WI: No Acadian Expulsion, but OTL Canada joins the Revolution

Gian

Banned
Basically the successor to this.

Suppose there are two PoDs:

1) There is no Acadian Expulsion, and thus the Francophone inhabitants of Nova Scotia are not dispersed (mainly to Louisiana)
2) Quebec somehow manages to side with the revolutionaries (either Guy Carleton is somehow killed or Arnold's military expedition succeeds).

The question I ask is what would the effect of three Francophone states (including St. John's Island/PEI) have on the United States. Would they go settle Upper Canada and the St. John River valley without the flood of Loyalists in our world? How would Montréal develop as a relatively easy gateway to the Great Lakes? And how would the presence of three (most-likely) free states affect the balance of power leading up to the Civil War?
 

Lusitania

Donor
Oh boy we have debated this endlessly until the cow come home. For how would French catholic speaking 3 states exert their influence and demands on the rest of the states who are all English speaking and somewhat anti French and anti catholic?
 
Oh boy we have debated this endlessly until the cow come home. For how would French catholic speaking 3 states exert their influence and demands on the rest of the states who are all English speaking and somewhat anti French and anti catholic?

Yeah, even if it's not inconceivable for the French-speaking colonies to revolt, they'd either go back to Mother France or become their own Canadienne Republique. Although of those three colonies (Quebec/Le Canada, Nova Scotia/L'Acadie, PEI) I'd imagine PEI would reform into the abolished-by-Britain Ile-Royale, joining with Cape Breton Island and with a revived Louisbourg as the colony's population center and capital.

OTOH I do think America would get all its OTL territory though and the Loyalists forced back to Britain, Newfoundland or the West Indies in greater numbers, primarily Britain.
 

Lusitania

Donor
Yeah, even if it's not inconceivable for the French-speaking colonies to revolt, they'd either go back to Mother France or become their own Canadienne Republique. Although of those three colonies (Quebec/Le Canada, Nova Scotia/L'Acadie, PEI) I'd imagine PEI would reform into the abolished-by-Britain Ile-Royale, joining with Cape Breton Island and with a revived Louisbourg as the colony's population center and capital.

OTOH I do think America would get all its OTL territory though and the Loyalists forced back to Britain, Newfoundland or the West Indies in greater numbers, primarily Britain.
As for territories. In 1783 I agree but I think they want to expand west as much as the English speaking setting up conflict.
 
As for territories. In 1783 I agree but I think they want to expand west as much as the English speaking setting up conflict.

Weirdly enough, I feel westward expansion for America and Gallo-Canada would remain roughly the same as OTL. The horror for America being hemmed in by connected French territories yet again, American settlers pushing westwards, Louisiana and Canada not actually being connected by the Mississippi River-Great Lakes since the portage is now solidly in American territory, and Napoleon being enough of a pragmatist to sell the more useless stuff for cash, means Louisiana probably goes to America anyway and Oregon is divvied up more or less like OTL so both get Pacific access. Specific bounds here and there may change but I'd figure it's eerily similar to reality for the borders of these two.
 

Lusitania

Donor
Weirdly enough, I feel westward expansion for America and Gallo-Canada would remain roughly the same as OTL. The horror for America being hemmed in by connected French territories yet again, American settlers pushing westwards, Louisiana and Canada not actually being connected by the Mississippi River-Great Lakes since the portage is now solidly in American territory, and Napoleon being enough of a pragmatist to sell the more useless stuff for cash, means Louisiana probably goes to America anyway and Oregon is divvied up more or less like OTL so both get Pacific access. Specific bounds here and there may change but I'd figure it's eerily similar to reality for the borders of these two.
The independent French speaking country available for French royalist and those fleeing French Revolution. Also they could become a destination for Italians and Irish Catholics. So it could grow much faster than iotl.
 
The independent French speaking country available for French royalist and those fleeing French Revolution. Also they could become a destination for Italians and Irish Catholics. So it could grow much faster than iotl.

Actually excellent points and I humbly concede on that, though I wonder how many would hit up a Louisiana that didn't get the OTL boost of the Cajuns.
 

Lusitania

Donor
Actually excellent points and I humbly concede on that, though I wonder how many would hit up a Louisiana that didn't get the OTL boost of the Cajuns.
A more developed but conservative French catholic country would be more inviting than an small backwater French outpost which Louisiana would of been at time of revolution.
 
The independent French speaking country available for French royalist and those fleeing French Revolution. Also they could become a destination for Italians and Irish Catholics. So it could grow much faster than iotl.

Agreed on the Italians (Assuming there are jobs) , but given the Emigres were either actively fighting to reclaim their estates or were, later, given clemancy to return and buy back their land I don't see why many would be squatting in frozen Canada.
 

Lusitania

Donor
Agreed on the Italians (Assuming there are jobs) , but given the Emigres were either actively fighting to reclaim their estates or were, later, given clemancy to return and buy back their land I don't see why many would be squatting in frozen Canada.
It would not of been the majority of the royals I was talking about the attacks on everyday French or clergy who fled. Even the landless Gentry who were attacked due to their lineage. So for some wishing to flee the purges, and war it would of been an option. I do wish to state that it all would of been depended on the relationship between France and French speaking Canada prior to revolution. If they been friendly with French starting to emigrate to it. Then we could had a refuge.
 
