You could almost say that this will lead to... decades... of... darkness???
When I started the thread, I wasn't aware that the POD for DoD was pretty similar. (I've since started reading the 1247 pages of that TL),
You could almost say that this will lead to... decades... of... darkness???
How much of a major seaport was New York City in 1812? It's my understanding (and I could be misinformed) that Boston, Philadelphia and Charleston were all more important. I have heard that the fortunes of NYC didn't really take off untill the completion of the Erie Canal some fifteen years later.
I'm not sure the maritimes would join New England. As a matter of fact, it's really kinda unlikely.
The other thing to consider is that, like in Dod, the rump US is now very slave-state-dominated.
It would depend on what NE does in relations with Britain after seceeding - presumably they would forge closer ties since their threatened trade was the reason for wanting to split. But to go far enough to eventually unite with the Maritimes? Maybe, if they were admitted as member of the Commonwealth. But the flipside is that NE is a republic, the Martimes still under the crown. How to reconcile peacefully?
The flip-side to the south being slave-dominated is that NE would be heavily theocratic, at least socially/culturally. This is the land of Puritans and Salem Witch Trials after all. Without New York City as the melting pot of ideas, cultures and mores to influence them [I can reccommend Island at the Center of the World for a treatise on how Dutch Manhattan imprinted cultural openess on American culture], you might end up with an equally repressive regime in NE - econmically open, culturally closed. Just a thought...
Eh, Puritan influence was on the decline in New England before the Revolution- it's certainly not gone and Puritan ideas still ring with some of the elite, but unless independence leads to a major revival I don't think you're going to see a Puritan-dominated New England.
I wonder about the New York-New England relationship, really... I mean, if New York is still a major city (and why wouldn't it be?) What does that mean for the country's relationship?
Alliance with the British I can see (as it's almost definite, I think), but why would they want to rejoin the British Empire? The Revolutionary War is still going to feature prominently in this country's national "myth", as it were.
Or New England industrialises (and doubtless becomes somewhat protectionist), and Britain decides to swap the decreasingly important NE traders for the resource exporting (and much lower tariff) US, and rebuilds a relationship with the latter?
Well the region has always depended on outside foodstuffs... That's why the Intolerable Acts were so intolerable, by closing the port they were quite literally starving the City of Boston. Hm... I wonder if this will lead to an earlier growth in the Maine potato industry. (Though, if you give New Brunswick Aroostock County, as is so common in these scenarios, that's not going to help the Maine potato)
The United States outlawed the slave trade in 1808- I'm not so sure it would come back. There is the possibility of Nantucket whalers taking small islands for bases, but I'm not sure whether this would lead to any formal overseas expansion.
Indeed so. Another factor is the waves of immigrants coming to the continent around this time. Where will they all go? Will they come at all? New England might hold the jobs due to manufacturing, but could they hold such an influx of people?
I suppose after leaving the Union, New England states might reclaim their territory from their charters that they gave up upon joining the US in the beginning, but not sure they have much shot at most of it.
If the Middle and Southern states end up getting a majority of the populations coming abroad then does that ensure they expand west and slowly develop into the power house they could?
If the Maritimes, without a large bribe from Canada or the UK, don't have free trade with New England they will literally do anything to get it. Without that free trade the Maritimes will be even worse of than OTL. If the New England price is formally joining New England, they will probably do so.
As regards the Maritimes and New England, the Maritimes are economically tied to New England. The only reason they joined confederation IOTL was via a large and ongoing bribe (which rather backfired, leading to a century and a half of decline until free trade was restored).
If the Maritimes, without a large bribe from Canada or the UK, don't have free trade with New England they will literally do anything to get it. Without that free trade the Maritimes will be even worse of than OTL. If the New England price is formally joining New England, they will probably do so.
No they won't, because the British would never agree to it. The population of the Maritimes weren't free to decide who their rulers were at this point. And let's not forget that Canada got stocked up with lots of United Empire Loyalists barely a generation or two ago.
Besides, if the Maritimes are economically tied to NE then NE was economically tied to the UK.
This especially goes if NE produce declines in value and importance, since it's likely that the New Englanders would find resistance to the ideas of free trade across their southern border,
as the resentment over secession fosters unwillingness to do business on a large scale. NE wouldn't be able to just demand the Maritimes. No chance.
If New England was de facto part of the British Empire, would that also happen?
Yet in Nova Scotia most of the original settlers (and the Loyalists thereafter in both Nova Scotia and New Brunswick) were from New England. Some of the Loyalists, in the scenario of a successful secession of New England, might potentially go back to New England, whilst some New Englanders might move east, thus making the Maritimes demographically dependent on New England as well.
Also, you're under-estimating politicians in the Maritimes and New England - if they want something, they will get it (eventually).
Eastern border, not southern border, if you're talking about the Maritimes (if you're talking about the rump US, give it a couple of decades and some of that feeling might die down). In addition, New Englanders at that time were staunchly pro-free trade, so they wouldn't mind trading with individual British colonies and Europe.
Even if New England became a 19th-century version of a Commonwealth republic?
It was still pretty damn important at that point, although you're right in saying that it really took off with the Erie Canal. Prior to the construction of the Erie Canal, NYC's major rival was Montreal, IIRC, not the other American cities. Here's an 1810 quote from a French consul reflecting views towards NYC at that time period:
"its inhabitants, who are for the most part foreigners and made up of every nation except Americans so to speak, have in general no mind for anything but business. New York might be described as a permanent fair in which two-thirds of the population is always being replaced; where huge business deals are being made, almost always with fictitious capital, and where luxury has reached alarming heights... It is in the countryside and in the inland towns that one must look for the American population of New York State."
(The Perspective of the World, by Fernand Braudel)
I don't know about Montreal, but the most important American rival to New York (and, in fact, the most important trading city on the Atlantic coast at this time) was Boston. Boston was where the wealth was, Boston was where the commerce was, and Boston was where the bankers were.
Meh. Montreal might've just been NYC's rival in terms of supplying the Midwest. My point still stands; NYC has always been an incredibly important city.