AHC: Southern and Middle American Colonies become Independent, but New England stays

What sort of PODs might lead to New England wanting/being compelled to stay in the British Empire while the rest of 13 colonies go free? Bonus points for scenarios that are temporally closest to the OTL War of Independence.
 
Last edited:

Saphroneth

Banned
Zany idea - the Brits win the WoI in the early stages before it gets too harsh, institute reforms (a fairly normal thing for them OTL, see Canada and India post-Mutiny for two examples) but their reforms include an extension of the ban on slavery on English soil to the colonies.

...might work?
 
If anything it would have to go the other way around. Loyalists were heavier in the south, NY was lost soon after Boston had been freed early on. So, after Washington loses NY maybe the colonies outside New England say "oops, maybe we were too hasty to support those Adams boys and those radical New Englanders..." and they tow the line while CT, MA, RI, and NH revolt and are successful. Perhaps the Green Mountain boys win independence as well, but with NY staying British I'm guessing some big influential wealthy people will be pushing Britain not to let Vermont go and possibly Benedict Arnold and Philip Schuyler are given British commissions and kick some Green Mountain butt.
 
If anything it would have to go the other way around.

I'm aware of that. I'm fairly certain several stories on this board have already considered a "South Stays/North Goes" scenario. I asked about this scenario specifically because it is 1) difficult to get to and 2) somewhat more novel, as far as I can tell.
 
You'd have to have a POD well before the Tea Party then, it was New England that started the Revolution... you'd have to have a POD during the French and Indian Wars I suppose. One possibility- the French survive in Canada but not in the Ohio Valley, meaning New England is still threatened but PA, VA, and the rest of the south can harbor resentment to the British for having to paying taxes to defend New England from the French in Canada, the South and Mid-Atlantic states have western territories they want to settle but the British won't let them; meanwhile New England, with no western territory that is practical to them and a French threat to the north provoking natives. That leaves New England wanting to remain British for the protection and the south wanting independence in order to move west and get away from what is in their mind the parasitic New Englanders. PA goes for independence, NY could go either way, but with a sizeable loyalist population and as we know from OTL a harbor conducive to the British sea power and hardly defensible by the Americans, the City of New York goes British and by default perhaps the whole Hudson Valley when it comes to the peace treaty. Perhaps the British give up Bermuda, or screw the Spanish and give East Florida, in return for keeping the entire Province of NY.

Interesting side-idea is this- if the war is limited mostly to New England, perhaps they conquer New Brunswick, maybe even Nova Scotia.
 
Britain held Boston until Washington fortified the heights overlooking the city. Ah. Dorchester Heights, that's it.

If the Brits had moved held that, or even if they'd managed to catch Washington moving artillery in, or if the Continental Army hadn't managed to drag captured artillery all the way down from Saratoga (!!!), then the Brits could probably have held Boston indefinitely.

Sure, that doesn't do much for the rest of New England, but they could keep New Englanders from trading, I imagine, and with a foothold in Boston, they could probably convince some of the New England colonies/states to switch back to the Loyalist side.
 

Saphroneth

Banned
Couple of musings.

In any rebellion or revolution, the objective of the defenders (i.e. the original government) is to present themselves as:

1) Legitimate - that is, the only legitimate government
2) A source of stability
3) Confident


The objective of the revolutionaries is to present themselves as:

1) Legitimate - that is, a viable alternative
2) Capable of winning
3) Unjustly oppressed


People are much more likely to join a call to a rebellion where the end-result is in sight than they are to join a possibly indefinite campaign.
There will always be die-hards, of course - there's no preventing that. The problem is the loyalty of the mass of the population.
If one can prevent the revolutionaries from scoring any particular successes or gaining a stable power base, then they have to supply themselves, and that means looting in this time period - and that's going to cause public opinion to turn against them.



If you have that going on in the North, but have the revolutionaries in the South suppressing slave revolts and otherwise having a much easier time of it evading trouble in the wider open spaces of the south, you might have a recipe for the objective.


...or not, I dunno.
 
Top