So long and thanks for all the fish, cousin Johnathon

After the seven years war the 13 colonies get stroppy after some taxation issue and the British government has finally had enough. Say 1770. (Someone in the Treasury has actually done the sums, and they are seen as a ridiculous drain with no real return. And a war is definitely not seen as worth the expenditure. King George is kept happy, somehow).

So the governors and the British troops get on the ships and go elsewhere. Britain has washed their hands completely of the colonists. No dominion or protectorate status. Britain will treat them as foreigners from now on - like Denmark or Norway for example.

We now have the 13 squabbling colonies left completely to their own devices. No British troops to defend the place.

They do not have the revolution to persuade them to form a union now. So do they remain Balkanised, or form a looser union than OTL, or eventually manage incorporation into one entity?.

Do they have a nice series of little wars with each other?.

Will say France try to take over - and get herself bogged down in the tar-pit the British found the place to be in OTL? (And France was in a much worse state financially than the UK was)
 
ASB, but eh I'll try.

New England will immediately form into a union, and Pennsylvania keeps control of Delaware since they shared the same governor till 1776 in OTL. New York and New Jersey stay separate, as do all the southern colonies. They all also keep their westward claims.

Eventually, I foresee two confederacies forming - one north of the Mason-Dixon line and one south, and dividing their claims at the Ohio River (assuming Britain left them the NW and SW Territories in TTL, but hey, this is already an odd enough scenario). Yes, Virginia claimed land north of the Ohio, but it won't be able to counterweight New England's, New York's, and even Pennsylvania's (since it did not formally control Pittsburgh yet at the time of the Revolution, and disputed Virginia's claims to the city) claims.

I say two confederacies forming because the Essex Junto in 1786 and again in 1804 wanted a 'Northern Confederacy' that went south enough to include Pennsylvania, and there's no reason for them to not want the same in TTL since New Englanders will dominate. The southerners in turn might unite under a Virginian ascendency but with powerful input from the Carolinas and Maryland to counterweight this new Northern Confederacy.

You thus see Yankees and Southrons compete for land and influence westwards and across the world as two separate nations.
 
ASB, but eh I'll try.

New England will immediately form into a union, and Pennsylvania keeps control of Delaware since they shared the same governor till 1776 in OTL. New York and New Jersey stay separate, as do all the southern colonies. They all also keep their westward claims.

Eventually, I foresee two confederacies forming - one north of the Mason-Dixon line and one south, and dividing their claims at the Ohio River (assuming Britain left them the NW and SW Territories in TTL, but hey, this is already an odd enough scenario). Yes, Virginia claimed land north of the Ohio, but it won't be able to counterweight New England's, New York's, and even Pennsylvania's (since it did not formally control Pittsburgh yet at the time of the Revolution, and disputed Virginia's claims to the city) claims.

I say two confederacies forming because the Essex Junto in 1786 and again in 1804 wanted a 'Northern Confederacy' that went south enough to include Pennsylvania, and there's no reason for them to not want the same in TTL since New Englanders will dominate. The southerners in turn might unite under a Virginian ascendency but with powerful input from the Carolinas and Maryland to counterweight this new Northern Confederacy.

You thus see Yankees and Southrons compete for land and influence westwards and across the world as two separate nations.

I was wondering if it was nearly wild enough to be ASB territory. But I suppose the British could just be po'd enough to finally tell them to get lost...

However - I am more interested in the possible divergences from OTL, than whatever reason the Brits upped sticks for. e.g. - you are going for a 2 way split here of the good old Blue and Gray.
 
Aye, mostly because the New Englanders felt that the South would dominate any federal union (which, arguably, they did until the 1820s balanced things out as per the Missouri Compromise). There was a reason in 1786, 1804, 1807, and 1812 you saw rumblings of secession in New England.
 
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