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:
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:
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.
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?
- 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.
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