@xchen08,
So in other words, no you have come-up with nothing to support your position and you can't even mount a decent attack on mine.
Around your proposed start of the FA war, there were ongoing Indian conflicts with the Hualapai (SW), Apache (SW), Comanche (Plains), Lakota(Plains), Cheyenne (Plains), and Arapaho (Northern Plains). Perhaps the French could provide assistance to the Indians similar to what was done in the French and Indian Wars of the 1750s-60s.
@Dave Howery,
I have already discussed the use of the term pacification and it is not inappropriate when applied to large sections of the frontier. However I think if you are going to suggest that the USA's treatment of the Plains Indians was not genocidal you are going to make a better case than you have. I think one could argue with some justification that without the British over the border watching events the Lakota, Souix and Dakota would have ceased to be (a few years after 1866 admitedly).
You asked what Mormons have to do with a Franco-American war in 1866? I refer you to my post #249 3)e).
I think it may take up 5,000 troops but a more realistic figure is 2,000. In the west even the smaller of these figures is significant.
@AbyssalDaemon,
Before I start I would just like to say: really cool use name! I have been reading Stross' Jennifer Morgue just before logging on so the coincidence was really rather freaky!
Did some checking and you seem to be pretty much right, I was apparently thanking of holdings of the Third Republic; however the French are still going to be worried over the holding that they do have. Their African and Asian holdings are both ones that they've fought tooth and nail to keep their hands onto, and both happen to be uncomfortably close to fairly hostile governments.You wrote that 'A portion of both [the French] army and navy have to be kept in various areas around the world ... and keep other powers from deciding to move in onto their holdings.'
1) What holdings exactly? The French Empire is not very big in 1866. They have interests in Mexico, French Giuana, St. Pierre & Miquelon plus some islands in the West Indies all of which are part of the battle zone in any war with the USA. As to the rest, they also have some islands in the South Pacific some of which are only protectorates, the Senegal river, Parts of the Ivory Coast, a naval base at Ningpo in China, an anchorage at Djibouti, some islands in the Great Southern Ocean and New Caledonia. They are still pacifying Algeria but it is mostly done with native troops and it is 'next door to home'. The First French-Indochinese war did not start until 1867 in OTL so none of that is part of the Empire.
I think that is most of the French Empire. Realistically other than those holdings the USA may aspire to, which of these is at risk other than Algeria, which may experience set backs at the hands of the truculent natives?
2) What nation would go to war with France for such small pickings? Only the British and Russians have the real capability to wage such a war, the British have bigger fish to fry (although the may side with the USA for other reasons), the Russians are over extended, in OTL they sell Russian North America in a few years. The Spanish, Dutch, Austrians, Ottomans and just maybe the Danes are the only others with anything close to the naval capability and frankly apart from the Dutch no one has any reason to go to war for such slim pickings. The Duch may and I stress may covert New Caledonia but honestly with Metropolitan France and its huge armies next door to the homeland you would have to be insane to start a war for a few islands.
This I heavily have to disagree with. First becouse the majority of 'pacification' being done against native Americans isn't by the army but by settlers who were also the ones who wanted the Indians off the land as well. Two majority of the time Army wasn't there to keep the Indian's on the land that was granted too them but to keep the settler's OFF. As to the morman thing enough other people have already brought that one up.3) The thing you did not mention is that the USA too has colonial obligations that it also needs to discharge during a war with France. It needs to:
a) Pacify the aborigional Americans in northern California and the North West.
b) It needs to keep the land routes and telegraph open to California.
c) It needs to pacify the aborigional Americans on the northern plains, ethnically clense the plains for exploitation by white setters and ensure that the aborigionals remain in their ghettos after pacification.
d) The aboriginal Americans in the South West have to be eliminated.
e) In addition to the above provision has to be made for the supervision and if need be re-suppression of the Mormons.
The above does not require a lot of troops but they are far flung and at the end of long expensive supply chains.
As for the U.S., it could either be really good or really bad. They would most likely won, and they would by a landslide if Prussia got involved. However, would the war unite the north and the south like the Spanish-American War would do or would France get another revolt to happen in the south? I guess Robert E. Lee and Ulysses S. Grant will be fighting alongside each other which would definitely be symbolic of unification.