American Rebel Boer-trek

How plausible is an Afrikaner style trek into the wilderness in the case of a majorly failed American Revolution?
 
I suggest you read For Want of a Nail. It deal with just that topic. After a failed US Revolution, the hardcore patriots go on a trek to Spanish Texas and form a democracy in the Jacksonian tradition; it eventually conquers all of Mexico and makes the United States of Mexico. The Loyalists and less fervent patriots stay behind in British North America, which becomes the Commonwealth of North America or something like that. It's a fake history book that continues up through the 1970s (when it was written). The two nations become continental rivals; is very good.
 

sprite

Donor
Monthly Donor
I'm actually reading For Want of a Nail at the moment, it's a bit dense but a good read.

As for likelyhood, it all depends on the atmosphere in a failed-revolutionary America. A repressive situation would lead to an exodus.

As for numbers, it depends on what proportion you believe supported the revolution. I enjoy the third each of patriot/loyalist/don't care split, it just makes things easier :)

Only 70,000 Loyalists left during and after the success of the revolution which had quite a mild aftermath. They also were aided by travelling to sympathetic neighbouring territory who had infrastructure and a system of government already in place.

For Want of a Nail has about 12000 whites and 2000 slave leaving following the end of the war. Which i don't see any real problem with, as for them forming a viable state, i find this a bit of a stretch.
 
They also were aided by travelling to sympathetic neighbouring territory who had infrastructure and a system of government already in place.

Ontario did not have infrastructure in place it was an empty forest in 1780 and sympathetic government was the United Empire Loyalists themselves.
 
For Want of a Nail has about 12000 whites and 2000 slave leaving following the end of the war. Which i don't see any real problem with, as for them forming a viable state, i find this a bit of a stretch.

(FWOAN spoilers ahead)

Those numbers are comparable to the number of Afrikaners who went off on the great trek and they formed two stable states out of that, and several more ephemeral ones (it helped of course that the Afrikaners were extremely fertile, when 10 kids is a normal family size and 20 is not unknown you'll fill up a wilderness fairly quickly). So the idea of rebels forming a viable state in Texas is not unrealistic. The idea that they could take over the whole of Mexico and turn it into a global superpower, not to mention spinning off a private corporation which becomes another global superpower, is in the less plausible to ASB end of the AH continuum though.
 

archaeogeek

Banned
I'm actually reading For Want of a Nail at the moment, it's a bit dense but a good read.

As for likelyhood, it all depends on the atmosphere in a failed-revolutionary America. A repressive situation would lead to an exodus.

As for numbers, it depends on what proportion you believe supported the revolution. I enjoy the third each of patriot/loyalist/don't care split, it just makes things easier :)

Only 70,000 Loyalists left during and after the success of the revolution which had quite a mild aftermath. They also were aided by travelling to sympathetic neighbouring territory who had infrastructure and a system of government already in place.

For Want of a Nail has about 12000 whites and 2000 slave leaving following the end of the war. Which i don't see any real problem with, as for them forming a viable state, i find this a bit of a stretch.

Okay even with demography, how would 14000 people take over a country of 6 million. It would make more sense to settle the west, or the mexican northern provinces and leave it at that (i.e. US south west+ Sonora, Sinaloa, Baja, Durango, Coahuilha), or Louisiana...
 
Yea, probably settling in the West and creating a United-States-West-Of-The-Mississippi (after sometime and contending with France, Spain, and Mexico).
From Louisiana and Texas, North along the river and West to California.

How would the American Disporia in Louisiana or Texas be delt with by Napoleon against Britain?
 

archaeogeek

Banned
Also to some extent the spanish would probably welcome, sort of, the trekkers, since they'd be both former allies and they had been trying to settle the Provincias Internas for years (the main reason they didn't become a viceroyalty was that they had too low population to pay for their military).
 
Okay even with demography, how would 14000 people take over a country of 6 million. It would make more sense to settle the west, or the mexican northern provinces and leave it at that (i.e. US south west+ Sonora, Sinaloa, Baja, Durango, Coahuilha), or Louisiana...

I think the Patriots spent a generation in Texas and then took over Mexico in the middle of some social upheaval a generation later.

IIRC they took out or assimilated the old ruling elite and within a few generations started acting like it, complete with caudillismo.
 
This kinda did happen OTL, but only in a small degree. The Appalachian mountains are still the stronghold of scotch-irish immigrants from the time of the revolution. interestingly, their speech and dialect is almost completely untouched, leading many scholars to believe shakespeare and queen elizabeth all spoke like hillbillies.

but yea, if you intensify the need for people to settle in the appalachian mountains. a failed american revolution which leads many pro-independence colonists into the "off-limits" appalachian mountains should do the trick just nicely
 
For Want of a Nail has about 12000 whites and 2000 slave leaving following the end of the war. Which i don't see any real problem with, as for them forming a viable state, i find this a bit of a stretch.

This isn't that far off from the Boer Republics.

Of course, whether they formed viable states is a question.
 
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