A British Louisiana is no refuge for the Arcadians displaced from Canada, so the Cajun Culture of Louisiana never develops, and lower Louisiana has an even smaller population. Without New Orleans as a base Spain can't attack Pensacola over land in 1781, and regain Florida in 1783. On the other hand the Spanish may attack New Orleans by sea, and take it during the ARW. The British were stretched thin in Florida, and the Gulf Coast after 1778. A lot of things could happen. The area was a low British priority during the ARW.
It's been debated in other threads, but the British would have a very tough time attracting White farming settlers to New Orleans. It's not like Canada. It's a swampy subtropical region, subject to tropical diseases, which is why it developed into a Slave driven plantation economy somewhat like the Sugar Islands. The population would be made up mostly of traders, dealing with the trappers, and farmers from up river. If the British are holding New Orleans, and Florida they'd be fought over in the War of 1812. The British decided that without the 13 Colonies Florida was a strategic liability, rather then a plus, and were willing to seed it back to Spain. New Orleans would be another major commitment. The British would have to decide if the profits from their part of the fur trade passing through New Orleans was worth the cost of protecting it, if their interests could be secured by negotiations.
Much of my ancestry comes from the northshore of Louisiana, in fact some of my African ancestry derives from the Fountainbleu Plantation founded by
Bernard de Marigny but also all the below mentioned groups.
The Northshore and the Florida Parishes by the late 1700s was settled by some:
- Spaniard brothers who received land grants
- pirates who fought for Andrew Jackson at the battle of NOLA
- a British aligned Choctaw population of Sixtown traditionalists who separated from the mixed euro-indian elite led faction that signed the treaty of Dancing Rabbit in Mississippi
- First Catholic Anglos + loyalists from Georgia Kentucky, Tennesee & South Carolina
- Later waves of Anglo-American families that ultimately pushed out the Spanish and created the West Florida nation (4 and 5 being the majority of the population by about the 1770s/1780s)
- Mixed race families of farmers and/or small slave owners who were often (but not always) supported and protected by their Anglo, Hispano and Franco white families up until the early 1900s
- Enslaved and free black families
- Maroons and afro-indigenous camps in Bayou Lacombe, Baou Tfefuncte, West Pearl River
Primarily silvo-pasture/agro-forestry herders, hunters, fishers; they eventually became part of a “Ozone” tourist industry that provided safe lodging for well to do Orleanians during the yellow fever and malaria seasons that plague NOLA.
Eventually these groups were largely screwed over by American industrialist lumber barons who completely denuded the forests that were made prestine first by Choctaw fire management.
There's many opportunities for the Florida Parishes and the parishes east both north and south of them. Point Coupee, St Laundry, Iberville, etc... Were also important parishes that had Creole white, mixed race and black families who'd still persist and exist without Acadians.
What would be interesting with a British Louisiana POD would above all else be the immigration of Creek Confederacy, Cherokee Nation, Choctaw and Chickasaw nationals to the region.
Many of their mixed race elite and white adopted leaders were British men, these were instrumental in the War of 1812 attack against the United States and would likely flee to British Louisiana if Georgia and Alabama north of Mobile were taken by incoming American settlers.
