Many people in the alternate history community like to poke fun at S. M. Stirling’s Domination of Draka series. There is an obvious reason why, it's completely implausible. For one thing, the POD makes no sense. The Dutch declare war on Britain during the Revolutionary War. Ok. That makes sense. But then Stirling sends the loyalists in America to South Africa instead of Canada. Why? No reason. They just decided they wanted to go to South Africa instead of the much closer Canada.
Another reason is the obvious historical cameos. People from OTL born after the POD pop up all the time. It is logical to assume that anyone born after the POD would not be born at all, anything as simple as somebody reading a newspaper about the POD and waiting 2 minutes before...uh...mating can mean that this person is not born. This one doesn't bother me so much, because having people from OTL going through different lives makes for a much more entertaining read (I will not,however, be featuring people born after the POD in this timeline).
Many people have tried before to create realistic versions of Draka, and I have decided to take a shot at it. I will be taking lots of inspiration from Stirling’s original books. This timeline will only be covering events different from OTL, so expect only to see the parts of the Revolutionary War and after that have been changed by the POD. So without further adue, here is As Darkness Falls, my attempt at a realistic Draka timeline.
Chapter 1: In Which Parliament Decides Not To Be Smart
The British colony of Quebec was French and Catholic. Unfortunately for them, the British hated everything French or Catholic. The Quebecois would be subject to oppression ever since the Brits took them away from their mother country of France. An attempt was made for parliament to pass a law protector the rights of Quebecois, but it did not pass. So it didn’t really come as a surprise to anyone when they decided to revolt alongside the 15 colonies, as they came to be known. When Richard Montgomery arrived at Montreal from Fort Ticonderoga, he found a Quebecois force had already stormed the British garrison there and were pushing the British out of the city. The arrival of Montgomery proved too much for the British, and they retreated to Quebec City.
The Americans would send another force under Benedict Arnold would leave from Massachusetts to march through the Maine region and meat Montgomery at Quebec City. However, once Arnold learned that Quebec was in rebellion against the British, he decided to take his force up the coast into the Nova Scotia colony. He would arrive at St. John and take the city, inspiring the colony to join the Americans in the rebellion. By the end of the year, most of the Colony had fallen to the rebels, although St. Johns Island [1] and the city of Halifax remained in British hands.
The march to Quebec city would be halted by bad weather, Montgomery’s troops stopping near Quebec city due to a Blizzard. By the time they moved into the city in January, the citizens there would have already starting to rise up against the British. Quebec city would fall mid-January. Quebec’s governor, Guy Carleton, would try to escape, however he would be caught and beat to death by a group of Quebecois.
Whether or not Quebec would join the United States as a state or become an independent country was an issue during the early stages of the rebellion. Some even proposed Quebec rejoin France as a colony. Many argued that America or France could protect Quebec from the outside and make the province stronger. However, by mid June most people had grown to the idea of independence, taking on the name of the Republic of Canada. France, even though she knew she would not get Quebec back, decided to help the two new nations against her enemy Britain. The Netherlands and Spain would follow soon with their own declarations of war on Britain.
These countries would prove to be a great help to the two rebellion countries. The most obvious result was British forces now having to fight in the East and West indies. In the East the British did well, capturing small Dutch and French forts in India, however they never could proceed with a full out invasion of the Dutch East Indies, however they did capture the Cape Colony in Africa. The British would prove to do poorly in the West Indies though, where combined Franco-Dutch-Spanish forces would capture or raid almost all of their island colonies. Britain simply did not have enough forces to hold off the combination of the three. Another, less direct effect, would be the rebellion of the Bahamas and Bermuda. These colonies economy’s would be hurt by the lack of trade with France,Spain, and the Netherlands. This, combined with frequent American and French raids, convinced the colonies to become the fifteenth province to send members to the continental congress.
Spanish forces would move to take West Florida in late 1776, while a Franco-American force departing from the Bahamas would capture St. Augustine in the East in 1778. The south would prove a place of lots of fighting, but by 1801 it and the rest of the 15 colonies would be firmly in American hands. American forces would capture major forts in the Ohio Country, with Quebecois forces capture the lands south of Quebec but north of the great lakes during the closing years of the war. One of the final actions of the war was a French assault on York Factory, home of the Hudson’s Bay Company.
The Treaty of Paris in 1782 would end hostilities between the Americans and their allies and the British. The British would lose almost all of their land in North America and the West Indies, however they did receive land in India and South Africa. The British were also able to negotiate passage of loyalist out of the new united States, and fair treatment of those who chose to stay. This would prove to be very important in the future...
[1]OTL Prince Edward's Island, although it was still called St. John's Island by this point in OTL too
And a map of the World after the Treaty of Paris
