Chapter 4: Scottish Diaspora
—c. AD 1803 – AD 1810—
“Here Stocks! Here Rope!”
English Dissident’s Taunt
Secret Staircase at the Partingdale House [a] [xc]
While dissidents in London and Windsor were rare, the further you got for the centers of power the more common it became. The reasons varied; for some it was religious. The Unitarian sect [57] that the commonwealth promoted theoretically taught respect for all other religions. However, that did not stop professed Unitarian public officials form actively removing members of other faiths from public offices. Furthermore, many strong Presbyterians and Catholics were very much at odds with certain form of secularism and humanism being akin to state policy. Especially when exiled French thinkers arrived, such as the Count of Saint-Simon and the Marquis of Laplace, who developed their own variation of Unitarian thought.
Others were still secretly loyal to the monarchy, the shock of George III’s abdication was the primary factor that led to the commonwealth gaining power so quickly. Loyalists who were able to hid were forced to pretend to support the commonwealth and only voice their opinions in secret. None of the commonwealth’s standardization laws were popular. The usage of the French Republican Calendar was the most hated {b}, but since the commonwealth adopted standardization as one of its primary ideologies, they were integral to the commonwealth’s identity, so non-negotiable.
In order to survive, the dissidents turned to the Elizabethan era and its Catholic persecutions. Meetings took place in secret, in private homes. Priest holes made a comeback as known dissidents would need a place to hide if soldiers made a search of the house. While most of English dissidents made due with these secret meetings, in Far North England [c] was far worse. With the commonwealth trying to replace Scottish identity with their new commonwealth identity. And the differences between the English based commonwealth culture and Scottish culture made it even easier to find the dissidents. Many families left Scotland trying to flee the reach of the commonwealth. America was the most popular destination, specifically the State of Miramichi [d], a few did try to flee to Laurentia [e] but that was mostly those sympathetic to Catholicism. Expressions of Scottish identity were not more acceptable there, but being further way from the capital meant less chance of being discovered.
§
Taxes, taxes seemed to always be the motivation in Anglophone America. Anger over the levy of new taxes was a main cause of the Columbian Revolt. The failure to levy taxes caused the dissolution of the Grand Council of Columbia. And now the commonwealth set taxed everyone with the same metric regardless of which state they lived in. The average Englishman living in any of the American states saw his taxes double almost overnight as it became equivalent to those living in the British Isles.
Many of the soldiers used in the invasions of the Mediterranean Island came from the American states, despite the American states wanting them to stay at home to defend from a French attack from the north. Now, the soldiers ended up being unneeded as New France did not have nearly enough men to launch an assault and was even conquered. But that did not change the resentment some had for the centralized military. And to make matters worse they had less political influence. Because each states voting power was determined by population, Thames had the largest population of all the states by a wide margin. So, it was able to force through almost any legalization. Dissidents in the American states were able to be much more open. It was still very dangerous to be caught, but taverns and churches were much less likely to report a meeting and there were fewer dissident hunters with a lot more area to cover.
The status of Laurentia was a matter of great contention. All the American states wanted to keep it has a colony. Thames, and by extension the federal government, was much more divided. Some agreed with the American states, while others wanted it to join as a member state after it was successfully converted to commonwealth values. This left the area in hazy legal zone. Its government was not an independent state, yet it was not quite a colony. The only thing that was certain was that area was occupied.
The goal of the New French partisans was also hazy at best. They knew that the war was over. And while they did not realize just how outnumbered they were, they knew that they could not fight off all the American commonwealth states on their own. What was clear was that the commonwealth would never let them live peacefully. The commonwealth’s terms were to abandon everything, their way of life and everything them and their ancestors held dear. And this was unacceptable. Some felt that now Canada had to take care of itself as France no longer would. The Francophones who joined the partisans were not alone. Amerindian allies fought alongside them. And many of the German speakers joined, and almost all the English speakers. The Anglophones [f] were treated even worse than the other groups of Laurentia. In addition to normally being Catholics, the English soldiers viewed them as traitors for leaving the British Isles in the first place.
Of those you did not join the partisans, there was a general sense of despair. They were abandoned by France. The Church could not protect them. And they faced an onslaught of reforms that they did not agree with nor understand. For them the only thing they could do was hid on their farms and hope the occupiers took no notice of them.
§
Meanwhile on the other side of the world, the Indian Commonwealth was in dire trouble. Unlike the English Commonwealth, the nobles that the Indian Commonwealth disenfranchised still had their own private militaries. And now all the nobles had a common enemy. The English loyalists in India also had a strong leader in Sr. Arthur Wellesley. The English Commonwealth had originally considered the trouble in India as part of the general trouble caused by the English Revolution. But when the Treaty of Rotterdam was signed the fighting in India continued and became known as the Second Bengal War. By AD 1806, the Indian Commonwealth was reduced to only controlling Calcutta and the surrounding areas.
§
During all of this, the Cherokee War continued to be raged. The English Commonwealth continued to hold the Cherokee’s backs against the wall. So, the Cherokee continued to fight ferociously to secure more room west. The tribes west of the Cherokee, mostly the Chickasaw and the Choctaw, had been their primary opponents. And they were losing, many members of those tribes decided that it was not worth fighting the Cherokee anymore. So, they followed in the Cherokee’s example, pushing westward.
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Footnote
a. The staircase is located on the right, door ajar.
b. This was only because the Spencean Alphabet Reform was not supposed to be enforced outside of government documents for several more years.
c. The commonwealth tried to rename Scotland to make it less distinct. It didn’t last, but was used during this time.
d. Modern day Nova Scotia.
e. The commonwealth’s name for occupied New France.
f. Which included Irish and Scottish.
Endnotes
57. The Unitarian sect that the commonwealth promoted has no OTL equivalent. OTL Unitarianism does exist in ATL but is considered a different sect in ATL
