Plausibility Check: Louisiana as a country

Once over the ocean, most would-be writers will be just too busy surviving to have time to write. Most OTL writers had either a an european market to their writings or/and a position giving them lots of free time. Neither would be found in the struggle for food in the colonies.

Not true at all. Brazil and Haiti were snake pits, to be sure, but larger colonies in milder climates with merchant & artisan classes and yeoman farmers far removed from the seat of power had a great deal of time for thinkin' and plottin'.

Mexico is a good example. By the mid 1700s it had universities and intellectual book clubs (openly reading 'banned' Enlightenment literature) and home grown radical dissidents and several full time operating printing presses that kicked out pamphlets and books that called into question the legitimacy of centralized colonial government and the role of the church as oppressor. Mexico was ripe territory for rebellion by the time Miguel Hidalgo moved up from Peru and joined a liberal book club in Guanajuato.

And this occurred not because dissidents were exiled; it happened because educated people who were the descendants of earlier immigrants read and thought about the ideas of the age and drew their own conclusions.
 
Aha! This has some of what I've been looking for for my own Louisiana TL idea, dealing with a larger German Coast element. :)
 
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