Long Term Effects of Canadian Alaska

What if the Americans had not gotten Alaska, and the British had bought it at a knockdown price from their original offer? What would be the long term effects of this?

On another note, is it possible to have Canada also include Greenland at some point, maybe through the selling of it?
 
Alaskan oil is now Canadian. Alaskan gold and other metals are now Canadian. Major economic boon to Canada/British Empire. Worse economic situation for the US.

Problem: They'll probably need to conquer it as the Russians IIRC sold it to the US as much to keep it out of British hands as for the money.

As for Greenland: possible, but why? It'd be an unincorporated territory of little advantage.
 
Alaskan oil is now Canadian. Alaskan gold and other metals are now Canadian. Major economic boon to Canada/British Empire. Worse economic situation for the US.

Problem: They'll probably need to conquer it as the Russians IIRC sold it to the US as much to keep it out of British hands as for the money.

As for Greenland: possible, but why? It'd be an unincorporated territory of little advantage.
Station nukes there :)

Canada getting the two abovememntioned areas, in my opinion is cliched as Greece getting Constantinople and the Aegean coast.

I don't see how it could be done, really unless war was declared.
 
I don't see how it could be done, really unless war was declared.


Seems simple enough to do, given the Brits and Ivans were not always the best of friends. Just have something alter a strategy during the Crimean war and the Brits snatch them up.


Now that I think about it, what did keep the UK from taking Alaska then? Simply relations with the US?
 
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Seems simple enough to do, given the Brits and Ivans were not always the best of friends. Just have something alter a strategy during the Crimean war and the Brits snatch them up.


Now that I think about it, what did keep the UK from taking Alaska then? Simply relations with the US?
Alaska was thought worthless at the time. If gold had been discovered around the Crimean War the British would have taken over Alaska in a heart beat.
 
Prime Minister Sarah Palin? But no. This is not ASB.

Assume somehow that Canada gets it before gold is found, would Americans rush up there to join in, and what would be the effects of that? Similar to what happened in Texas when Americans moved in?

Substantively I'm not sure how much it matters for the US until the 1930s or so. Some economic impact, but I'm not sure how much.
 
Station nukes there :)

Canada getting the two abovememntioned areas, in my opinion is cliched as Greece getting Constantinople and the Aegean coast.

I don't see how it could be done, really unless war was declared.
If it is so cliched, then can I please see a timeline involving these things?
 
Now that I think about it, what did keep the UK from taking Alaska then? Simply relations with the US?

More like "Canadian priorities"....because it was of more importance that what would become western Canada be linked to the east properly, so money, tons of it, was paid to Canadian Pacific to build a link. In some ways it parralels what happened in the US, but it was a "last spike", not "gold spike", and also, it was constitutionally mandated that British Columbia had to be linked by rail. So Alaska was "less important."
 
MNPundit said:
Assume somehow that Canada gets it before gold is found, would Americans rush up there to join in, and what would be the effects of that? Similar to what happened in Texas when Americans moved in?
I doubt any Texas-like situation would have resulted. Alaska is just too far away from the lower 48. Furthermore, there actually was a gold rush in the Yukon in the...1880s? IIRC. And of course Yukon Territory is still part of Canada.
 
Assume somehow that Canada gets it before gold is found, would Americans rush up there to join in, and what would be the effects of that? Similar to what happened in Texas when Americans moved in?
Mexico's problem with Texas was the American immigrants could not assimilate. Canada is much more culturally compatible. American immigrants to Alaska would eventually become Canadians.

Substantively I'm not sure how much it matters for the US until the 1930s or so. Some economic impact, but I'm not sure how much.
Overall economic impact for the US would be small. On the Canadian side, the addition of resources and a generous Pacific Coast may encourage the British empire to seek a greater Pacific role. That might include a British take over of Hawaii.
 
Overall economic impact for the US would be small. On the Canadian side, the addition of resources and a generous Pacific Coast may encourage the British empire to seek a greater Pacific role. That might include a British take over of Hawaii.

The British were already quite invloved in the Pacific with Australia, New Zealand, Fiji etc.
 
On a semi related note (assimilation of Americans in Canada) I was rather surprised to find out that the US was such a major supplier of migrants to Canada. I was reading this morning (so cannot give you much of a citation at present) that apparently the US supplied something like 600k to Canada between about 1890-1914 (not 100% sure about these dates, can check tonight). These might well be very recent migrants to the US for all I know.

This is the book I was reading.
 
I doubt any Texas-like situation would have resulted. Alaska is just too far away from the lower 48. Furthermore, there actually was a gold rush in the Yukon in the...1880s? IIRC. And of course Yukon Territory is still part of Canada.

Interestingly, though, there was a pretty hotly contested border dispute between Yukon and Alaska since the gold straddled the border. TR sorted it out with quiet diplomacy, but hotter heads could have easily appeared on both sides...
 
On a semi related note (assimilation of Americans in Canada) I was rather surprised to find out that the US was such a major supplier of migrants to Canada. I was reading this morning (so cannot give you much of a citation at present) that apparently the US supplied something like 600k to Canada between about 1890-1914 (not 100% sure about these dates, can check tonight). These might well be very recent migrants to the US for all I know.

This is the book I was reading.

As a Canadian I can add to the above. My great-grandfather on my mother side was an American who homesteaded in Canada. Population flows moved the other way too. Quebecois were drawn to the mill towns of New England. And a quarter of Col Custer's troopers were Canadian. The man who wrote our current (hopefully temporary) national anthem, I prefer The Maple Leaf Forever as a national anthem, joined the Union Army in US Civil War.
 
I agree the Maple Leaf Forever is far better than Oh Canada.'

EDIT: Interesting it seems that while the writer of Oh Canada fought for the U.S. the writer of The Maple Leaf Forever fought for Canada.
 
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Would Alaska have become part of the NW Territories or be established as a separate territory at the time of purchase? Is a separate Yukon Territory butterflied away by this purchase? Would Alaska be a province today? How would the region's First Peoples have fared over the past 100+ years?
 
Would Alaska have become part of the NW Territories or be established as a separate territory at the time of purchase? Is a separate Yukon Territory butterflied away by this purchase? Would Alaska be a province today? How would the region's First Peoples have fared over the past 100+ years?

I think it likely that Alaska will be merged with the Yukon territory, and assuming that Alaska only gets 50% of it's total OTL population, that's still 3 times as high as P.E.I., so I'm it'll become a province, but probably not until the 1950's.

The First Nations would most likely be doing their own thing until the 50's-60's, much like the rest of the north, until the government starts to take a more active role.
 
Definition of immigrants

On a semi related note (assimilation of Americans in Canada) I was rather surprised to find out that the US was such a major supplier of migrants to Canada. I was reading this morning (so cannot give you much of a citation at present) that apparently the US supplied something like 600k to Canada between about 1890-1914 (not 100% sure about these dates, can check tonight). These might well be very recent migrants to the US for all I know.

This is the book I was reading.

The question is how to define an "US-American" immigrant. I am pretty sure, that many Americans who moved on the Canada had immigrated from elsewhere in the world earlier so that their identity was not yet set in a way as one would nowadays assume.
 
The question is how to define an "US-American" immigrant. I am pretty sure, that many Americans who moved on the Canada had immigrated from elsewhere in the world earlier so that their identity was not yet set in a way as one would nowadays assume.

Not really. There were some, like Dad's Mom's parents, but most of the 'US' immigrants into Canada were born there. The various American neighbors who lived near the farm Mom grew up on were all native born Americans before coming across the border.

Actually, mostly the flow went the other way - immigrants coming to Canada and then moving to the states.
 
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