Antarctic France Timeline: a French Southern Cone in America.

JosephWorld

Banned
Part VII: The decadence of the Spanish Empire.

The unexpected discovery of the Americas by Christopher Columbus in 1492 gave Spain its heyday in the 16th century. However, by the 1620s and the accession of Philip IV to the throne, Spain was clearly in economic and political decline. This was also true for the Portuguese monarchy, which had just been united with Spain in 1580 in a dynastic union. Portugal's sovereignty was thus undermined, for example, it was deprived of a separate foreign policy from Spain.

In the New World, Spanish and Portuguese hegemony was also increasingly challenged by Dutch merchants, who had just founded the Dutch West India Company in 1621, by England, which had established itself in North America as early as 1607, and by Antarctic France in the Southern Cone.

This decadence of the Spanish Empire was particularly visible in the far south of the Americas, in the Silver River Basin and in the Captaincy General of Chile: the regions south of Potosi offered no fossil resources to exploit for the Spanish cash crop. The Silver River basin could have become a major port centre, and could have been used as a waterway to evacuate gold from Cuzco and silver from Potosi to the metropolis, but Spanish sailors preferred the Peruvian port of Callao in the Pacific.

These peripheral regions in the Southern Cone were therefore widely left out of the Spanish Empire, and were extremely poorly supplied, forcing the inhabitants of the cities of Buenos Aires, Asuncion or Santiago to smuggle goods in order to survive. In Chile, devastating earthquakes and attacks by the indigenous Mapuche made the region really unviable, settlements in the region were regularly razed to the ground.

The balance of power will thus very quickly turn to the advantage of Antarctic France...
 
Last edited:

Deleted member 147978

Also, question.

The French are going to colonize Patagonia specifically if you mean by Southern Cone?
 

JosephWorld

Banned
Also, question.

The French are going to colonize Patagonia specifically if you mean by Southern Cone?
Of course! I don't know for the colonisation of Patagonia, but the colonisation of the Falkland Islands should come as early as the 18th century!
 

JosephWorld

Banned
Part VIII: 1620s-1630s, the conquest of the inland.

The Duck Lagoon is characterised by very shallow water, so ships with a draught of more than 5 metres cannot sail there. As modern ships became larger and larger over the decades, the port of Henriville became progressively obsolete in the 17th century. So, in the 1620s, another port was built in a Huguenot town, New Rochelle, near the estuary of the River Argent. The port soon became the centre of naval production in Antarctic France and attracted many merchants.

Thanks to its naval production, Antarctic France was soon able to build ships to dominate the Silver River basin. Military forts were built on the eastern bank of the Parana River to block Spanish incursions into a region called "Mesopotamia". A real paradise on earth, humid, green, which already began to attract its first French settlers in the early 1630s.

Very quickly, it became necessary to subdivide Antarctic France, which was becoming increasingly large in territorial terms. Antarctic France was thus divided into three colonies, a first colony in the south called the "Colony of Transargentine", with New Rochelle as its capital, a second colony in the centre called the "King Henry's colony", with Henriville on Duck Lagoon as its capital, and a last colony in the north called the "St. Catherine's colony", with the town of Louisport (in the middle of the tobacco plantations of the Itajaï-Assou river) as its capital.

Printable-Map-of-South-America.gif

A map of the Spanish, Portuguese and French empires in the years 1620-1630.
 
Last edited:
This thread made me wonder, will Occitan be a major language in Antarctica?

There was never such a close relationship between Native Americans and whites in the Protestant settlement colonies of the New World. Whites quickly flooded the New World demographically and the Native Americans, quickly outnumbered, were ostracised. Miscegenation was the norm among Catholic settlers in the New World but not among Protestant settlers.

I wonder if this is less of a Protestant thing so much as an Anglo thing. I'm not sure if the English Catholics of Maryland mixed with the natives much either. And the Antarcticans, being French, or Latin, would be more receptive with mixing with the natives. There's also the angle that the Spanish and Portuguese colonies were originally dominated by men instead of families, leading them to intermarry.

That said, the creative decision to make the Huguenots not marry out is valid, especially since they are a persecuted, limited population who likely see themselves as besieged and must keep themselves pure laine.
 

JosephWorld

Banned
This thread made me wonder, will Occitan be a major language in Antarctica?



I wonder if this is less of a Protestant thing so much as an Anglo thing. I'm not sure if the English Catholics of Maryland mixed with the natives much either. And the Antarcticans, being French, or Latin, would be more receptive with mixing with the natives. There's also the angle that the Spanish and Portuguese colonies were originally dominated by men instead of families, leading them to intermarry.

That said, the creative decision to make the Huguenots not marry out is valid, especially since they are a persecuted, limited population who likely see themselves as besieged and must keep themselves pure laine.
The Huguenots did not arrive alone in Antarctic France, but surely with their entire family (also persecuted). This is one more argument to justify the fact that the Huguenots would stay in their community and not mix.

I hadn't thought about the Occitan language at all, but I'll think about it!
 

Gabingston

Kicked
The Huguenots did not arrive alone in Antarctic France, but surely with their entire family (also persecuted). This is one more argument to justify the fact that the Huguenots would stay in their community and not mix.

