British Florida endures: Collaborative TL

Excellent point about economics.

Weird thought - U.S. buys Florida from Britain in the 1790s and Louisiana a few years later.

Of coruse, that wouldn't be British Florida so outside the scope here, but you've made some good points. I guess I always thought of colonizing as always similar to the Scramble for Africa, where they all just rushed in partly to keep the other guy out. After all, I've read a few times ont his site that those colonies weren't very profitable.
 

TFSmith121

Banned
Imperialism in Africa was different; the economics

Excellent point about economics.

Weird thought - U.S. buys Florida from Britain in the 1790s and Louisiana a few years later.

Of coruse, that wouldn't be British Florida so outside the scope here, but you've made some good points. I guess I always thought of colonizing as always similar to the Scramble for Africa, where they all just rushed in partly to keep the other guy out. After all, I've read a few times ont his site that those colonies weren't very profitable.

Imperialism in Africa was different; the economics issues, other than minerals in South Africa and control (once it was built) of the Suez Canal notwithstanding, there was a lot more "geo strategic competitiveness" (to be polite about it) in the scramble for Africa than the previous centuries' efforts by the Europeans in the Western Hemisphere and Asia.

And it varied from European imperializer and which parts of Africa were imperialized, as well; in North Africa, the basic issues were control of the southern littoral of the Med, including Egypt; in West Africa and elsewhere the issues were more abstract, and (other than southern Africa) came close to sheer territorial aggrandizement to forestall "another" European power, as you have described it.

The economic, demographic, and technical differentials came into play as well; basically, there was enough slack in the European economies that they could afford to play the game in Africa in the late Nineteenth and early Twenthieth centuries, and medicine had advanced enough that Europeans could do so in the tropics absent the disease issues that had a lot to do with the lack of political control in previous decades; that is less a factor in the Western Hemisphere because, from the middle of the Eighteenth Century on, the Western Hemisphere is/was basically a series of daughter societies of Europe.

The US buying territory from the UK is an interesting thought; basically it would have established a precedent that was not really present in Anglo-American relations in the same era...

Best,
 
An idea for the flag at some point in the future.

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