AHC: Make the US south Romance Speaking Completely.

[John7755 يوحنا]

With a POD of 1600, make the following states romance speaking majority by the year 1900 within a state that is not Romance Speaking (so English or Dutch essentially):

Arkansas
Louisiane
Texas
Mississippi
Florida
Alabama
Southern Georgia

Bonus points with a large variety with Portuguese, French and Spanish all represented.

Then a question, if such a large area is Latin speaking with French, Spanish and Portuguese but in a greater English state, would it be considered Latin America, as well as say Puerto Rico?

 

[desmirelle]

With a POD of 1600, make the following states romance speaking majority by the year 1900 within a state that is not Romance Speaking (so English or Dutch essentially):

Arkansas
Louisiane
Texas
Mississippi
Florida
Alabama
Southern Georgia

Bonus points with a large variety with Portuguese, French and Spanish all represented.

Then a question, if such a large area is Latin speaking with French, Spanish and Portuguese but in a greater English state, would it be considered Latin America, as well as say Puerto Rico?

Point of fact: in 1600 none of these were states;they were more or less the 'wild west' and potential cash cows for Europe.

 

[Deleted member 67076]

Texas and Florida can be done by a richer Spanish Empire with less monopolistic trading and settlement practices (i.e, no limiting initial settlement to just Castilians until the 1700s; more ports to be able to do legal trading in) alongside keeping Portugal in the Iberian Union for the extra settler base. Texas in particular has good cash crop and ranching land that can attract a steady stream of settlers (and wine growing territory as well- an essential for every Spaniard). Economies would be limited and too focused on extraction at first but hey, that's almost everywhere in the empire. Of course, Texas would require more connections to Mexico proper and the establishment of a militia system early on to protect from Native raids, but if that's done and the region is secure I'd see no reason why it wouldn't become heavily populated given a few generations ala Chile. And like Chile, it'd probably be split off into its own Capitan Generalcy early on to save more money from Veracruz's tax collectors.

Now the settlers don't have to be Castilians or hell other Romance speakers; later cases of immigrants from Ireland or Germany have assimilated just fine into the New World Colonial systems and very quickly losing their native languages. So I'd say just opening up immigration to willing Catholics would do the job.

As always with my go to solution to the Spanish Empire's problems, the earlier an internal free trade can be developed the more populated and powerful it'll be. In doing so here, you can see settlers eventually decide to expand from their bases of Texas and Florida.

Don't really know about New Orleans and the rest of the Deep South. Maybe France plants colonies there based of cotton, indigo, sugar and other cash crops? It'd be an easy way of making money- certainly would attract more people than Quebec at first. And from sugar comes a whole bunch of supporting industries that eventually create booming towns, with the demand for labor causing more and more settlement.

 

[funnyhat]

If you just want that region to speak a Romance language (or multiple ones) I don't think it's too difficult; you just need Spain/France to take more of an interest in the region and send more settlers.

If you mean that they should still be part of the United States, but not speak English in 1900, that's tougher. The Cajun regions of Louisiana were still predominantly French-speaking at that time, but for the entire South to be like that would be challenging.

 

[Cornelis]

With a slightly earlier PoD : Henri IV dealt with Philip III for the peace in France. He relinquished his Navarran crown to the Spanish crown and converted (back) to Catholicism. In exchange, he is married to infanta Isabella Clara Eugenia, the niece of Henri IV's first wife and the Spanish pretender to the French throne. Along with this new alliance, the French were given a right to settle America north of the Rio Grande to Florida (a compensation for the Spanish Netherlands they claimed). Champlain was send there and found New Paris (OTL New Orleans). Henri IV, in order to appease the religious tensions in France, allowed french protestants to settle in the northern parts of New France, far from the Mexican border. The french colony did not end well, as its more eastern lands are conquered by the British-Americans after the 8 years war, a civil/religious war, the vanquished Catholics going under protection of the spanish speaking Californian Republic. Nonetheless, the long french settlement of the 17th and 18th c., especially the many protestants, ensured French is still the main language of the Mississippi Basin.