I hadn't thought about the Occitan language at all, but I'll think about it!
What do you think the ratio of Protestants to Catholics will be? Clearly there are going to be more Protestants than Catholics in France Antarctique, but I'm wondering what the exact proportion will be.
 

JosephWorld

Banned
Part IX: The Franco-Spanish War.

Since 1618, Europe had been in turmoil as the Thirty Years' War raged in the Holy Roman Empire between the Habsburgs (who ruled the Holy Roman Empire and Spain) and the German Protestant princes. By realpolitik, France decided to support the Protestants in the Thirty Years' War, in order to destabilise the hegemony of the House of Habsburg over Western Europe. But the French logistical support did not bear fruit, so Cardinal Richelieu decided to declare war directly on Spain in 1635. The French were very successful in this war: in 1643, the French army won the victory at Rocroi, in the Ardennes, against the Spanish Flanders army.

The colonial war in America also turned to the advantage of the French: in 1638, the colonial troops of the French Antarctic landed on the southern bank of the Silver River and surrounded the fort of Buenos Aires, the colony easily fell into French hands after three months of military siege. In 1646, the French colonial troops advanced to a region called "le Pays des ruisseaux" (Pago de los Arroyos) and annihilated there the Spanish troops dispatched from Cordoba, although the French were outnumbered with 3,000 men against 6,000 men. Cordoba was invested by French troops in 1647. In 1648, when Antarctic France had become the sole master of the Silver River basin, the city of Asuncion, totally isolated, raised the white flag and fell without resistance to the French troops.

The war in Europe continued for another decade. In 1659, the Treaty of the Pyrenees was signed between France and Spain, and Spain conceded very large portions of America to France: the whole Silver River basin, the city of Asuncion, the surrounding Guarani wildlands and the Andean halts as far as Buenos Aires (Salta, San Miguel de Tucuman...). With the annexation of all these new territories, nearly 35,000 Hispanic settlers and mestizo fell under French rule (of the original 70,000 people living in the region in the mid-17th century: half of them remained in the region and the other half fled to the other Spanish colonial territories). Buenos Aires was renamed "Bonaire", "New Lyon" for Cordoba, "Assomption" for Asuncion, "Saint-Michel" for San Miguel de Tucuman, "Louisville" for Salta...
 
Last edited:

JosephWorld

Banned
What do you think the ratio of Protestants to Catholics will be? Clearly there are going to be more Protestants than Catholics in France Antarctique, but I'm wondering what the exact proportion will be.
A clear majority of Protestants until the end of the 18th century, afterwards we will have to see what will give the immigration of the 19th century...
 

Gabingston

Kicked
Part IX: The Franco-Spanish War.
The war in Europe continued for another decade. In 1659, the Treaty of the Pyrenees was signed between France and Spain, and Spain conceded very large portions of America to France: the whole Silver River basin, the city of Asuncion, the surrounding Guarani lands and the Andean halts as far as Buenos Aires (Salta, San Miguel de Tucuman...). With the annexation of all these new territories, nearly 70,000 Hispanic settlers and mestizo fell under French rule. Buenos Aires was renamed "Bel-Air", "Cordoba" for Cordoba, "Douville" for Pago de los Arroyos, "Assumption" for Asuncion, "New Lyon" for San Miguel de Tucuman, "Charlesville" for Salta...
A few thoughts on the new city names at the end:
  • I think Bonaire would be a better name for Buenos Aires than Bel-Air. Sure, it's already an island in the Caribbean, but I just think it sounds better. This isn't the fresh prince we're talking about. If not, then just make the name of the city Belair without the dash in the middle. I was actually thinking of making a French Southern Cone TL years ago before I decided to settle on my current TL, and I was planning to make Bonaire the French name for Buenos Aires.
  • Pago de los Arroyos is the modern city of Rosario, the Spanish word for Rosary, which in French would be Rosaire.
  • Assumption is good, keep that.
  • Make San Miguel de Tucuman Saint-Michel, and rename Cordoba to New Lyon (Cordoba is a city in Spain, so why not rename it after a French city).
  • Apparently "Salta" means jump in Spanish, which in French would be "Saut". However, that's kind of a strange name for a city, so, Charlesville sounds good.
 

JosephWorld

Banned
A few thoughts on the new city names at the end:
  • I think Bonaire would be a better name for Buenos Aires than Bel-Air. Sure, it's already an island in the Caribbean, but I just think it sounds better. This isn't the fresh prince we're talking about. If not, then just make the name of the city Belair without the dash in the middle. I was actually thinking of making a French Southern Cone TL years ago before I decided to settle on my current TL, and I was planning to make Bonaire the French name for Buenos Aires.
  • Pago de los Arroyos is the modern city of Rosario, the Spanish word for Rosary, which in French would be Rosaire.
  • Assumption is good, keep that.
  • Make San Miguel de Tucuman Saint-Michel, and rename Cordoba to New Lyon (Cordoba is a city in Spain, so why not rename it after a French city).
  • Apparently "Salta" means jump in Spanish, which in French would be "Saut". However, that's kind of a strange name for a city, so, Charlesville sounds good.
Done!
 

JosephWorld

Banned
One question my friends: about the spelling and conjugation mistakes in English in my text, are there many or not? Please let me know so that I can correct them (and improve my written English).
 
Last edited:
Top