (at the time, which here means the mid-to-late 19th century) about joining Confederation. In both cases, both Ottawa and Whitehall dropped the ball. If, on the other hand, both Jamaica's and Barbados' bid was successful, it would not be unreasonable to have more follow.
 
German New Guinea. Australia already had Papua. New Zealand got the German Pacific islands south of the Equator. Japan got everything north of the Equator.

Yet Australia got Nauru for a time. How can that be explained?
 

for it to be successful Canada would probably have to find a sort of middle class, closet socialist, slightly-holier-than-though, beer drinking hockey fanatics tucked away in the corner of the Caribbean somewhere ... if something like that was out there it just might happen.

Or... Canadians could take up rugby union and cricket en masse - particularly cricket, as it's to the BWI what football is to the US or CFL and hockey to Canada. In other words, cricket is the sport to play and/or follow if you happen to live in the BWI. There's good reason why the West Indies cricket team has such massive name recognition.
 

Cook

Banned
Yet Australia got Nauru for a time. How can that be explained?
There is nothing to explain because Australia did not get Nauru. Nauru is South of the Equator and was captured by Australian, New Zealand and British forces. It was given to Britain at the Peace Conference and jointly administered.
 
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