Tallest Skil
Banned
So how do you get the US to be powerful enough to do it whether or not it cares what Britain feels?
Hmm. I guess that question starts with how early we’d have to keep a standing army.
So how do you get the US to be powerful enough to do it whether or not it cares what Britain feels?
Hmm. I guess that question starts with how early we’d have to keep a standing army.
I like how you act like New England is just going to meekly submit in your own proposal.
Ha.
Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha.
I join in his laughter at the thought that your claim would ever happen.
Hmm. I guess that question starts with how early we’d have to keep a standing army.
Erm, yes. AND I guffaw in the general direction of your statistics. You do realise that at the time of the Pig war the USA had an army of just 16,000 men. I suspect you had decided to reply to my post out of context and we're referring to the combined armies of the USA and CSA at the peak of the ACW but even then you only get an army of just about 1 million not three!
So go ahead and laugh, but reality is on my side.
And you seem to forget that the British had just gotten out of the Crimean War, had put down a rebellion in India just a few years before,
and would be fighting an enemy with internal lines of control and communication across the Atlantic Ocean.
And again, British leaders won't be looking for a U.S. Aiming for revenge in twenty-thirty years, when the U.S. most likely would win.
Why not just use the usual POD for this aim in this era? The rumored British offer to sell the USA British Columbia is more than a rumor, SoS Seward snaps it up for whatever the asking price is, and with the stroke of a pen, you've given the USA the first chunk of Canada, and neutered any possible Canadian Confederation.
More than likely, in this scenario, with no Pacific port, we could see what's left of British Canada form into smaller Dominions or get sold to the USA bit by bit. Either way, it paves the way for peacefully integrating the rest of our northern neighbor(s) without ending up in another Whale vs. Wolf War (My slang for any Anglo-American War in the era, Britain (the whale) winning at sea, America (the wolf) winning on land, resulting in an impasse).
You have confused the size of the Union army with what looks like the total number of men that served in it. The peak army size was only about 680,00 (from memory).
Yep. That was in the late 1850s, they also defeated the Chinese too. So what?
As for internal lines pof communications you do realise that the British logistical system across the Atlantic is much quicker and higher capacity than the USA's railway system in this period? The USA comms system also gets quickly erroded once the British gunboats move up the Mississippi.
This is sad. A USA holding a grudge against the British Empire for 20-30 years will be a USA that gets stamped on by the Iron Heel of the Royal Navy for 20-30 years each time it steps out of line. It will get very little British investment. The path to greatness will be closed to it. It will become like modern day North Korea.
Do you not think it would have been a spiffingly good idea to actually read what I had 'claim'ed before making statements like this?
…maybe even the whole of New England returning to British control again…
Frankly I can't see how long 'we'd' had standing armies being in any way relevant to the thread?
Well other than:
(a) The proposal is based on an apparently fallacious rumour
(b) There is no apparent reason for Britain to sell BC*.
(c) Worse, there is no reason for the British to sell the province of Canada to the USA and even if they wanted to the Franco-phones at least would want independence instead.
(d) Even worse why would the British sell Nova Scotia with the great naval base of Halifax** at a time when it still needs the place to ensure it can 'rule the waves'. Prehaps the Admiralty had a universal brain anurism to a man?
This is a pretty good idea ... of course the OP does not get his/her 'invasion of NB/NS'.
* I mean come on! If I suggest that the USA sells Britain Maine and Delaware (which are respectively both snowy and wet) for absolutely no reason there will be uproar.
** My counter proposal would of course be that the USA in the interest of closer ties of friendship with Britain swaps them Fortress Monroe, the Panama railway and the Forts defending New York, Washington DC and Boston for a ten year residency by Charles Dickens and Wm Thackery.
I note your Wolf/Whale war never ends in impasse either the Wolf beats the Whale at sea (a very low probability event) or the Wolf yields due to blockade.
And this matters why exactly? It shows the number of soldiers the Union was willing to throw into an internal war. There is no reason to believe the president won't call up similar numbers to wage a foreign war..
... especially given how much Food was imported from the Union at this time. London would be looking to reestablish trade and end a war as fast as possible, not crush a country they have no real quarrel with.
By 1890 the US was capable of fighting Britain as an equal OTL, with no allies. Give them thirty years to build a proper regular military and a chance to find allies who have similar grudges against Britain (say a certain newly united European country that is looking to build its own colonial empire, or a certain enormous country that got beaten by the British as well in a similar time period) they would do more than be equal.
Give them another ten years and the British would lose against the US alone, another twenty and it wouldn't be close to an even fight anymore. There's a reason that by the early 1900s the British plan for war with the United States was abandon Canada to save the Empire. The US is too huge, has too high a population, and had too much domestic industry to end up like North Korea.
Did read. That’s why we made the statements.
Last but not least in terms of low probability events a Pig war scenario is more likely to see Maine, maybe even the whole of New England returning to British control again rather than NB let alone NS falling to an invasion and adsorbtion into the USA.
snip
1) Invading NB and NS is hardly a case of 'have no real quarrel with'.
2) The food argument sometimes called the 'King Corn' argument is completely fallacious and has been comprehensively disproved here and elsewhere. Please look it up.
The OP says 1865-1885 so all of this is irrelevant.
Still irrelevant but ...I note in passing that by 1910 when you appear to think the USA will be able to defeat the British the time-window for this thread will have been over 25 years. I also note that implicit in you rather ambiguous statements is the view that prior to this the USA will not be able to defeat the British and thus you have presented no reason to suggest that the USA would not, as I suggest, be denied the path to greatness.