Prior to the Amer. revolution what colonial region was the most pro-british?

And why didn't the GB/UK do what they did in many a colonies elsewhere, to use any division in sentiments to play groups against each other and keep the colonies from uniting?
 
The Patriots had a GREAT propaganda machine. Ss much so that MANY loyalists feared the return of the patriots even when the British were winning, so many provided intel and food while refusing an overt display. The most pro-British colony was New York.
 
I'd say New York and then Georgia and South Carolina were the most pro-British. In the latter two, the majority of immigrants were much more true English than the other colonies, combined with the plantations, the rigid heirarchy in this regions, and the less religiously based societies led them to have stronger ties to their home regions then most of the middle colonies or New England. The reason North Carolina was much less loyalist was due to the agricultural community being small independent farmer based as opposed to huge cash crop plantation based.
 

SsgtC

Banned
Allot of it was the British failed to realise that a true national identity was forming in the colonies. The UK tended to see the individual colonies as just that. Individual. I think they failed to understand the sheer amount of interaction between the colonies and that the colonies themselves saw themselves more as part of a whole than individual. Obviously I'm generalising heavily here, but there really wasn't a way for them to play one colony off of another the way they did elsewhere.
 
Quoting from Wikipedia and historian Robert Middlekauff:

"The largest number of loyalists were found in the middle colonies: many tenant farmers of New York supported the king, for example, as did many of the Dutch in the colony and in New Jersey. The Germans in Pennsylvania tried to stay out of the Revolution, just as many Quakers did, and when that failed, clung to the familiar connection rather than embrace the new. Highland Scots in the Carolinas, a fair number of Anglican clergy and their parishioners in Connecticut and New York, a few Presbyterians in the southern colonies, and a large number of the Iroquois Indians stayed loyal to the king."

Part of the reason they didn't exploit local divisions was that these weren't less developed colonies with limited access to weapons and information. Stirring up local resentments would do nothing except make governing worse and probably drive people to the Patriots side.
 
And why didn't the GB/UK do what they did in many a colonies elsewhere, to use any division in sentiments to play groups against each other and keep the colonies from uniting?

That's what the Québec Act of 1774 was for. It bought the allegiance of the Canadiens and prevented all of North America from rising up.
 
Halifax was also very loyal.

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OTL Halifax was loyal because it was primarily a (British) Royal Navy port.
Since Acadians had recently been booted off the best farmland (Annapolis Valey), many farmers were recent immigrants deeply loyal to the crown.
Smaller fishing villages along the south shore were not wealthy enough to have strong political feelings.
Pre ARW Nova Scotia's economy was merely an extension of New England's.
 
I'd say New York and then Georgia and South Carolina were the most pro-British. In the latter two, the majority of immigrants were much more true English than the other colonies, combined with the plantations, the rigid heirarchy in this regions, and the less religiously based societies led them to have stronger ties to their home regions then most of the middle colonies or New England. The reason North Carolina was much less loyalist was due to the agricultural community being small independent farmer based as opposed to huge cash crop plantation based.

New York and Georgia had extended and stable occupations by the crown after 1776, allowing Loyalists to feel safe and organize. The point about North Carolina leads to another factor, that Loyalists, whatever the colony, were more likely to be in the century long settled coastal regions. The smallholders inland were more likely to favor revolt. As Winkler points out in his history of the Point Pleasant battle, the smallholders in the interior were paying taxes to support the Crowns regiments, but those were on the coast enforcing tax collection while the militia from the interior settlements fought the Shawnee & others. Unaided by those Royal regiments and poorly supported for rations and ammunition by the taxes they paid.
 
On the contrary, many loyalist in New York colony war constantly afraid of a Patriot return and refused to give covert aid. This is after the capture of New York City and before Saratoga, so the British look like they are winning, but a common sentiment was "glad you're here, but I'm afraid of the thugs who will be back when you leave" which is kind of a stupid thing to think between New York City and Saratoga. I guess they were properly paranoid though.
 
True, but there were better situated than Loyalists in Philidelphia, Boston, ect... New York did provide a few Loyalist regiments that actually fought. I dont remember Philidelphia providing any.
 
They were better than poor Loyalists in Philadelphia (and there weren't any surviving lyoalsits in Boston to compare to on the account of evacuation or deadness), but even the ones in New York were afraid.
 

Anaxagoras

Banned
The failure of the British to properly assist and organize the Loyalist population was their single greatest failure of the war.
 
OTL New York City was pro-British because it was a major port and frequently traded with the U.K.
The Carolinas were loyal because plantation owners sold thier cash crops (cotton, tobacco, etc.) to British merchants.

Meanwhile, New England desperately needed more farmland to feed its expanding population. The whole American Revolutionary War started with Virginia land surveyors expanding g into French lands in the Ohio and Mississippi River Valleys.

Reimbursing Loyalists was a painful, slow process that dragged out many years after the war. I suspect that only wealthy loyalists -with powerful friends - received compensation.
 
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