WI: Acadia remains French after the Seven Years War

Rush Tarquin

Gone Fishin'
Imagine France keeps Acadia during the Seven Years' War. If you want a specific scenario as to how this happens, go with Anaxagoras' 'God is a Frenchman' with French victory in that war in general and in the North American theatre in particular.

Anyway, what is Acadia's subsequent development and history like? How does it differ from OTL Quebec in the long term?
 
If God is a Frenchman then he would have surrendered to Satan by now :D
When do people start to realise that French surrender jokes aren't funny. Especialy on this site, where people should actualy know history, French surrender jokes should not be made, because of how stupid and unrealistic they are.
 
Last edited:
Very funny national cliché.

The french could say it's very easy to talk courage when one is protected by the sea or the ocean or when one has been waiting someone else to do the toughest job before fully committing oneself.

Geography is by far the most important criterion. Netherlands and France, and I would also add the ottoman empire, lost ground to a large extent because they lacked coal and iron when these were the key ressources.
The UK, Germany and the US became world powers because they had plenty of these ressources. :D

To answer the question, I start by ... a question. What kind of Acadia are we talking about ? The small province of Acadia, the whole french provinces north of the Ohio river, or the whole french possessions in north America including in 1756 ?

If A, it is only the area of today's Québec, then it means the British have won the seven years war but have accepted to let the french colonists be ruled by the french in a colony no longer big enough to be a threat. So you can have the french colonists still feel like a small State surrounded by a very powerful and rather hostile neighbour.


If B, it is the big map, I would say it depends much on the extent to which the french win the seven years war.

If the result is only some kind of status quo, then there si still going to be a strong pressure from the numerous people of the british american colonies to gain new lands at the expense of the neighbour hereditary enemy.

So unless you have God being a frenchman, you are going to need either the UK and France to make a lastable peace or France to win the next american wars until the french settlers grow enough in numbers to deter the british settlers trying to conquer them.

And so B is going to look like A for almost a century until the french colonists are numerous enough.
 

Rush Tarquin

Gone Fishin'
For details about the initial scenario, look here. At least until the end of the *Seven Years War. What would happen after that is up for discussion in this thread.
 

Rush Tarquin

Gone Fishin'
As far as I've heard, Acadians tended to be from a different part of France than people in what is now Quebec, and so there were some differences in cuisine and dialect. Would those differences be able to persist over the long run with future waves of French immigration and internal migration within French North America? At the time, I believe Acadia only had about 10k settlers.
 
Acadia was northern Maine, New Brunswick, Southern Gaspe, PEI, and Nova Scotia. It's focus of pop settlement was around the Bay of Fundy, in the tidal floods and north shore, the Saint John River, Cobequid Isthmus, and eastern Cape Breton. Anything else that's French NA is coinsidering Canada, or Louisiana.

Acadiens tended to hail from the Bordaux region predominantly. While a lot of québécois arrived from northern France.

The trick with Acadia was getting around it. It is a trek to ge from the Saint John river to Halifax, or more importantly in this case for now, Louisburg. Everything had to be moved by boat, over land was not a top option due to the localized farming developments around the Bay of Fundy, where the capitol was at Port Royal.

The reasons Halifax was seen as the spot for the new capitol of Nova Scotia is double. The Harbour, an the Shubinacadie portage route that connected Chebucto (halifax harbour as it was known by the french/Micmac) Harbour to the head of the Bay of Fundy, and at the end of the Windsor Vally, and where the Cobiquid isthmus meets the Nova Scotia peninsula.

A French Acadia into the mid 18th century would mean a much more secure NA French empire.

Maybe, with longer ties to the Mother country, Acadien cuisine moves beyond potato starch, and chicken... Although rappé pie is devine with a drizzle of maple syrup.

Sorry to ramble...
 
If God is a Frenchman then he would have surrendered to Satan by now :D

sorry just had to say that

Isn't there a study somewhere that the French have won more battles than any other European nation (including the British). The French win battles. It's just that they don't win a lot of wars...
 
Isn't there a study somewhere that the French have won more battles than any other European nation (including the British). The French win battles. It's just that they don't win a lot of wars...
Didn't a study of the BBC say the french had the best military record of Europe?.
 
While keeping parts of OTL Canada under French control is possible, anything south of the Great Lakes really not going to happen long run. France never saw its overseas possessions, at least in North America, as a place to send colonists in large numbers and for a variety of reasons they were not willing to accept non-French colonists, especially Protestants. British areas, while not always paragons of "multiculturalism" did attract more colonists and a wider variety - and also don't forget that the British parts of North America were better for farming etc than Eastern Canada as well as not so rugged a climate. The push for land/settlement west of the Appalachians by the USA after independence will simply overwhelm any French presence there, and the Native Americans as well (OTL the British used them to try and block westward expansion for>20 years after independence). Demography. geography, and distance will ensure that most of the OTL midwest will end up being American.

Any peace settlement of the Seven Years War will still give everything west of Quebec or Eastern Ontario to the British - that's what they (and Hudson's Bay Co) really wanted the most as that was the center of the fur trade - which had already begun to tap out eastern fur bearing species.
 
The biggest hurdle for Freance is Louisburg. While being just finished construction in time for the 7 years war, it was out of date in design and really a white elephant. It is the one spot where France can't be lax on if it has any long term goals for NA. It is the doorway to the St Lawrence, they knew it, the Brits knew it, and Manny should have known it, I mean that's his wife. Sorry Pulp Fiction flash-back.

The question I have is can France keep Louisburg surrounded with enough ships to keep the American British raiders, and/or RN curious about being elsewheres.
 
Acadiens tended to hail from the Bordaux region predominantly. While a lot of québécois arrived from northern France.

...

I don't think they came from places that far south. My understanding is that they were more from the regions that are now Poitou-Charentes and Pays de la Loire - areas that spoke a dialect of the langue d'Oïl. Bordeaux is down in langue d'Oc country.
 
I don't think they came from places that far south. My understanding is that they were more from the regions that are now Poitou-Charentes and Pays de la Loire - areas that spoke a dialect of the langue d'Oïl. Bordeaux is down in langue d'Oc country.

You're right, the main dialectual base for Acadian/Cajun French is Poitevin, so at least a significant portion, if not a majority of the original colonists would have come from that area.
 

katchen

Banned
It's my understanding that the French had the option of keeping New France and giving up Guadalupe or keeping Guadalupe and giving New France to the British. The French chose the latter, but it WAS a choice. So ITTL, the French give up a lucrative sugar island to keep Nouvelle France, including Louisiana--in which as it turns out even more sugar can be grown. And Acacia. And Qebec-Canada.
That gets them up to the 1770s. At that point, the question becomes:
Will the colonists revolt against the British with the French threatening?
Probably not.
Fast forward to 1789-1790.
France is in revolt.
Ask the question again, but also ask if the French colonies want to remain under the French crown or Republic. The answer may be NON! And Canada and Acacia and Nouvelle Orleans and Mobile may send delegates to the Continental Congress and be part of the Committees of Correspondence.
After all, at a time like the 1790s when revolution is sweeping Europe, there is no reason why French and British colonials cannot discover that they have more in common with each other than they do their respective mother countries and to work toward mutual independence and confederation and a bi-lingual union.
 
Top