"Pennsylvania Lancers" - Discussion Thread

Yes. The Great Fire may have destroyed a lot of houses but it only killed six people.

My first thought was "And one of them was Raleigh Waterhouse." :D:rolleyes:

A Idea to how Europe will look after the situation has stabilised.

You're missing the icecaps.

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OK, they won't be that big (the glaciers'll probably just move down the mountains a little), but still, the whole point of a Peshawar-scenario is that the impact will massively screw over the climate. Scandinavia won't be uninhabitable... but it will be very, very marginal at best. Not to mention that the 1749 harvest is going to fail like nothing, and the coming winter is going to kill a lot of people. Sweden is moving to Delaware*, or it will cease to exist as a nation.

*Yes, I know. Shut up.
 
The Ice Sheets would not extend much more than they already are at the time. It just takes too many decades to get a really noticable movement of the sheets. Glaciers will extend, and faster too, but the actual ice sheet no.

What you will get is less sunlight in northern regions. This will cause more snow pacts forming and lasting a longer time throughout the year. With the Little Ice Age poised to occur in 1770, it just causes an earlier start to it.

Would British sea trade now be based in western England or the American colonies? Their Carribean holdings would fair better in uring the global cooling, but the Carolinas would be able to hold a more stable population.
 
The idea of a new island in the North Sea is quite interesting. Dogger Bank, maybe? How long would it take until this new island would be inhabitable?
 
The Ice Sheets would not extend much more than they already are at the time. It just takes too many decades to get a really noticable movement of the sheets. Glaciers will extend, and faster too, but the actual ice sheet no.

What you will get is less sunlight in northern regions. This will cause more snow pacts forming and lasting a longer time throughout the year. With the Little Ice Age poised to occur in 1770, it just causes an earlier start to it.

Would British sea trade now be based in western England or the American colonies? Their Carribean holdings would fair better in uring the global cooling, but the Carolinas would be able to hold a more stable population.

I know (hence my hastily edited comment that "the glaciers'll probably just move down the mountains a little") but this won't just move the Little Ice Age two decades earlier; this will kick it off with the most catastropghic failed harvest since... I don't know, 73,000 BC Millions will starve to death in the '49/'50 winter. That's the problem, not the cooling over the next decade.

(So in retrospect I don't know why I posted that map at all. Hyperbole, I guess. :eek:)
 
The idea of a new island in the North Sea is quite interesting. Dogger Bank, maybe? How long would it take until this new island would be inhabitable?

Figure within three years. The area itself is not as seismically active as other areas, although in the 60's there was a huge quake eminating from the Dogger Bank. Surtsey off the coast of Iceland took only four years to form, and this is in a highly geologically active zone OTL. Life started to make a foothold here almost immediately. Unfortunately the island is already starting to noticably erode.

The Dogger Bank island would do the same thing. Since it is not in as highly active zone, the continual upheavel of magma won't be there to renew the island. If plants can get a hold quickly it may slow the erosion by wind down. The erosion by sea I'm not to sure about, I'll try and look up currents in the area to see what effect it may have.

A downside to the impact and the island forming would be that the great fishing in the Dogger Bank would be gone for several years.
 
merchant shipping

On thing to keep in mind in this scenario is that this is truly still the age of sail.

any population movements would be slower than during the PL scenario when steam power is available. Sailing vessels are also smaller. The East Indiaman would be the largest transport available and that will vary with the company..
Danes, Swedes, and French all have East India men on the China trade at this time which can be pressed into service to move some people..but probably no more than what...2-300 at a time and that is a stretch.

Swedes will not be able to go to North Germany because of the local devastation and the already short supplies for the German population still there.
Mind you, how many of those states would survive in an organized form is open to question. Some will no doubt fall under the sway of the Danes, assuming they have an organized gov't.

Temperatures will fall rapidly and the first harvest will be bad followed by an even worse one the following year. the largest die off will probably be in those first years before some kind of sustainable equilibrium is reached and depending on how many can actually escape to southern mediterranean ports and encampments. How viable would that be as a temp. measure.

sea voyages, particularly to Asia would be exceedingly long.

North America will appeal to most as it is shortest. France will no doubt send many refugees to the mouth of the Mississippi if they can It would shore up their claims in the newly explored regions there. Spain has vast terr. in the north in Alta California and Tejas and the Rio de la Plata that could also be settled by refugee settlers. Portugal, southern Brazil ( or perhaps Spain's claims to the east bank of the Uruguay could be strengthened ) all of these are closer than distant Australia for instance, which will probably be explored far earlier this time around by the VoC (they have lost a third of their capital in this event in all probabililty, but are still probably the biggest outfit going) or perhaps the Swedes and Danes in a kind of partnership of sorts. Danes and Swedes do have some posts in Africa and the Danes in India that could be used as way stations enroute to the Indian Ocean..but some kind of partnership with the VOC would be necessary and even desirable to give the three of them bargaining strength with the EIC and the larger Catholic European states.

Let the Dutch/German settlers go to the Cape, West Aust. and Tasmania, the Swedes to East Aust. and the Danes to New Zealand. Their remnant Kingdoms would be the sovereigns over the regions in question. In the Short term..Spanish/French and Brits will be involved mostly in the shorter routes to the Americas and protecting and trying to expand their interests there. They won't even be looking at the Indian ocean because of its distance. Obviously the Br. colonies will also be a repository for some Scandinavians and Germans as well. especially if you have a Hanoverian Br. America develop and a Stuart restoration in the Br. Isles. Just were would the bulk of the EIC merchant fleet end up...? or in whose service in that case.

Some kind of bargain will have to be struck with the Hapsburgs as well perhaps that might enable refugees to depart by way of Adriatic ports. And of course there is Venice, Naples and Tuscany as a ports of exit as well
 
Portugal, southern Brazil ( or perhaps Spain's claims to the east bank of the Uruguay could be strengthened )
In the case of Portugal, being the mid XVIII century, Portugal would probably settle people mainly in the Centre/South and Minas Gerais.

On a general note, IMO, the countries with colonies would attempt to move as many as they could there and the other countries, if they can, they will try to settle people in territories still unclaimed by another power (be it an european power or a strong non-European power).
 
Overall I think those nations with colonies will be the ones to move people out to those colonies, like Archangel said.

Yet, I think at this time period it would be the rich and powerful who mostly do the actual moving. Poor people will only be able to go to the colonies if they already have a boat capable of crossing the Atlantic or if they can pay to board a ship bound to the colonies. So, in this scenario I think there will be allot more dead as the Little Ice Age sets in, than in the time PL was set.
 
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