It would not of been the majority of the royals I was talking about the attacks on everyday French or clergy who fled. Even the landless Gentry who were attacked due to their lineage. So for some wishing to flee the purges, and war it would of been an option. I do wish to state that it all would of been depended on the relationship between France and French speaking Canada prior to revolution. If they been friendly with French starting to emigrate to it. Then we could had a refuge.

In that case I question how those French peasentry and clegy are going to get access to the transport required to get to Canada en mass, especially since the government is going to be skeptical of large concentrations of ships and people of dubious loyalty. I could see some of the folks from the later Federalist cities wanting to escape the war created collapse of their local trade and manufactures, but where is the cost of passage and resettlement going to come from when money is all tied up I bread and ship traffic is at a trickle?
 

Lusitania

Donor
In that case I question how those French peasentry and clegy are going to get access to the transport required to get to Canada en mass, especially since the government is going to be skeptical of large concentrations of ships and people of dubious loyalty. I could see some of the folks from the later Federalist cities wanting to escape the war created collapse of their local trade and manufactures, but where is the cost of passage and resettlement going to come from when money is all tied up I bread and ship traffic is at a trickle?
First the relationship has to exist beforehand with old regime And there would need to be aristocrats who are fruendly with French Canada and there would of been a program or agreement in place to allow and encourage migration. These would then be the link and impetuous to continued migration and refuge. The French Canadian could of supplied ships and paid for migration of people too. May not be huge amount but few thousands of the years till end if napoleonic wars. There were also famine in France during that time as well as wars all providing sources for imigrariam.

Irish Catholics another group that could of been recruited but require benefactors to pay for transport.
 
The political organization of the Maritimes in the event of no Acadian deportation but a British conquest is open to debate. I would think the unification of the Maritimes into a single colony under Halifax would be most likely, since the previous mixture of jurisdictions was a consequence of the region being divided between rival empires.

As for French immigration, why not? By the 1780s, the Canadiens and Acadiens have been cut off from France for only a generation. There is no reason why the ties knitting these societies to the north and west of France, respectively, might not be restored.
 
First the relationship has to exist beforehand with old regime And there would need to be aristocrats who are fruendly with French Canada and there would of been a program or agreement in place to allow and encourage migration. These would then be the link and impetuous to continued migration and refuge. The French Canadian could of supplied ships and paid for migration of people too. May not be huge amount but few thousands of the years till end if napoleonic wars. There were also famine in France during that time as well as wars all providing sources for imigrariam.

Irish Catholics another group that could of been recruited but require benefactors to pay for transport.

I suppose a great deal depends on the structure of Canada* in this scenario, weather or not it would take a page out of the American model or adopts a system more along its pre-British roots. Though, what you seem to be talking about would be a pre-Revolution, rather than during the Revolution, migration based on the Ancien Regieme forming relations with Canada and the French nobility signing onto a system that would take away their rural labor just as the price of grain is going thorugh the roof and the lowering of internal tariffs are allowing them free reign to make boatloads of cash from the famine (The urban population is differing, but being they aren't agricultural laborers they aren't as temping to be courted as settlers or as likely to acccept, and I don't think Montriel has a thriving silk industry for example.) Indenture is an option, I suppose, for the truely desperate, but that system requires a stable government in France so the second the Revolutionary tensions kick off things are going to start breaking down. As for once the wars start, no way in Hell in Paris is going to letting her conscripts or anti-revolutionaries escape in any real numbers if they can help it.

A few thousand would certainly be possible in drips and dribbles over the years, but they're not likely to come from the groups that were persecuted during the Revolution (sans the non-landed gentry, who if Canada is offering homesteading might be very sorely tempted. Indeed, if I were Canada that's what I would do and could get a huge swath of folks from France if (assuming we have a nobility) I offer a title and large swath of land assuming you come and pay for the passage of X number of workers with you, as well as pay for the construction of things like a mill on your claimed land)
 
Most migrants to New France did not come from the south, but rather from the north and west. The Canadiens had particularly strong links with Normandy and France, while the Acadiens had links with the west of France (Poitou, for instance). A trickle of immigration had continued throughout the French period. If it dropped off rather than growing hugely, that had largely to do with ties betwren France and New France being cut off by British rule for a century.
 

Lusitania

Donor
Most migrants to New France did not come from the south, but rather from the north and west. The Canadiens had particularly strong links with Normandy and France, while the Acadiens had links with the west of France (Poitou, for instance). A trickle of immigration had continued throughout the French period. If it dropped off rather than growing hugely, that had largely to do with ties betwren France and New France being cut off by British rule for a century.
Yes since the British had only captured New France in 1760s the independence of French Canada in 1783 would of allowed French ties to been easily re-established. The Acadian link would of been more strained but could of easily re-established.
 
Oh boy we have debated this endlessly until the cow come home. For how would French catholic speaking 3 states exert their influence and demands on the rest of the states who are all English speaking and somewhat anti French and anti catholic?
good times right.
 
The French would likely have kept Saint-Pierre and Miquelon, and their fishing rights off the west coast of Newfoundland; that alone could create interesting Franco-Acadian dynamics.

In the longer run, I think there could have been serious potential for French migration to New France that was cut short OTL.
 
Top