WI: The US and Britain Clashed Over Venezuela in the 1890s?

Except the difference is rather than moving by sea across the Pacific, for example (20,000 men by August), they are moving via the New York Central... Or the Grand Trunk, Penn Central, Illinois, Rock Island Line, etc.

And directly from places like Burlington, Albany, Buffalo, and Detroit upon such places as Montreal (what, 40 miles north of the border?), Prescott, Toronto, Windsor, etc.

So in actual fact getting there is harder. Rather than being able to bring supplies in ships you must now transport them by horse. Rather than have the guns of Navy cruisers and battleships available you must bring your own.

If you read the not unflattering source materials made available on the US preparations for war in Cuba you will see it takes time to concentrate and organise an Army Corps.

Whereas whenever operation Imperial Storm kicks off, the British have to mobilize, cross the Atlantic, and then decide whether they are landing in Halifax, St. John, or Quebec City, or Montreal (although if it is winter, the last one is out); there's also the minor question of whether the Intercolonial and/or Grand Trunk are open or closed, given how close both are to the border for almost their entire length...:rolleyes:

Slightly more of a challenger for Sir Redvers Buller et al to get from Aldershot to the banks of the Detroit than it is for Wesley Merritt to get from, say, Plattsburgh to Montreal.

Best,

Not really as he can catch a train too but that is why you get maybe forty two days as because that is the time frame it took the British to land an entire army Corps inside South Africa and the lead elements made it into contact with the enemy before then. So a proven but slightly harder deployment is being used as the baseline by myself.

After that overrunning Canada in the short term is off the cards. The British can build up forces in Canada at least as fast as the US can based on demonstrated abilities.

It is not a question of US commander being incompetent it is that the resources they need are not to hand, there are no corps staffs, insufficient artillery and insufficient horse transport to supply the army in the field.

In Cuba and the Philippines the horse transport issues were less of a problem as the troops were close enough to ports to have less need of such.

If Grover Cleveland kicks off the war before letter can be exchanged you can have a winter fight, otherwise you are going to need to string the crisis out till late 1896 and still give the by now potentially lame duck President an interest in going to war...though maybe say if Cleveland had some side effect from his cancer treatment that caused unknown brain damage that affected his moral judgement he might draw out the crisis for the express purpose of getting re-elected.

Even so the British can still land at Halifax and Quebec, I am trying to find what if any were the state of fortifications on the US side of the frontier, these might close the St Lawrence to river traffic but of course they cannot close the Canadian railways which are deeper into Canada.

Really a lot depends on when the conflict kicks off and how long it brews for. There are of course a lot more dynamics in play than just the armies and troop numbers.
 

TFSmith121

Banned
Pardon me, is that the Intercolonial Railway?

Consider where the (essentially) one railway in Canada ran in the Nineteenth Century and which side of the Saint Lawrence it was (mostly) on and what direction it ran in relation to the border, and contrast with the lines in the US.

I'll wait...:rolleyes:

Best,
 
Consider where the (essentially) one railway in Canada ran in the Nineteenth Century and which side of the Saint Lawrence it was (mostly) on and what direction it ran in relation to the border, and contrast with the lines in the US.

I'll wait...:rolleyes:

Best,

So you have been waiting since 1885 at the latest for people to forget about the pesky Canadian railways :D

The problem is that the US Army starts moving on the 15th of April 1998 and is only ready to deploy the V Army Corps by 7th June 1998.

Deploying armies by sea is not actually harder than by land, that is the secret sauce of both the British Empire and modern American global power projection.

Organising armies for effective combat operations is the tricky bit.

It might be worth noting the Boers were able to launch their rush into Natal and Cape against only ad hoc Imperial defences but it did not work all seven sieges they conducted were ultimately raised and the Boers had thought to invest in modern artillery.
 

True about how Venezuela managed to piss of France and Belgium but this might be one of those times when hatred of one enemy wins out over another. For example I could see the US negotiating a loosening in the Monroe Doctrine to a degree in exchange for the European powers getting involved as well.
 
True about how Venezuela managed to piss of France and Belgium but this might be one of those times when hatred of one enemy wins out over another. For example I could see the US negotiating a loosening in the Monroe Doctrine to a degree in exchange for the European powers getting involved as well.

Well my first response was that such an effort would be impossible but then again we are talking about straying into madness territory and let us face it which ever President conquers Canada is going to be looking at getting his face on a dollar bill :D

However you would need to make that a very attractive sell as while as explained above the Europeans were not yet locked in their holding of alliance both France and Germany were looking to court Britain against the other.

Also the Monroe Doctrine is...at least at the beginning what this war is all about...however if you could build a party around the idea of the manifest destiny of Canada to enter into the Union which is after all an article of faith with some Americans even today there may be a chance.

