DBWI-Saint Pierre and Miquelon still part of France

NomadicSky

Banned
A few weeks ago I visited the island of Saint Pierre a small island that's part of the Canadian province of Newfoundland.

It got me thinking what if the British didn't keep the islands after the war of 1812 and gave them back to France?

Is it possible for France to have a tiny colony of the coast of Canada?
 
I guess it's not impossible, but it strikes me as wildly impractical. The French have no way odf defending these rocks ion the water, so what this does is hand the Royal Navy a cheap victory in any future war. They'd be much better placed trying to swap them for some other island in a place they can actually defend.

Also, what exactly is the point to owning the place? IIRC nobody knew about the mineral resources at the time. Perhaps if there were some kind of rule that tied fisheries to ownership of coasts?
 
Can we get this moved to ASB?

It is not ASB. Britain would have to allow French ownership of those islands. Presumably if they let them keep them in 1763, they would have seized them again in 1781 and again in 1800 or so. So, it is really a matter of Britain returning them to France after each war.
 
It is not ASB. Britain would have to allow French ownership of those islands. Presumably if they let them keep them in 1763, they would have seized them again in 1781 and again in 1800 or so. So, it is really a matter of Britain returning them to France after each war.

But why on earth would they let them be kept? A French naval base inconveniently near to discontented Francophones? It's like the Channel Islands if there was an Anglophonic uprising in Normandy.
 
But why on earth would they let them be kept? A French naval base inconveniently near to discontented Francophones? It's like the Channel Islands if there was an Anglophonic uprising in Normandy.

I admit that would be strange, but those unusual things happen. That small part of Italy in France for example, or the Prussian-Polish border.
 

NomadicSky

Banned
Well it's a unique place on it's own. I guess it's the fact that the community who lives there still speaks French.

Maybe it was a little asb. I just thought it was a cool idea.

I could see the islands become a base for bootleggers during the prohibition era.
 
Pompejus is right, these strange things do happen. Like the Bering Islands in the South Atlantic - however much the Argentinians complain that it's "Las Malvinas", it's still Danish territory.
 
Great; that's all we need in North America, another bastion of squallor, poverty and lawlessness! Just look at how France rule in Haiti has worked out over the past few centuries. I'd hate to see such lovely archipelago trashed like this.
 

NomadicSky

Banned
Great; that's all we need in North America, another bastion of squallor, poverty and lawlessness! Just look at how France rule in Haiti has worked out over the past few centuries. I'd hate to see such lovely archipelago trashed like this.

I don't know I think part of the problem with Haiti is the local population.

The French West Indies are nice. Although they were Danish until the end of WWI.
 
I'm Canadian, and I must say, I don't care for those Islands that much. Canada has been the world's largest nation since 1964. Besides, who wants those cold islands when we have the long west coast to love and care for. And don't just put down my opinion just because I'm from the west.
 
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