Would a world without the USA a worse world?

Would a world without the USA a worse world?

  • Yes

    Votes: 126 53.6%
  • No

    Votes: 109 46.4%

  • Total voters
    235
Speaking of Spanish America, TTL is likely to see Louisiana remain "Spanish" for at least a time, which will intersect with the discussion me and @Achaemenid Rome were having earlier about native nations -- thinking about it further, I will grant that British North America still sees demand for new land that will push at least several native nations "away", but depending on how serious Spain is that may not extend beyond the Mississippi. Meanwhile, I do remain convinced that at least several native nations will be significantly safer than OTL as they find a place in the wider British Empire (just imagine Cherokee and Chicksaws forming *Gurkha* regiments).
 
Speaking of Spanish America, TTL is likely to see Louisiana remain "Spanish" for at least a time, which will intersect with the discussion me and @Achaemenid Rome were having earlier about native nations -- thinking about it further, I will grant that British North America still sees demand for new land that will push at least several native nations "away", but depending on how serious Spain is that may not extend beyond the Mississippi. Meanwhile, I do remain convinced that at least several native nations will be significantly safer than OTL as they find a place in the wider British Empire (just imagine Cherokee and Chicksaws forming *Gurkha* regiments).
As safe as the Maori or aborigines!
 
Speaking of Spanish America, TTL is likely to see Louisiana remain "Spanish" for at least a time, which will intersect with the discussion me and @Achaemenid Rome were having earlier about native nations -- thinking about it further, I will grant that British North America still sees demand for new land that will push at least several native nations "away", but depending on how serious Spain is that may not extend beyond the Mississippi.
I agree that this would be the policy, but would it in the long-run stop individuals from pushing on? I'm thinking f.i. OTL Texas.
 
I agree that this would be the policy, but would it in the long-run stop individuals from pushing on? I'm thinking f.i. OTL Texas.
You mean Anglos might "immigrate" into Spanish territory and seize power themselves? I'll admit that's a possibility, though they have to keep away from places like New Orleans with plenty of military resources to fight them off; and even if they do set themselves up, I imagine they'd be more akin to the Boer Republics clinging to their independence (and all the limitations that come with that) than settler republics looking for re-annexation into the British Empire.
 
You mean Anglos might "immigrate" into Spanish territory and seize power themselves? I'll admit that's a possibility, though they have to keep away from places like New Orleans with plenty of military resources to fight them off; and even if they do set themselves up, I imagine they'd be more akin to the Boer Republics clinging to their independence (and all the limitations that come with that) than settler republics looking for re-annexation into the British Empire.
I see a more peacefull migration to some 'empty' areas even promoted from governmental side under the (wrong) asumption this would strenghten their hold on the area.
 
I see a more peacefull migration to some 'empty' areas even promoted from governmental side under the (wrong) asumption this would strenghten their hold on the area.

Nah, the Spanish were dead set to not allow them in, if I remember right. Federal Republic Mexico they ain't, who did made that mistake.
 
I see a more peacefull migration to some 'empty' areas even promoted from governmental side under the (wrong) asumption this would strenghten their hold on the area.

Nah, the Spanish were dead set to not allow them in, if I remember right. Federal Republic Mexico they ain't, who did made that mistake.

It depended upon the Imperial policy of the time. The Spanish sometimes welcomed and worked with settlers but also briefly attempted to restrict Anglo immigration before the Louisiana Purchase. Regardless, depending on the PoD, I don't see successful revolt as inevitable. A reforming Spain that remains in charge of its American territories is a far cry from the weak, unstable mess that was Mexico during the Texas revolt.
 

Deleted member 67076

Interesting. Is it related to no disruption of global markets due to the two decades of on/off war, or gaining independence from Spain ?
Did removing Spain hurt the economies of various ex-colonies ? I assume that Britain would have easily stepped in to fill the gap.
That plus the end of the economic integration from thr 1770s onward and extensive war that created massive economic, demographic, and political damage to the region.
 
Spain/New Spain allowed migration from the US. Danial Boone acted as a land agent in Missouri.

Interestingly, early in independence, Kentucky was considering joining up with New Spain, as they weren't getting much protection from the eastern colonies against the natives.
 
Interesting. So it really was cyclical, then. Since Moses Austin spent years trying and failing to get the government accept settlers moving into Texas. He even quit once and only came back when the Panic of 1819 sank his bank.
 
At the risk of tempering a more optimistic scenario for Latin America TTL, might I ask -- what kind of effect did the Revolutionary Period (1806-21) have on race relations in the southern-ish parts of the Western Hemisphere? Because AIUI, they played a crucial role in the abolition of slavery across the region; if I'm right, than averting these conflicts, combined with a longer lasting Atlantic Slave Trade, might actually have a good number of downsides in the medium to long term.
 