Small chance...then again us rodents have small minds :D

(do expect reasoned diplomatic historians to explode in flames at this notion though)
 
Alright no. There is no border change north or south of the 49th Parallel since the US has no actual interest in carving off any of what there was to Canada (the only border dispute at this time was the Alaskan panhandle so that gets settled to the US favor...like OTL) at this point since the border issues have been settled to everyone's satisfaction for decades.

They can demand an indemnity (which is far more valuable to them) for damages caused on the seas or to the coast during the war, but they aren't carving off Canadian territory.

In another aspect they aren't overrunning in either. They can't even dream of threatening Halifax here so the best they can do is probably occupy from Vancouver to Montreal, while being stymied by the fact the Maritimes are only connected by a peninsula, which is protected by the Royal Navy.

Canada is then a negotiating piece, not a spot to be carved up by Manifest Destiny wishers.

Bear in mind, the last time the USA would have had claims on anything North of the 49th - when the British offered British Columbia as indemnities, and the USA took cash instead - the USA didn't own Alaska, and had just fought the biggest war in the nation's history. Cash mattered more then land that time.

THAT time, being the key words. Now, the USA is rebuilt, an industrial and military powerhouse in the throes of jingoism. They would certainly seek some land at the peace tables.

That said, I don't see them taking, say, the whole of Canada. I see them pushing for British Columbia and everything else west of the Rockies, if only to connect Alaska to the lower 46. MAYBE they push for some of the Prairie provinces, which at the time, weren't even provinces and were barely populated, depending on negotiations.

Anything east of Manitoba though, I would agree the Americans would have to cede back to the British. Giving up some underpopulated prairies and a near undefendable Pacific coast that offers nothing more than a coaling station is one thing. Giving up bits of Upper or Lower Canada, which have been British since the Seven Years War, would be another entirely.
 
Bear in mind, the last time the USA would have had claims on anything North of the 49th - when the British offered British Columbia as indemnities, and the USA took cash instead - the USA didn't own Alaska, and had just fought the biggest war in the nation's history. Cash mattered more then land that time.

THAT time, being the key words. Now, the USA is rebuilt, an industrial and military powerhouse in the throes of jingoism. They would certainly seek some land at the peace tables.

That said, I don't see them taking, say, the whole of Canada. I see them pushing for British Columbia and everything else west of the Rockies, if only to connect Alaska to the lower 46. MAYBE they push for some of the Prairie provinces, which at the time, weren't even provinces and were barely populated, depending on negotiations.

Anything east of Manitoba though, I would agree the Americans would have to cede back to the British. Giving up some underpopulated prairies and a near undefendable Pacific coast that offers nothing more than a coaling station is one thing. Giving up bits of Upper or Lower Canada, which have been British since the Seven Years War, would be another entirely.


Actually I think that the point you and many others do not seem to grasp is that America cannot simply snip bits off Canada without ACW levels of expenditure.

It is an idée fixee that Britain has a small army, it is further held to be right and true that Americans have just to walk across the border to win. Yet if you look at the Spanish-American War it took the V Army Corps forty three days from the declaration of war to start deploying...in fact it took it so long that the Navy got ticked off with waiting and the orders to their own Marine battalion specifically included the words "Don't wait for the Army".

Yet if this seems a harsh measure of the US Army's ability to mobilise then it is worth considering the first action of the US following Fort Sumter in the Civil War took until June 3rd of 1861 and involved just three thousand men, it was a whole further month and a half before a full field army was ready to move.

Some folks seem to take the idea that the US Army might need some time to organise as a slur on its competence. Not so, I doubt anyone else ever raised and put into the field a Corps sized command any quicker.

The reason the British are able to respond more quickly in the first instance is that the Army is already organised into divisions and divisions under corps level headquarters staffs who are already organised, further they are reacting according to the then doctrine of Imperial Defence which was predicated on the ability of the strategic reserve held in Britain to launch quickly forth in response to any threat.

Thus in the foreseeable short term the US are not able to mobilise forces more quickly than the British are able to get them to Canada. At least in part because the British already have stocks of arms for their Army, Reserves, Militia and Volunteer Force and have the larger armaments industry.

Indeed given that a fast ship should reach Halifax twelve days sooner than it could Cape Town and a slow ship in sixteen days some might think I am being harsh on the British is saying the Americans have a forty-two day window, however I am trying to make allowances for the fact that in the event of hostilities the British would need to convoy their troops as the USN had an effective commerce raiding force and a doctrine that had practised that notion.

That said, while I can see the British being brought to the notion it is better to make some (though not complete) reparations of financial damages, I doubt they could be forced to give up land without a far greater expenditure of blood and treasure than is being allowed for.

