Anglo-American war of 1896

In OTL...
In 1896, Venezuela had a border dispute with British Guiana which almost turned into a war with the United States when The british began to send troops to Guiana. The venezuelans realized that they could not fight a war with Britain, and so appealed to American President Grover Cleveland. Cleveland (citing the Monroe Doctrine) demanded that the British leave the Region or the United States would "by Every Means" force the British out.
The British and the Canadians began preparing for war. Reflecting on the possible war, the British Army decided that its plan would be to land troops at Boston or New York and make a "vigourous offensive gesture". However Britain would send no troops to Canada. As for the Royal Navy, it had no intention of conveying troops anywhere until the growing US navy was defeated.

However on October 3rd the Crisis was resolved when Britain decided to submit to the "Schomburgk Line".

what if the British were a little more ambitious and more Anti-American and the war does occur. I suppose the British Navy could successfully Defeat the American Navy and Land some Troops along the East Coast but What about Canada... would the Americans overrun it easily or would it Be a disaster like 1812.
 

67th Tigers

Banned
what if the British were a little more ambitious and more Anti-American and the war does occur. I suppose the British Navy could successfully Defeat the American Navy and Land some Troops along the East Coast but What about Canada... would the Americans overrun it easily or would it Be a disaster like 1812.

You're right about the navy, the entire USN isn't a match for the RN Atlantic Squadron in peacetime.

As for ground war, the US doesn't have much of an army, the regulars are about 25,000 strong. The militia/ national guard are 100,000 on paper, but 40% of these have never even shouldered a rifle, let alone have any real military training. There are only 10 batteries of field artillery, equipped with an antique that was obsolete when ordered.

What they can throw at Canada is prettymuch what they could assemble immediately for field service in OTL 1898 22 Infantry Regiments, 6 Cavalry Regiments and most of their field artillery constituted their disposable regular force, and this is what they can assemble on the Canadian border, about 16,000 infantry, 3,000 cavalry and ca. 50 guns.

This isn't a host to overrun Canada, to be sure.

Canada is in a worse state with respect to a regular force ("active militia") much smaller than this. However, their militia system is in much better shape. They have about 90,000 volunteers to call on trained to a much better standard than the US militia, with modern weapons and artillery (the US militia have modernised ACW arms and no artillery worth speaking of).

The British have the lift and available troops to deploy 10 infantry and 2 cavalry divisions to Canada, a force of over 100,000 regulars and about 300 modern guns (and about 100 maxim guns at the scale of issue then).

The US don't have the forces available to make it quick, and if they wait until the militia are mobilised, trained and equipped they've lost months and the British are already there.
 
In OTL...
In 1896, Venezuela had a border dispute with British Guiana which almost turned into a war with the United States when The british began to send troops to Guiana. The venezuelans realized that they could not fight a war with Britain, and so appealed to American President Grover Cleveland. Cleveland (citing the Monroe Doctrine) demanded that the British leave the Region or the United States would "by Every Means" force the British out.
The British and the Canadians began preparing for war. Reflecting on the possible war, the British Army decided that its plan would be to land troops at Boston or New York and make a "vigourous offensive gesture". However Britain would send no troops to Canada. As for the Royal Navy, it had no intention of conveying troops anywhere until the growing US navy was defeated.

However on October 3rd the Crisis was resolved when Britain decided to submit to the "Schomburgk Line".

what if the British were a little more ambitious and more Anti-American and the war does occur. I suppose the British Navy could successfully Defeat the American Navy and Land some Troops along the East Coast but What about Canada... would the Americans overrun it easily or would it Be a disaster like 1812.

King Nazar

See https://www.alternatehistory.com/discussion/showthread.php?t=111302, "They called it Civilisation" by Rex Britianniae, which despite his user name is not a Brit wank. A lot in there I think unrealistic and some way from historical characters but covers the same general area.

In an actually shooting match in that time period the devil as always would be in the detail. The US has a numerical and industrial edge and the British army hasn't had the experience of the Boer War to shake it up drastically. Also Britain has to consider possible threats from Europe, although that's pretty stable at this point. On the other hand the US has even less practical military experience, a weaker government in terms of organisation and nothing to match the RN. Also while Canada would be highly vulnerable to the US, which is unlikely to accept any declaration of neutrality by Canada it could become a huge quagmire for US forces given the technology of the times. Furthermore an attack on Canada would unite the empire and enable moblishing a hell of a lot of effort to defeat the US.

Most likely impact, in the short term, is that both nations lose a lot of men, money and influence worldwide as other profit while their slogging it out. [Unless you got a reasonably balanced war in Europe at about this time].

Highly unlikely however as you would need something like the insanely aggressive Venezeula and US that Rex has in his TL to get the two powers into a big war with each other and even then would expect Cleveland to get kicked out it he did something that daft.

Steve
 
What would be really amusing in such a scenario would be if Canada DID declare neutrality and the US accepted that neutrality.

OK, President Cleveland, how do we even fight the British now?:D
 
1896 is not a good time for the US, equipment wise... they still don't have modern weapons, and the USN is still far behind the RN in numbers. If you want a fairly even US/UK matchup, you have to head up into around WW1, at least for ground forces.... for an even naval match, you have to wait until the 1930's or so...
 
Fighting a land war in Canada is probably very much like fighting a land war in Russia, and American agression in this case would unite the empire against them. but the British would also have to deal with widespread insurgency as well. and it is concievable that the Americans could do like they did in the civil war, squeak by until they get thier act together, they'd have a lot less time to do all of this in though.
 

Eurofed

Banned
Fighting a land war in Canada is probably very much like fighting a land war in Russia.

Wrong. Canada's population and industry is almost entirely concentrated in a strip of territory a few hundred Km deep all alongside the US border. If the British-Canadian army is pushed beyond that point by US forces, they are basically refugees with guns in the middle of frozen empty nowhere. While they can still get supplies from Royal Navy through some ports, they would have no other source, and Canadian railway is not that much developed in the Big Frozen North. So the US army would have a big advantage at that point. Same reason why an hypothetical Canadian insurgency is not going to be all that much successful, the space the US counterinsurgency would have to control is nowhere as vast as Canada's map makes it think. The US Army had no trouble controlling a bigger effective space during the Reconstruction.
 
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