Smallest possible Great Power USA?

What is the smallest the United States can be (either at genesis or through secession/balkanization) and still be a Great Power, albeit not necessarily a superpower? Assume a POD before 1900.
 
What is the smallest the United States can be (either at genesis or through secession/balkanization) and still be a Great Power, albeit not necessarily a superpower? Assume a POD before 1900.
Have Mexico hold onto all of its territory and have the British take the old northwest and lock the American out of the West coast, stuck on the eastern seaboard the USA will still be a significant power but it will not only be much smaller but also be in competition with a Mexico that holds California and a Canada that holds a good portion of the Rust belt
 
Have Mexico hold onto all of its territory and have the British take the old northwest and lock the American out of the West coast, stuck on the eastern seaboard the USA will still be a significant power but it will not only be much smaller but also be in competition with a Mexico that holds California and a Canada that holds a good portion of the Rust belt

Can the USA still be a Great Power without the Lousiana Purchase?
 
With the right population level and successful industrialisation, I can see a great power US holding only the North-East. Maybe everything North of (and including) Virginia and Kentucky and East of the Mississippi. I think the resources and populations of this part of the US could match a France or Spain for power.

Now it'd really depend on what happens in the rest of the continent and how friendly the regimes their would work with the US, and also how some economic transport routes would change. For example if the 19th C. Cattle-empires of Texas don't use Chicago as their meatpacking railhead then that'd stunt the Second City and the Mid-West's development.

Of course if you started from right now, the State of California aline would easily qualify as an Upper-Middle power, so it wouldn't take much more territory/population/resources for that state to become a great power.
 
USA could still be a Great Power if it controlled New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and the Great Lakes states.I would say that's the absolute minimum for USA to still be a great power.
 
USA could still be a Great Power if it controlled New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and the Great Lakes states.I would say that's the absolute minimum for USA to still be a great power.
I'd probably throw in enough of New Jersey to make sure that it can control the mouth of the Hudson River, and including Massachusetts/Connecticut/Rhode Island would help just for the initial phase of getting established. On the other hand, you can lose some of the Great Lakes states (Illinois becomes much less important if Chicago is no longer the railroad gateway to the west, and you lose access to the lower Mississippi; Wisconsin even more so; I'd keep the "mitten" of Michigan but the Upper Peninsula is much less important).

Of course, that leaves you with a much weaker US, but one that can probably still potentially be a weaker great power. Note that the US is likely more militarized in this scenario as well, as it's probably surrounded by significant rivals, as opposed to OTL's scenario of being basically isolated from foreign threats post 1815.
 

Japhy

Banned
Henry Clay America is probably as small as it could to maintain a dominant position: Texas as an independent protectorate with minimal borders, possibly copied in California, with the Oregon border dispute settled with the Columbia River as the border between the US and BC. Obviously no Pacific coast doesn't close the US to the top tier but it does hobble things.
 
Any particular region in the US that breaks away, manages a GDP per capita of $70,000 (compared to about $60,000 for OTL national average) and a population of 30 million would have a GDP of 2.1 trillion. If they get nukes and show a willingness to spend 4% of their GDP on defense they would probably be considered a Great Power.
 
I'd probably throw in enough of New Jersey to make sure that it can control the mouth of the Hudson River, and including Massachusetts/Connecticut/Rhode Island would help just for the initial phase of getting established. On the other hand, you can lose some of the Great Lakes states (Illinois becomes much less important if Chicago is no longer the railroad gateway to the west, and you lose access to the lower Mississippi; Wisconsin even more so; I'd keep the "mitten" of Michigan but the Upper Peninsula is much less important).

Illinois has tons of farmland plus is more land on the Mississippi River, and the Upper Peninsula has massive deposits of copper and some iron, in addition to the strategic position.
 
I'd say that a United States that has no Louisiana Purchase and has every slave state secede could easily be a great power. Have the borders be the Mississippi and Ohio rivers and then the historical US borders and I would say it would be a top great power. I don't think a United States smaller than that could attract enough immigration and leverage enough international power to be a great power. Perhaps you could take away New England, but I think that it would only be able to be a great power if New England left in the 20th century or late in the 19th.


BTW the area delineated above has a population of around 100,000,000 and a GDP of $7.5 trillion. That would make it a top-tier world power today, but I think it would be less developed, probably like Japan or Germany. A huge economic power, but not dominant worldwide. It could probably be cut smaller, but you would have to provide justifications for its rise. I think I have a safe bet.
 
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