DBWI: Practically no French immigration to America

[Deleted member 97083]

It should be a surprise to no one that France, being one of the largest and most populated countries in Europe, had been one of the largest sources of European immigration to the United States. French Americans are a massive demographic group, numbering in the multiple tens of millions, and the vast majority of French Americans descend from immigrants who came from France itself, rather than Quebec or Louisiana.

What if this was, somehow, not the case? What might cause French Americans to be, for example, only a tiny percentage of the U.S. population?

 

[funnyhat]

Well, if all of the states spoke English, instead of having four that are predominantly francophone, immigrating to the USA would probably be less enticing.

 

[Deleted member 97083]

Well, if all of the states spoke English, instead of having four that are predominantly francophone, immigrating to the USA would probably be less enticing.

They are Francophone now. But if I recall correctly, Haiti started out speaking Haitian Creole, and Upper Canada started out speaking English. Those became Francophone later, influenced by immigration and education.

Only Louisiana and Lower Canada have been French continuously since they became states, though there was a brief period shortly before the Civil War when Louisiana became majority Anglophone. That was of course, before Reconstruction established a Haitian and French Radical Republican community in the state, who voted for language protections for Francophone Louisianans.

 

[Sicarius]

Les chiroptères de l'espace alien...

 

[Byz]

The United States received immigration from all across Western Europe, France being no exception. French immigration was proportionally the same as the rest of Europe, its population is just so large they formed the largest immigrant group. The Germans, as the second largest population in Western Europe, are unsurprisingly the second largest immigrant group, and some north central states have large German populations. I don't see how you could change these facts, other than some sort of extreme Francophobia.

 

[Padilla]

The United States received immigration from all across Western Europe, France being no exception. French immigration was proportionally the same as the rest of Europe, its population is just so large they formed the largest immigrant group. The Germans, as the second largest population in Western Europe, are unsurprisingly the second largest immigrant group, and some north central states have large German populations. I don't see how you could change these facts, other than some sort of extreme Francophobia.

Any source on this? if I recall correctly the US records stated that the biggest inmigrant groups were from

1. The British empire (includes Scotland,Ireland,Wales and Canadians)
2. German confederacy (also includes Poles as they were part of Prussia)
   
3. Austro-Hungary (Hungarians,Czech,Germans,etc)
   
4. France

The thing with France is that their birthrates slow down in the XIX century and because of this fewer inmigrants,being the biggest emigration destinations Algeria,Quebec,Argentina and some parts of the US.

 

[Zorqal]

Any source on this? if I recall correctly the US records stated that the biggest inmigrant groups were from

1. The British empire (includes Scotland,Ireland,Wales and Canadians)
2. German confederacy (also includes Poles as they were part of Prussia)
   
3. Austro-Hungary (Hungarians,Czech,Germans,etc)
   
4. France

The thing with France is that their birthrates slow down in the XIX century and because of this fewer inmigrants,being the biggest emigration destinations Algeria,Quebec,Argentina and some parts of the US.

OOC: Is this DBWI? The point is that French immigration is far larger than OTL.

IC: Maybe the answer is have France be more stable? The numerous invasions by the Germans and their disastrous wars in Spain, Russia, and Africa caused so much instability that the French were en masse looking for new places to settle. The fact that the US had French speaking populations already was a draw for them, and meant integration was easier than in places like Argentina, Canada, or Mexico.

 

[Byz]

Any source on this? if I recall correctly the US records stated that the biggest inmigrant groups were from

1. The British empire (includes Scotland,Ireland,Wales and Canadians)
2. German confederacy (also includes Poles as they were part of Prussia)
   
3. Austro-Hungary (Hungarians,Czech,Germans,etc)
   
4. France

The thing with France is that their birthrates slow down in the XIX century and because of this fewer inmigrants,being the biggest emigration destinations Algeria,Quebec,Argentina and some parts of the US.

OOC: This is a DBWI. That means we're asking a WI from an alternate history. In this alternate history, the French make up the largest immigrant group and had the largest population in Europe, which was not true IOTL. This may be because of an altered French Revolution that doesn't result in a birthrate slowdown, or something else.

