Challenge: Quaker State

With no POD before, say, 1660, have an independent state that...

---Is majority-Quaker.
---Exists until modern-day and maintains a Quaker majority.
---Follows the Quaker principals of peace, equality, toleration, and such.

It can be any size. The most likely paths: make Pennsylvania independent and keep it majority-Quaker somehow (or cut some independent state out of Pennsylvania), or have a Quaker-majority country in the British Isles.
 
I'm not sure how their numbers would stay in the majority enough to last to the present day, unless said state was in a rather remote area with minimal immigration. Or a shift in thinking that lead to a push for evangelization.

I knew a few Quaker families growing up, and they all alluded to the dwindling of their community in what little ever came up about their church.
 
Unless their was a large amount of Quakers and they could consistently keep their numbers. Also if they are pacifists whats to stop them from being invaded or taken advantage of?
 
For a timeline I'm working on, The Quakers start a state in Southern Africa, accidentally kicking off a violent *Mfecane.

EDIT: Didn't see PoD restriction

I suppose if the Quakers went they could keep a culture. Have an event causing Britain to lose their grip on the colonies (worse colonial wars?) and the Quaker state becomes independent. Quickly they establish themselves as a merchant state, trying to remain neutral to ensure safe commerce.
 
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Unless their was a large amount of Quakers and they could consistently keep their numbers. Also if they are pacifists whats to stop them from being invaded or taken advantage of?

Nixon was a Quaker. Simply because the ideal of Quakerism is pacifism does not mean that a state based on Quaker ideals won't be able to defend itself.

Another possibility is some Quaker group essentially replacing the Mormons; a sizable number move out west, where they found a colony and build up their numbers. Relations with the local Indians will probably be good, and the remote location makes being swamped by settlers from the east unlikely. Ask someone who knows more about the settlement of Utah how the Mormons managed to maintain their majority there. At some point, *Utah becomes independent for some reason. It's even easier if you want a state in the US, not an independent nation.
 
Shouldn't be too hard:

Quakers go colonize a island somewhere (Caribbean? or maybe something goofy like the Falkland Islands?) instead of Pennslyvania. It doesn't have to be a big island so you don't need that many people. It stays under the aegis of the British Empire until relatively recently and eventually gets granted dominion status. Then presto! Quaker country. Is friendly enough with the UK that people don't invade it or if they do the Brits kick them out.
 

birdboy2000

Banned
Seems like Pennsylvania's the easiest way to do it. If the 13 colonies wind up as 13 independent polities and not as the USA, say if the constitutional convention failing and the articles of confederation, increasingly ineffective at resolving intra-colonial disputes, are eventually torn up, you have a state with a quaker elite making up a significant percentage (although IIRC no longer a majority) of the population. This alone won't be enough, but it's conceivable that it would grow if enough quakers outside Pennsylvania flee there to escape persecution, or if quakerism develops a more missionary bent.
 
The problem with PA is that a certain PENNSYLVANIAN, Ben Franklin, pointed out rightly and widely that the options were hang together or be hung separately by the British. That's basic strategy - you're always stronger the more people are on your side Sorry, XNM, MOST of us like hanging TOGETHER.

So it'd hafta be the island idea - that'd also solve the continuing majority problem. It'd probably be separately settled from PA (maybe if there was a split between Penn and other Quaker elites?)
 
1684, the Welsh Tract becomes a second colony (John Roberts negotiated with William Penn to make it one in OTL) where people speak Welsh and follow Welsh laws, where newcomers are assimilated more into society than in PA. While being a Quaker is not a requirement, many new immigrants will find it expedient as it is part of the culture.

Following the revolution, the Welsh Tract opts not to join the union (assuming a union comes about at all), due to their otherness and lack of desire to be ruled by Virginia elites or New England Puritans.

The problem with PA is that a certain PENNSYLVANIAN, Ben Franklin, pointed out rightly and widely that the options were hang together or be hung separately by the British. That's basic strategy - you're always stronger the more people are on your side Sorry, XNM, MOST of us like hanging TOGETHER.
Ben Franklin was a Puritan born in Massachusetts. He didn't arrive in PA until he was 17, and usually opposed the Penn family. He followed more New England ideas of assimilation and communal unity rather than Pennsylvanian/Quaker ideas about pluralism (see his comments about Germans)
 
You could make Pennsylvania independent with a Quaker elite, and make it so that the religion of the elite spreads to the general populace.
 
Vermont had a decent sized Quaker population. What if Vermont stayed independent (likely as something of a US puppet)? More Quakers would have to move there, maybe in a deliberate effort to create a Quaker state, or at least a more pacifist country. It would end up something like an American Switzerland. Many of the "Quakers" wouldn't be particularly religious in modern day, or at least not fit the image of a Quaker, but they would be of Quaker decent, and the stereotype of a Vermonter would be a Quaker to outsiders.

EDIT: I realize VT was predominately Congregationalist, but I think it has a better chance of staying independent than Pennsylvania (by the mid-1700s at least)and was sparsely populated enough that a migration of Quakers could still dramatically change the demographics.
 
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You actually need a POD in Britain, not America. Few American PODs will accomplish a thing, because there just weren't enough Quakers to go around. Pennsylvania's way to big, but honestly so are New Jersey, Vermont, and even Rhode Island. The best you could do would be to have William Penn be granted Maine, say, and then prevent a North American union.

But with an Anglo-Scottish divergence, you could perhaps keep Quaker numbers near 8-10% of the population of the big island, where they peaked OTL. If you can do that, and persecution isn't relaxed under Cromwell or is reinstated after the Restoration, then you have a big enough population to make things properly strange in the New World.
 
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