Question: How many people lives in the Louisiana Purchase today?
- Thread starter Jürgen
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You’d have to do it state by state and add it up yourself, but all the info is out there via the Census. Actually I guess based on this list you might have to go to county level on some states.
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Yes and I can do so, but if anyone have the information already, it would be a waste of time not asking first.
All information is welcome.
Surely most of this is on places like Wikipedia.
You might have to do more work for the edges, but info on the whole states shouldn't be too hard.
You might have to do more work for the edges, but info on the whole states shouldn't be too hard.
I refer back to post 3 in this thread. I mean is it that incredible to think that someone on this board could have this information already?
Only thing I could find right off the bat was it had a population of ~15 million roughly 100 years after the purchase.
Thank you I roughly calculated the modern number and found it having around 40 million people today. Compared to that there live around 160+ million east of the Mississippi.
While a independent Greater Louisiana would likely have a bigger population than the region have in OTL, thanks to investment being kept local and greater local urbanisation. I have a hard time seing Greater Louisiana even with a early settlement having more than half the population of cis-Mississippi USA.
Keep in mind that it's highly unlikely a Greater Louisiana would retain anything like the borders of the Louisiana purchase. They'd want to make sure New Orleans is defensible so they'd at least have all of modern Louisiana within their boundaries likely a chunk of Mississippi (probably up to the Pearl River so most of the southwestern quarter of the state). And they'd almost certainly have most or all of Texas too in order to further protect their border as well as perhaps a situation like OTL. It's not inconceivable they grab everything to the Continental Divide and they'd likely try and get a Pacific port through either the Pacific Northwest or through Sonora. The former is easier since the area was nominally unclaimed and they'd have plenty of fur trade interests to give them a good position for negotiation there (even if they get far less land than the US did OTL), while the latter they'd have to seize a bunch of land from Spain/Mexico.
I mean it depends, if Spain keeps Louisiana territory I expect it to have perhaps half the population of OTL as an independent country today with half of that in New Orleans and area. Politically major problems as New Orleans people outvotes the empty land, and the rural farmers will hate that.
What’s the scenario? No Purchase?
What’s the scenario? No Purchase?
St. Louis is more likely to be the largest city since it would be the industrial center.
One of my early timelines was about a Danish Louisiana. France wanted to trade it for Iceland in 1762 (for stupid reasons, which wouldn’t change the Seven Year War), I was thinking about reworking it. So that would be the POD, it would lead to a greater settlement of the colony from 1762 to 1800.
I agree but more for climatic reasons, you can more easily upkeep a large population in St Louis than in New Orleans and pre-air condition they have a easier time working further north, through you could also end up with Denver or Kansas City as it could be a benefit to move industry away from the border.
St. Louis also has the advantage of the river, being closest to the coal and iron in Missouri/Iowa/Minnesota, and being a border city. Climate too definitely as you said. I'd also see somewhere in the Front Range (could be Denver, could be somewhere else) being of major importance since it has coal and iron and is nearby a rich agricultural area and also potentially larger than New Orleans which has the issue of climate, flooding, and hurricanes. It's highly likely the capital is moved out of New Orleans at some point to somewhere more central and protected so maybe along the Missouri River like Kansas City or Omaha or even a little further west on the Plains.
Really, I think a "primate city" is unlikely to develop in Louisiana since the country is too diverse, there's too many resources spread around, and centralised rule from New Orleans unlikely to last since the farmers and nascent industrialists of everywhere north and west of the Missouri River will have inherently different economic interests than the slavocrat elite. Like Brazil, you'd have two large cities (New Orleans and St. Louis) and then a few other large cities like national capital and somewhere in the Front Range of Colorado.
I almost swear you told me before, but in case: I didn't know Denver had such abundant resources. Minerals makes sense, but agricultural surprises me. Is it on any trade routes accessible pre-railroads or not as well?
Denver grew up as a major gold rush center and transportation hub and nearby Pueblo was one of the most important steelmaking towns west of the Mississippi because of the iron and coal in Colorado, New Mexico, or Wyoming so it's safe to say the Front Range has plenty of potential. Agriculture is because Eastern Colorado produces a huge amount of grain and makes good ranching land.
OTL by the time settlement happened it was well-explored by mountain men and other trappers by that time and both the Arkansas River and South Platte River lead to that area.
You’d also have to go outside the United States as the purchase included territory that’s now part of Alberta and Saskatchewan.
Nominally I agree but that ceded is not that big in area alongside, I imagine, being extremely sparse in population that it will barely make a difference included or not.
Also you'd have to omit some areas, like the Red River Valley in the eastern Dakotas and western Minnesota, which would likely remain Canadian, being a part of Selkirk's settlement... breaking it down by counties would be time-consuming and not precise, but could give you a fairly good estimate....
