If the Americans lose the Revolution where do they go?
- Thread starter ETGalaxy
- Start date
I don't think they would. They'd just stay on their farms or in their shops, continue to bitch about tyrannical things like taxes and treaties with Native Americans, and give revolution another try in a couple of decades
Skallagrim
Banned
It's quite possible that a considerable number might just trek further inland. They were doing it anyway, king George didn't want his subjects settling there, and so it handily moves them beyond his effective control. This is not to say all Americans who supported the revolution would pack up and go, but I can easily see far greater numbers than in OTL trekking across the Appalachians and setting up their own free states between the mountains and the Mississippi. The notion that this might happen is often likened to the Boers migrating away from the Cape to set up their Free States inland.
Most of the leaders were Boston merchants or Virginian plantation owners. It's not like they're Boer-style ranchers who are used to settling the frontier.
But the rank-and-file often were, and I think there'd be enough of them to make a movement inland. Besides, the Boers didn't start off with their "trek"-ing credentials any more than the NAmerican pioneers either.
This is going to sound very Draka like but what about the Cape. Owned by the Dutch who were opposed to the British in the war, fair climate and slave owning.
Texas is another option but maybe too close to the British?
Texas is another option but maybe too close to the British?
I thought Louisiana would work. It was sparsely populated which means that there's plenty of land to settle and it was part of Spain, a nation that had supported the Americans in the Revolution. My other idea would be the land that would eventually become the Northwest Territory. (Basically the states that surround the Great Lakes.)
The second option has been done in fiction as well (For Want Of A Nail). Not to discredit either option, just pointing out that both have been explored in literature before.
Skallagrim
Banned
The 'Trans-Appalachian' option is likelier than the 'Texas' one, because it's a) closer and b) not actually held by another foreign power (this is no time to make enemies, after all). Of course, American exiles settling up to the Mississippi may lead to them also settling beyond the Mississippi soon enough...
(The Cape is less practical, mostly because of the obstacle to getting there. Trekking west is feasible for lots of people: arranging for oceanic transport to a far-away locale is not quite that simple for most.)
(The Cape is less practical, mostly because of the obstacle to getting there. Trekking west is feasible for lots of people: arranging for oceanic transport to a far-away locale is not quite that simple for most.)
Except that foreign power is someone who can protect them. Trans-Appalachian, and they are unprotected.
The Americans wanted "No taxation without representation". The actual deal they had been getting till French and Indian War had been "no representation but low taxes". And that was a deal Spain had also been offering to their settlers till the military threats forced them to increase taxation with no representation.
If British held the East bank of Mississippi and Spanish the West Bank, they have a choice between low taxes from American settlers, or no taxes if the settlers choose the other bank. So the Americans can bid down the taxes they actually have to pay.
What would Britain think about fugitive/exile migration into the old northwest and southwest, where they were hoping to keep stable fur trading relations? Would they help the Indians (and maybe Quebecois) fight and hunt fugitives trying to resettle in large numbers?
Just give them Indians rights to loot and kill the squatters. All official British activity and settling will be let known ahead of time and with official documentation or something. It's not like the settlers are going to remove the Indians if they are going to suffer chronic shortages of nitrates for powder (found underground in Mississippi, Chicago, and New York region, with only the last one known at that time... or found in bat guano). Plus the settlers would have little ability to live a normal life. The Americas might have been relatively self sufficient, but the West alone without the East coast isn't.
I think it will be harder. OTL settlers could trade with their coastal settlements couldn't they?
There were tons of frontier settlers and beyond-Appalachian settlers. Bourbon whiskey was first invented in the 18th century by the communities of Scots-Irish farmers beyond the Appalachians who farmed the area and stored corn long term by fermenting it into whiskey. They sold this product to the urban centers of Virginia. So the settlers in what is now West Virginia and Kentucky already had their own stable economy going by the time of the revolution.
Did they? I somehow doubt that. I'll give you they have crop, and whiskey. They also have a way to sell to gain funds. At the same time, I don't see them getting any significant quantities of glass, copper, nitrates, and several others if disconnected from the port cities. For example, around this time, New England could survive with a total block on the rest of the world... but most of the population would be reduced to a 15th century living standard.
Illicit trade and smuggling would still occur though. Also, the Boers didn't reduce to a 15th century living standard.
Also some of the urban artisans/craftsmen/blacksmiths would have been former "Patriots" in the revolution, and some emigres may join the existing farmers if there is significant cultural and political pressure against former rebels.
My point was mainly that they had a population, not that their economy would be perfect, but I think they wouldn't lose any technology.
The
So while these "American Boers" may not be strictly abolitionist, they aren't, for the most part, going to be plantation owners. They will be smallholding farmers. There would be plantation owners joining them in the following decades as cotton cultivation expands, but the founding "pseudo-Boers" generally won't belong to the elite classes of Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, and Virginia.
edit: Although some of the OTL Founding Fathers from Virginia might go west.
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