What if English beat the French in settling the Gulf Coast?

raharris1973

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Not the first time this has been considered, but apparently the British and French were poking around the area at almost the same time.

In 1698 a one Daniel Coxe gained a patent for the Mississippi Valley to settle a colony there, a 'Province of Carolana'. He set a group of colonists over to the mouth of the Mississippi under one William Banks/Bond but this captain was turned back by Louisiana's founder, Iberville, who successfully bluffed that a large French fleet was already in the area. The point where this happened and Banks/Bond turned back is known as English Turn and a part of New Orleans today.

What if Coxe and Banks/Bond called Iberville's bluff and settled anyways? Not even Biloxi has yet to be settled, nor Port Bayou St. Jean in the New Orleans to-be limits, and so the Europeans in the area would be overwhelmingly English. France's claim to the area would be contended but have to eventually be dropped.

So, adapting off the above, what if Iberville and his whole expedition get delayed, and the English get established first at the mouth of the Mississippi and survive while excluding the French from what became OTL Baton Rouge, New Orleans, Mobile, Biloxi, etc.?

This ends up establishing a British Gulf Coast colony, probably called "Carolana", that is a couple decades younger than Pennsylvania and Carolina on the east coast, but several decades older than Georgia.

What would the culture of the colony be like?


What would the process of competing with France be like?

Would Carolana-based colonists expand any more or less to the east, north or west (for example, east to the Appalachicola river where the Florida panhandle and peninsula meet, east to Texas & Rio Grande) than the French?

Would English presence on the Gulf, if more populous extensive than the French, stimulate earlier Spanish counteraction in Texas, Florida, northern Mexico?

Would Carolana join a continental congress and independence movement if the Atlantic colonies start one?

If so, how does having the Gulf Coast settled and additional southern colonies, in comparison to the whole set of English American colonies, change development of British North America or an independent Anglo-America?

Carolana.gif
 
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raharris1973

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I think that the availability of dissenters or yeoman getting pushed off the land in the British Isles (and advertising for colonists in northwest Europe generally) will result in a higher rate of migration towards alt-Louisiana/Carolana in the ATL. Much of this will be cut down by high death rates from tropical disease, but population should still grow faster than in OTL's French Gulf Coast colonies. The Gulf Coast colony will probably produce a cross-section of rice, indigo, tobacco, sugar and cotton. It will grow to be as slave-errific as South Carolinia. Cattle will also be a business, and Anglo cattlemen may go some way in to Texas before running up against hardening Spanish opposition. I think the Spanish will probably still establish Pensacola and hold the English back from Florida from that location for at least a generation or two.

Carolina and Carolana fur trappers will do some exploration of the Deep South between their two colonies, and some englishmen will probably have done a journey down the length of the Ohio or Tennessee rivers by 1730 or so. I think French fur traders will predominate the Mississippi valley from at least the junction of the Mississippi and Ohio northward for 50 years or a bit more (going forward from the 1698 PoD).

The placenames on the southern Gulf Coast will all be english, scottish or native.

There is plenty of opportunity to butterfly away a continent-wide independence movement, but given the early establishment of Carolana on the Mississippi, decades prior to OTL Georgia and Nova Scotia, I think it would be probable that if a proto-independence movement and ultimately a rebellion does develop through the Atlantic colonies, Carolana would not be exempted from it, even if its the most distant and noncontiguous settlement.
 
Most important question: what city will the british new orleans be a new version of?

I quite like the sound of New Cantebury
 
Most important question: what city will the british new orleans be a new version of?

I quite like the sound of New Cantebury

Well, OTL it was named not really for the city of Orléans, but for the regent of France at the time (the duc d'Orléans). TTL's city will probably be named for the monarch or its sponsor if it is a proprietary colony.
 

raharris1973

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Well, OTL it was named not really for the city of Orléans, but for the regent of France at the time (the duc d'Orléans). TTL's city will probably be named for the monarch or its sponsor if it is a proprietary colony.

But the British sometimes did also name some things after the city of origin (ie, Plymouth) in addition to the colonial sponsor.
 
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