Louisiana as America's Quebec

AHTG's Tripartite Alliance Earth massive timeline has an interesting path for Louisiana, part of its overall effort to make all Francophoney. Selected excerpt:

From the Peace of Paris in 1763 until the Treaty of Ildefonso in 1802, the Spanish monarchy controlled the vast territory of Louisiana, stretching from the scattering of colonists in the far south of the territory north to the uncharted prairies and woodlands stretching to the Canadian border. In 1802, though, the Spanish were induced to sell the Louisiana territory to France by the threat of force. Napoléon once hoped to transform Louisiana into the centrepiece of the French colonial empire, but he was soon forced to recognize that France simply could not defend Louisiana adequately against the United States of Britain. In 1803, Napoléon offered to sell the entire Louisiana territory north of the 40th parallel and free access to the port facilities in New Orleans/Nouvelle-Orléans to the young American federation. This stratagem worked remarkably well, laying the foundation for the Franco-American alliance against Britain in the Napoleonic Wars. Though Britain made several raids against Louisiana in the course of the American phase of the Napoleonic Wars, French imperial forces and the United States army were always able to repel the British from Louisianan soil.

As the French Empire's position weakened in Europe, however, France faced the real possibility of losing Louisiana to the British. Reluctantly, in the fall of 1813, the French Empire entered negotiations with the United States on the sale of Louisiana. Just before the final collapse of the French Empire in 1814, the United States purchased South Louisiana from France for two million United States dollars. Under the terms of the purchase, the large Francophone community of Louisiana was to retain the full of the French language in government and education. The conclusion of the Anglo-American War in 1815 brought an end to British attempts at conquest, and Louisiana was confirmed as an American state.

Louisiana's population was quite diverse, but it was still Francophone. The Cadiens -- survivors of the British deportation of the Acadiens from eastern Canada in the Seven Years War -- constituted the single largest group of Louisiana Francophones, rapidly expanding in number throughout the bayous and prairies of western Louisiana. In the east of Louisiana, the Creoles descended from the pre-Seven Years War settlers vied with the tens of thousands of settlers Napoleonophile settlers who fled France after 1814 for control of state politics. There was also a large group of Black Creoles, descended from Caribbean immigrants and slaves. By the eve of the First Civil War, these Francophone groups constituted almost three-quarters of the Louisianan population. In addition to the Francophones, there was a large Anglo-American community took shape in New Orleans to profit from the Mississippi trade, and forty-five thousand immigrants -- nearly all Catholic, mainly French, Irish, Spanish, or Italian, most settlers in the New Orleans area.

Even though Louisiana was a Southern state, the passage of the Graduated Emancipation Law in 1853 also made it a free state. The rapid growth of the Cadien, Creole, and foreign Catholic agricultural settlements led to the formation of a free agricultural peasantry, unique in the South. This, and the ideological opposition to slavery on the part of the Catholic Church, led to Louisiana opting to remain outside the secessionist Confederacy, and to remain loyal to the Union, consequently making Louisiana the first target of the Confederacy. Despite a ferocious defense of the state by the state militia, Louisiana would have been doomed to fall to the Confederates had it not been for the surprising intervention of the Second French Empire against the Confederacy. Though the French intervention may have shortened the Civil War by years, it also created a quasi-permanent xenophobia on the part of Anglo-Americans, upset that the seemingly friendly intervention of France was actually intended to mask a bid for Mexican empire. Louisianan Francophones, as colinguals of France, were naturally suspect.

Over the next generation, Francophone Louisiana became increasingly isolated from the rest of the United States. Though it remained a prosperous territory, its role as an entrepôt for the United States' foreign trade gradually decreased as better railways and the development of New York City and Baltimore made New Orleans obsolete. Louisiana was also distinguished from the rest of the United States by its language, religion, and by its relatively high rate of population growth and the relative importance of immigration. Not surprisingly, Louisiana began to grow apart from the United States.

Beginning in the 1940's, and continuing in the next decades, nationalism began to grow among the Louisianan Francophone community. In the century after the Civil War, the four distinct Francophone groups had begun to intermarry into each other and to develop a growing consciousness of a wider Francophone nation in Louisiana and of an increasingly important Francophone community worldwide. The Parti louisianais was formed by a group of New Orleans intellectuals in 1951. Its platform was a clear statement of the fundamental unity of the Louisianan Francophone population, explicitly identified Louisianan Francophones as a nation and Louisiana as their putative nation-state, and called on the state government to formally establish the predominance of the French language throughout Louisiana. The 1962 language laws passed by the Parti louisianais government, requiring all signage in the state to have French letting, making the French-language school system the default system for all immigrants coming from outside the United States, and requiring the Louisianan government and local corporations to work in a Francophone environment and offer French-language services, were widely criticized. Many Americans saw these laws, and the similar legislation passed by the New Mexican and Navajo territorial governments, as symbolizing the imminent collapse of Anglo-American culture.

Thoughts?
 
Okay the Tripartite World timeline aside just how hard is it to grasp the concept of a Catholic French-dominated Louisiana that ends up as a free state and then culturally and economically isolated from the rest of the Union JEEZ
 
I don't really know much about the direct effects of such a version of Louisiana, but I think it should have very interesting effects on other immigrating groups if they can point to Louisiana as a place that stayed loyal to the USA despite having a different language/culture. I personally would like to see a German-speaking midwest as well, just to make this more interesting. Overall, this version of Louisiana could make the US go two ways, force assimilationism to much higher levels in the country or make the US truly multicultural, whether such a multicultural US is sustainable is up for debate though.
 
I'd think that it's at least plausible enough to be considered, after all people are always talking about Quebec being the 14th colony around here and if a huge province like that can be considered, why not a couple of cities around the mouth of the Mississippi.
 

MacCaulay

Banned
I think Louisiana winding up like that (for any number of reasons) could be very plausible. One think that I don't see happening is any sort of independent country down there, but you don't need one for nationalist tendencies.

Just look at the FLQ in Quebec in the October Crisis. Especially with Louisiana's...shall we say, checkered...political past, it's not hard to believe that a homegrown group or groups could rise up on the precinct level or larger. Or whatever they call their counties. Departments? Cantons? Something like that.

What you would need would be a rallying point. The Quebecois, and to a different and more violent extent the Metis around the Red River area in Manitoba, all shared a common past stemming from the loss of New France and what they felt was a suppression of their cultural heritage by the British, Hudson Bay Trading Co., and Canadian governments, depending on the time and the place.

Could the Acadian population of Louisiana possibly have ever had a similar situation thrust upon them in their past? Of course. For the most part, the Quebecois have managed to make something out of what is virtually nothing for the past fifty years.
It would take a strong leader and a good grassroots movement. I can't see the group being a "hate-movement" so much as an "us-movement," pushing for policies on the local-, state-, interstate-, and national-levels that it deems good for the Acadian culture.

Of course, that's a assuming that's what they'd call it. And we all know what happens when you assume.
 

Hashasheen

Banned
What Israel ATL.
He has several other ATLs on the site, one where Hitler manages to escape Europe, and for some inane reason flees to the Middle East, and declares war against the Jewish communities of the Palestine Mandate. From there it degenerates into Arab-bashing and Israel-wanking. :cool:
 
Wrong. Some other guy wrote that, there were over about a dozen writers on AHTG. Randy McDonald wrote the Tripartite Alliance Earth timeline.
 
Well Tripartite TL's pretty implausible too. Despite the POD being in the early 1800s with the US going to war against Britain earlier then OTL there still is a World War 2 with Nazis and a Soviet Union!
 
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