AHC: Greater Canada

Saphroneth

Banned
https://www.census.gov/geo/reference/pdfs/cenpop2010/centerpop_mean2010.pdf

Seems to suggest that in 1810-20 it was also incredibly east.

https://www.census.gov/geo/maps-data/maps/2010popdistribution.html
It also seems that the majority of the population is still fairly east in the US now.
California (and to a lesser extent, New Mexico, Oregon and Washington) pull it quite a long way east - it's in Missouri.

US_Mean_Center_of_Population_1790-2010.PNG


But the correct comparison isn't "The US centre-of-population now and Canada now", it's the population centres as of potential statehoods. California is not much further from the Canada CoP as of 1850 than that of the US.
 
California (and to a lesser extent, New Mexico, Oregon and Washington) pull it quite a long way east - it's

But the correct comparison isn't "The US centre-of-population now and Canada now", it's the population centres as of potential statehoods. California is not much further from the Canada CoP as of 1850 than that of the US.

That was my point. I suggested that Britain take California for services rendered to Spain against Napoleon. So 1810 or so. Which has the US centre in.. Virginia...just...

Also if Canada had California, and the rest, I'm fairly sure attracting colonists wouldn't have been too much of an issue for them. Nice climate resources etc
 
If 1812 goes smashingly well for Britain northern/eastern Maine, Northern New York state (Plattsburg to Sacketts Harbor), the Niagara Peninsula, Michigan, a sliver of NW Ohio north of the Maumee, northern Indiana/Illinois and a huge chunk of land north of the Missouri are all possible. From then they could push for all/more of the Oregon Territory. California could happen if Britain plays its card right but there's a lot of ifs for that to occur.
 
Some power-players in the British government in the 1830s-1840s were interested in buying California from Mexico in exchange for money that Mexico owed to the United Kingdom IOTL (source: here), though a change in administration in the United Kingdom and the Texan rebellion in Mexico prevented it from taking place. And it was so far away that it wasn't impossible for the British to colonise it; they managed Australia, after all, and it's not as if there was a large American presence in the territories immediately to the east (California achieved the necessary population to get statehood quite a while before all the territory between it and the east coast did). The problem with this counterfactual is that the Americans will probably not take kindly to a strong British presence in California, especially with the whole 'from sea to shining sea' thing.

A secession of New England (which really wasn't just hot air, by the way—true, supporters of outright independence were on the fringes of the movement, but so were supporters of outright American independence even into the American Revolution until their appeal to the King to override Parliament was rejected, and the American government was unlikely to be conciliatory toward them; they were only discredited by the timing of their political action with the United States coming out surprisingly well from the War of 1812) is probably necessary to weaken the USA enough for the British to plausibly hold California; New England held much of the United States' commercial and industrial power, so without it the United States' position in North America vis-à-vis the British Empire is much less overwhelming.

In a map game I had California be successfully acquired by the British Empire (and thus end up in Canada) by the annexation happening during an (earlier-than-OTL) American Civil War, so it was a fait accompli by the time the USA was free to do anything about it… but that wasn't exactly hard AH.
 
In my opinion, to have a greater Canada (and Russia), you don't need more territory, you just need more people. It already has a monstrous quantity of resources with not enough people to completely utilize them (most of it just gets sold to the US). Wanking large nations can have different preconditions compared to wanking mid to small sized nations.
 

TFSmith121

Banned
Define "Canada"...

The challenge, if you choose to accept it is this: have Canada control as much of the US as possible with a POD of 1800 and assuming the American Revolutionary War happened like OTL.

Define "Canada"...

And for that matter, define "the U.S." - as of 1800? As of 2014?

And can "Canada" even be defined as anything else but "Anglosphere North America that is not the United States"?

Confederation occurred in 1867 for a reason, and it was not because the Province of Canada (i.e., the districts of Canada East and Canada West, or historical Lower Canada and Upper Canada) plus the colonies of New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island saw eye to eye on much of anything other than the fact they all bordered (or came close to bordering) the United States ... there's a reason the Crown had to purchase the HBC's rights and then pass Rupert's Land to the Dominion, the Prairie provinces and BC took as long to join as they did, and Newfoundland didn't join until 1949.

Sort of crystallizes the problem, doesn't it?

No United States as a continental power, no Canada, certainly not in any sense that would be recognizable as what Canada is today.

Best,
 
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Define "Canada"...

And for that matter, define "the U.S." - as of 1800? As of 2014?

And can "Canada" even be defined as anything else but "Anglosphere North America that is not the United States"?

Confederation occurred in 1867 for a reason, and it was not because the Province of Canada (i.e., the districts of Canada East and Canada West, or historical Lower Canada and Upper Canada) plus the colonies of New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island saw eye to eye on much of anything other than the fact they all bordered (or came close to bordering) the United States ... there's a reason the Crown had to purchase the HBC's rights and then pass Rupert's Land to the Dominion, the Prairie provinces and BC took as long to join as they did, and Newfoundland didn't join until 1949.

Sort of crystallizes the problem, doesn't it?

No United States as a continental power, no Canada, certainly not in any sense that would be recognizable as what Canada is today.

Best,

A good point. In order for Canada to exist, America has to be an existential threat. Even a Canada with triple the population and far reaching territories will still have a very powerful southern neighbour. A Union might not be inevitable, but in order to prevent American domination it makes the most sense from a British perspective.
 

TFSmith121

Banned
The other point, of course, is that British North America

A good point. In order for Canada to exist, America has to be an existential threat. Even a Canada with triple the population and far reaching territories will still have a very powerful southern neighbour. A Union might not be inevitable, but in order to prevent American domination it makes the most sense from a British perspective.

The other point, of course, is that British North America, from (arguably) 1783 onward, was pretty much on the periphery of the Empire.

3,000 miles across the North Atlantic from the green and pleasant land lies a narrow temperate band with a fairly limited agricultural package (crops and growing season), and a lot of boreal to arctic territories; not exactly the economic engine that, say, the sugar islands of the British West Indies, the trade routes of the British Mediterranean "zone", or even the Africa and Asian imperial territories were ...

There's a reason Argentine Patagonia and the Chilean south, much less the Russian north, have never been the "heartlands" of their respective nation states...much less Alaska.

As lovely as much of today's Canada is, it's too damn cold.:(

Sorry.;)

Best,
 
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