 

[Padilla]

My bad.What about a heavier colonization of Algeria? Wasn't Algeria conquered precisely for that? Either way most of France didn't speak French as a first language in the XIX century so I don't think that French would have become that strong.Also the US would turn into a catholic country which could cause internal trouble.

 

[JonKenobi]

I think it goes all the way back to the French Indian war of 1763. Had France lost that war instead of won it, (I'm looking at you British Wank enthusiasts.) French influence would have been less. They would have also not been as spread out as they became.

It didn't help that Britain ended up taking out its colonial losses out on France immediately afterward. High tariffs, the Brittany expedition and arming pan Germans in the Rhineland region all helped destabilize France. We only won our own Revolution due to Spanish aide and the fact that Britain had no place to stage invasions from. Had they owned Canada I'm sure the ARW would have lasted a lot longer.

 

[Neoteros]

I think it goes all the way back to the French Indian war of 1763. Had France lost that war instead of won it, (I'm looking at you British Wank enthusiasts.) French influence would have been less. They would have also not been as spread out as they became.

It didn't help that Britain ended up taking out its colonial losses out on France immediately afterward. High tariffs, the Brittany expedition and arming pan Germans in the Rhineland region all helped destabilize France. We only won our own Revolution due to Spanish aide and the fact that Britain had no place to stage invasions from. Had they owned Canada I'm sure the ARW would have lasted a lot longer.

They took them out by proxy too: there's a reason why the current US states of Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, Seneca, Tuscarora and Cherokee dominate the Great Lakes area. While almost every other native civilization in North America outside of those of the Pacific Northwest (and only because the Americans, the Russians and the Spanish squabbled over the Oregon Country so much they basically decided to turn it into a neutral state headed by James Brooke) was almost driven to extinction, the Haudenosaunee, because of how they fought alongside the British even when defeat was certain, turned into the palefaces' pet native polity and were allowed to realize their old dream of genociding every single people other than themselves on the southern shore of the Great Lakes as soon as they could get away with it.

Hell, the current US government is modeled at least in part after the Haudenosaunee confederacy - that still exists despite its constituent peoples being part of the US as separate states, even though it's more or less a regional organization now - and the less I say about the northern United States' lacrosse obsession the better. Joseph Smith really liked the Haudenosaunee, too; the Book of Mormon would be very different without gratuitous influences from the local mythology, and Mormonism itself would probably not be one of the most gender equal Christian denominations in history.

And all because the British felt so passive aggressive towards the French after their defeat that hatred towards the French trumped any kind of prejudice they must've surely have had towards the then-Five Nations.

 

[James Ricker]

A event after the fall of the French republic like a strong leader taking charge could do it. Bringing a little stability to France and avoid the 50 years of on and off again civil wars and the population wouldn't want to flee.
The Americans bought Louisiana and Haiti from the French for cheap because they were so desperate for cash to keep their government afloat that's the origin of the term pulling a Hamilton.

 

[rfmcdonald]

OOC: As contemporary central and eastern Europe shows, you do not necessarily need high rates of natural increase to also have high rates of emigration. You do not even need that big of an income gap: you just need opportunities which look good. You can easily even have emigration so vast it will lead to population decline, though in the 19th century the island of Ireland was the only country to experience that.

 

[Arkenfolm]

I wonder what would happen to our country without our two most noteworthy presidents of French descent? John Jaures and his Progressive Party and his defacto successor George Clemenceau defined American politics for much of the early 20th century. Without them, American politics would be a lot less left-wing. The Progressive Party has been gone since the Great Depression and the Great War in the 1930s due to a variety of splits and remergers, but it's successor the ASWI (American Section of the Workers' International) pioneered by our third French American president Eugene Debs and after his assassination our fourth French American (and our first Jewish president) Andrew L. Blum remains dominant in the American left. Even the right-wing parties have names which seem radical to foreign observers, like the Radical Republican Party or the former Democratic Socialist Party which recently merged into the RRP. With all French Americans have contributed to our politics, philosophy, and culture, it would be unimaginable to have them be a minor factor.