What could get the British to give up Canada in the post-ARW treaty

We talk a lot about a greater United States and these discussions often bog down a bit on the how do the Americans get the area of Canada, given that they didn't have the military to do it forcibly and the Quebecois were apathetic to the idea at best.

Some boundary conditions:
  • The overall flow of history is the same to about late 1777, so the Americans don't take and hold Canada/Quebec in 1775/76.
  • The British will not give up Newfoundland because of the fisheries.
  • The Quebecois are not really in favour of being handed over to the Americans but nobody asks them for their opinion either.
  • Nova Scotia/Halifax could go depending on the perceived need for a Naval base there.
This is a pretty far fetched scenario but I'm trying to get a sense of what would need to happen to get the British to say "Oh, Screw this! Just give the Canadians to somebody and get the best deal possible!" in the treaty negotiations.

I can see it happening in a couple scenarios but I'm not confident enough of my ARW diplomacy to say which is more likely.

1. They give a shrunken Canada/Quebec back to the French. For this to work, I would think the following would have to be true:
  • The British do better elsewhere and want that territory more than Quebec. They keep West Florida and take New Orleans and, by extension Louisiana, for example.
  • This seems to be something of a poison pill scenario...The British don't really want the French to have the territory back but...the British want to spite the Americans, hem them in, and in-the long term have them as strategic competitors with the French and/or the Spanish.
  • I think this scenario actually requires the active part of the war to drag out a bit longer with the British taking more French territory in 1783/1784.
  • Is this too twisty and Machiavellian for the period?
2. They give Canada/Quebec to the Americans. Not sure what would have to happen for this one to work. Possibly:
  • They would be doing this to spite the French, who really didn't want the Americans to have that much territory.
  • The British have taken some territory that the French or Spanish want back badly enough to accept the transfer of Canada/Quebec as part of the final treaties. Is there anywhere that would fit that bill? Havana? Manilla? New Orleans? Dominica?
  • The war went badly enough in the mid-stages (1778-79) that an earlier peace with the Americans was done so that the British could focus on the French and Spanish? No Southern Strategy leading to the point above.
  • This could also have a poison pill aspect in the idea that giving even more to the Americans might be too much for them but I think this requires too much foresight, especially as nobody was sure that the American wouldn't splinter into many countries anyway.
Anyway, any thoughts on the conditions that would have to prevail would be appreciated. The same applies to thoughts that say there are no conditions that would have the British give up Canada/Quebec, if they are well reasoned.
 
Last edited:
Other than the ability to tax North American subjects directly, what really is the benefit to the UK keeping Canada as a part of the Kingdom? Did the British not have enough difficulty keeping down rebellions in their (relatively) small islands (not to mention overseas possessions like India)? Would the British presence not make the border into more of a closed, armed line?
 
Other than the ability to tax North American subjects directly, what really is the benefit to the UK keeping Canada as a part of the Kingdom? Did the British not have enough difficulty keeping down rebellions in their (relatively) small islands (not to mention overseas possessions like India)? Would the British presence not make the border into more of a closed, armed line?

It didn't in OTL, so I'm not sure why it would in an ATL. There was just too much open land between the settled parts of the US and Canada/Quebec to cause any great friction, unless a war was started by London/Washington.

I think the benefits to the British were (in no particular order) Pride; A place for Loyalists to go; and the Natural Resources that came with the place. Taxation revenues were never the draw. I think, at best, the British only ever wanted their colonies, even the American ones before the ARW, to pay for themselves. The Resource Extraction thing has always been a theme in Canadian History.

I guess my basic question/challenge is to understand what set of circumstances would make them forego the bird-in-the-hand that was Canada/Quebec. Note I'm only talking about the Watershed of the Great Lakes, not Rupert's Land.

For example, would capturing South Africa from the Dutch be enough of a trade or would somebody have to march an army through the Citadel in Quebec before the British would let go?
 
Top