Alternate to 49th Parallel?

Longer term, it means the Trans-Canada Railroad can't be built. You could argue that would lead to British Columbia becoming American or a separate dominion. I think likely British Columbia would become part of *Canada, with the major transportation routes running through a friendly neighboring country. The US might try to set up unpleasant tax laws for them though.

I think they could still build one. It's a bit further north, so maybe a bit more expensive, though Selkirk and Stonewall don't seem all that different of countryside from Winnipeg.
 
I'd agree on Canada's development, but I doubt it would really influence American politics towards a more Pacific and Western orientation. The portion of shore that is added is not the most useful for large ports.

It would make the regions far more important far earlier though - among other things, there would still be frontier to settle, with Columbia, the Yukon and Alaska, maybe even Idaho and Montana taking the place of the "Wild West" as America's frontier of choice. Jack London and his "Northerns" would join Louis L'armor and his "Westerns" shaping America's picture of the frontier.

The fact Alaska is connected to the USA by land might also make its integration into the US far sooner a given - we might even carve a state off of the Northern half.

Could you tell us more about the significance of proto-Winnipeg in 1818? It wasn't on the major routes between Hudson Bay and Columbia Territory. Was there it part of a trade route from the east? Was there a large population there that couldn't do their work further north, east, or west?

I think that a further south border is more likely than a further north one, but it's fun to consider the what-if scenario of the US getting Winnipeg in 1818. In the short term, you'll probably get rioting like a new Battle of Seven Oaks. (Maybe the first Battle of Seven Oaks motivates the handover?)

Longer term, it means the Trans-Canada Railroad can't be built. You could argue that would lead to British Columbia becoming American or a separate dominion. I think likely British Columbia would become part of *Canada, with the major transportation routes running through a friendly neighboring country. The US might try to set up unpleasant tax laws for them though.

I assumed if there was a higher latitude chosen for the border, it would only count for the land West of the Rockies - If a Canada DOES come into being, it would be denied the Pacific, but still have the Prairie. If the Hudson Bay Company still sells it to them.

As for my earlier multiple Canadian dominions idea, Manitoba would be in something of a flux. The Maritimes, Upper and Lower Canada each form a natural Dominion. Depending on the fate of the Prairie provinces though, Manitoba could be a real wild card. Merge with Ontario? Merge with the USA? Form its own Dominion? Form an ethnic homeland for anybody from the Metis, to Icelandic settlers to Mormons? Take your pick, it would have the chance to be the most different and the most independent of the regions of British North America.

Regardless, makes for a VERY interesting place to play with :D
 
Could you tell us more about the significance of proto-Winnipeg in 1818? It wasn't on the major routes between Hudson Bay and Columbia Territory. Was there it part of a trade route from the east? Was there a large population there that couldn't do their work further north, east, or west?

“England needed to maintain her access to the Great Lakes via the westernmost of those lakes, Lake Superior. Such access was vital to England's fur trade in general and, in specific, to a major fur trading post located at the confluence of the Assiniboine and Red rivers—a place now known as Winnipeg. Had the border been located at the 50th parallel, Winnipeg would have been in American territory, as would the waterways that flow east to Lake Superior.”

You could argue that would lead to British Columbia becoming American or a separate dominion. I think likely British Columbia would become part of *Canada, with the major transportation routes running through a friendly neighboring country. The US might try to set up unpleasant tax laws for them though.

It’s a small difference, but I imagine that with 50º being the border that the US would get everything west of the Rockies. Since no railroad, then south roads, as you said. Since south roads, tariffs. Since tariffs, desire to avoid them. Since desire to avoid them, support to join the Union.
 
Why not bump a thread? I cannot speak for the initial 49th parallel really, but only for its extension into the Oregon Country. The positions of the British and Americans never really changed; the former wanted the Columbia as the border, and the latter wanted the 49th parallel. As has been recounted on this forum, at one point the British suggested a detached portion of the Olympic Peninsula become American to offset fears of a lack of naval ports. During another set of negotiations, the border of the Columbia unofficially was offered by the United States but went nowhere diplomatically speaking. Outside of these blips, the standard response for renewals of negotiations by Americans was the 49th parallel. At least, Upshur, Webster and later Calhoun were voices of it in the 1840s.

This brings us to the 54'40 or Fight, such a popular AH bit. ;) Only a few men in Congress were avid supporters of the concept, namely Lewis Cass and his clique. Maybe I'm just no trying hard enough but I've only been able to find three additional men named in the group. Interestingly, or not, the "All-Oregon" lobby was the majority (or entirety) of the equally fringe but still popular with many on AH.com, "All-Mexico" camp. I'm certainly not a wizard at American Presidencies but I have thumbed through a few biographies on Polk about his support of 54'40. They generally state the position was used purely to drum up support for his election. Additionally some substantiate fairly convincingly that Polk touted the measure to finally make the British acquiesce to the long offered 49th parallel.

The British had the preeminent economic force among European descendants in the Pacific Northwest through the Hudson's Bay Company. Something once held as valid in scholarship was that the American settlers of the Willamette Valley and surrounding areas that arrived in the 1840s "saved" Oregon for America. The position became abandoned once it became clear how little the settlers and their "Provisional Government" factored into the thinking of American and British diplomats. Ironically a recent book "French Canadians, Furs, and Indigenous Women in the Making of the Pacific" spins this logic on its head by stating French-Canadians/Métis kept British Columbia, well, British. :rolleyes:

There would need to be major butterflies to have happen, after the previous portion of the America-BNA border being set at the 49th parallel. Something like a British Republic forming during the French Revolution, or just being royally wrecked from those wars. For the Americans to go to war over Oregon, an episode would have to be engineered like OTL's Mexican-American war. Additionally, Lewis Cass would have to be President with a united backing in Congress to support his measures. For the British side of an alternative border, something fairly bad would have to occur to the United States to remove it from being an active participant [insert civil war]. Even if what is now Washington state was to settled by British, they would be like the OTL American pioneers, insignificant for the diplomatic exchanges.

tl;dr Either the United States or the United Kingdom have to be thrashed and heavily lose interest in PNW after the first treaty established the 49th parallel for an alt Oregon Treaty (and border) to become plausible.
 
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