Now a lot would depend on the internal politics of the USA but given the strong anti-war feeling towards this venture in OTL any President would have to anticipate a backlash in the event of the war proving costly to prosecute.
 
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Bear in mind, the last time the USA would have had claims on anything North of the 49th - when the British offered British Columbia as indemnities, and the USA took cash instead - the USA didn't own Alaska, and had just fought the biggest war in the nation's history. Cash mattered more then land that time.

Er what precisely are you talking about? The Alabama claims?

Britain never offered up British Columbia as payment for anything, and they certainly weren't ever in a position to be strong armed by the US government into doing so. They stalled on the Alabama Claims precisely because they had no interest in paying until international arbitration was found to give them cause to. During this time Seward and a few other Americans (and some British anti-imperialists IIRC) floated the idea of taking British Columbia instead, Britain didn't even consider it, and the British Columbians having basically zero interest in the idea sealed the deal.

THAT time, being the key words. Now, the USA is rebuilt, an industrial and military powerhouse in the throes of jingoism. They would certainly seek some land at the peace tables.

That said, I don't see them taking, say, the whole of Canada. I see them pushing for British Columbia and everything else west of the Rockies, if only to connect Alaska to the lower 46. MAYBE they push for some of the Prairie provinces, which at the time, weren't even provinces and were barely populated, depending on negotiations.

Anything east of Manitoba though, I would agree the Americans would have to cede back to the British. Giving up some underpopulated prairies and a near undefendable Pacific coast that offers nothing more than a coaling station is one thing. Giving up bits of Upper or Lower Canada, which have been British since the Seven Years War, would be another entirely.

They could ask, but is the American public really going to want it? For them to take said territory they have to win an overwhelming victory which would see both Britain and Canada see they have no choice but to give it to them. It's one thing for them to occupy Canada, but it's another thing entirely for them to force the concession of the entire Canadian West.

The other thing is that this war would mostly be at sea, where the USN would probably be pretty decisively beaten, which doesn't really lend credence to the idea the US could demand whatever it wanted from Britain.

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Personally I'm in agreement with other posters that a land war is unlikely purely because all it is is a distraction where the US has no hope of seizing the important bases which the Royal Navy would use in this war. I'd think the War Department would realize this as well and not want to risk mainland USA to war. While there would be some posturing on the border I don't think either side is going to want to commit to a fight they can't be sure of winning.
 
The Regular US Army was less than thirty thousand strong which is far too small to form the effective core of a "huge army". Even raising a force of two hundred thousand to fight the Spanish-American War badly over-stretched the available pool of trained officers and NCO's.

For that matter a dire shortage of modern weaponry meant that some troops fighting in Cuba were still forced to carry obsolescent single-shot rifles and ancient Gatling Guns were brought back into service because the US was critically lacking in machine-guns.

as much as I hate to put the odds against my homeland, gotta agree with this. When discussing this scenario, it's often assumed that 'the USA will be invincible on land, the UK at sea." I never doubted the second, but always doubted the first. When you read about how woefully unprepared the USA was for the SAW just a few years later, when the army famously had to buy Krag rifles in a hurry to equip the troops, you have to wonder just how good of an army we could put up against the Brits in 1895 or so. To be sure, we could raise a big number of troops, but we'd have to arm them with things like Winchester rifles... not the greatest thing to face the British empire with...
 
as much as I hate to put the odds against my homeland, gotta agree with this. When discussing this scenario, it's often assumed that 'the USA will be invincible on land, the UK at sea." I never doubted the second, but always doubted the first. When you read about how woefully unprepared the USA was for the SAW just a few years later, when the army famously had to buy Krag rifles in a hurry to equip the troops, you have to wonder just how good of an army we could put up against the Brits in 1895 or so. To be sure, we could raise a big number of troops, but we'd have to arm them with things like Winchester rifles... not the greatest thing to face the British empire with...

Actually the US Army had given more than a little thought to the problem over the years. The Navy took the opportunity of the Venezuela Criss to update their info on Canada and sent a certain Commander Charles Vernon Gridley to make a covert reconnaissance.

Both services essentially seem to have regarded Canada as first and foremost a Navy problem. The reason being that the US Army simply did not have the resources to hand for the job. Therefore the key factor was control of the Great Lakes in order to prevent the British from attacking while they tooled up.

A retired Rear Admiral L.A. Kimberly reckoned the US would need to raise armies of six hundred thousand men to cover both the invasion and maintain the defence of US soil from British threats to the Atlantic and Gulf Coasts at the same time.

Clearly not something that could be done quickly or cheaply.

Interestingly but one concern when it came to the Indiana Class battleships there was only one port in the Western Hemisphere that had the facilities to repair them when they first entered service. It just so happened to be Halifax, Nova Scotia.
 
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