At the risk of tempering a more optimistic scenario for Latin America TTL, might I ask -- what kind of effect did the Revolutionary Period (1806-21) have on race relations in the southern-ish parts of the Western Hemisphere? Because AIUI, they played a crucial role in the abolition of slavery across the region; if I'm right, than averting these conflicts, combined with a longer lasting Atlantic Slave Trade, might actually have a good number of downsides in the medium to long term.

Would the AST really last longer in such a situation?
 
Would the AST really last longer in such a situation?
This is a topic I've gotten riled up on the board about before.
The idea that the ARW was a key factor in the successful organizing of British Abolitionism is actually not that controversial when one looks at the debate in full -- in Moral Capital: Foundations of British Abolitionism, Christopher Leslie Brown identifies (correctly, I think) two major schools of thought as to why the British Empire came to ban the Slave Trade in 1807, one about moral progress pushed by abolitionists, the other about the economics of Empire. The latter has its roots in the descendants of British Caribbean slaves re-examing the trade's end in the 20th Century; Eric Williams' Capitalism and Slavery (1944) in particular makes the case that it was economics that doomed the slave trade, and that abolitionists only "campaigned against the slave trade and slavery when it became economically convenient to do so" (Brown's paraphrasing). And the key event to this shift in the underlying economic reality, Williams said, was the loss of the North American colonies.

The other, older narrative has its origins in the first history of the movement, written in 1808 by none other than one of its most prominent leaders, Thomas Clarkson; focusing on the moral character of the British abolitionists and the British nation, it essentially made the case that the "moral arc of the universe [or at least Britain] bends toward justice", a sentiment that would be expressed by future abolitionists (and eventually Dr Martin Luther King). However, even Clarkson admitted that the success of the American Revolution played a vital role in the organizing in his movement, saying twenty years before he wrote his history, "As long as America was ours, there was no chance that a minister would have attended to the groans of the sons and daughters of Africa, however he might feel for their distress".

Brown seeks to look at other psychological motives for the abolitionists and their supporters, connecting the movement and its success to changing views on empire and nation, themselves brought on by (all together now) the success of the American Revolution. But whichever narrative we go with, the role of the America's Independence cannot be denied -- if we go with moral progress, then Britain's loss was necessary for her to seek redemption; if we go with economics, then the imperial economy must first take the hit of said loss; if we go with a change of political consciousness, then we need the previous one to be in crisis.

The fact remains that before anti-slavery sentiment in Britain organized itself into a movement in 1787, it was only that -- sentiment -- and posed no serious threat whatsoever to the vast slave interests in the Empire. To the idea that abolitionism was a trigger for the ARW, well -- the preceding sentence alone would destroy any pretense of taking it seriously, to say nothing of the fact that the Revolution began in Massachusetts (where slavery was far from essential to the economy), or that the Declaration originally laid the slave trade at the feet of the British Crown, or really the lack of any evidence whatsoever (save the odd letter of James Madison, written in the midst of the war, to some tory leaning plantation owners).
See, it's bullshit like this that shows why it's important to learn about the how abolitionism came to rise in the British Empire -- how the loss of the American Colonies (and the subsequently affected revolutions of France and Haiti) was absolutely essential to the context not only for the abolition of the slave trade but the very growth of true abolitionist sentiment into a politically meaningful movement. It's not "America taking credit for abolition", as critics say, but pushing back against this... thing -- at best naive historical determinism, and at worst, willfully blind and contrarian-for-its-own-sake counterfactual narrative -- giving a clearer understanding as to how this fundamental change in the history of Western moral and economic development came about.
Also earlier in the thread:
When thinking about slavery in the 18th and early 19th century (and related topics, like the rise of abolitionism, etc), you really have to keep in mind that we're at least talking about two related but district atrocities -- not only the practice of plantation slavery itself in the New World, but the Atlantic Slave Trade. The latter in itself killed, even in the most conservative estimates, as significant fraction of those transported en route to the New World, as well as making the most brutal conditions of plantation slavery economicallg feasible by providing a steady supply of "replacement" labor; not for nothing has this period been likened to a "black holocaust".

An abolitionist movement that took longer to really get underway, combined with the lack of a ripe geopolitical context provided by the Haitian Revolution and Napoleonic Wars, would most certainly mean the height of the Atlantic Slave Trade continues longer (possibly 25 years).
 
If the British held onto the Thirteen Colonies, the British Empire would likely remain a pro-slavery empire for decades longer than OTL. So it would very likely be worse.
Britain would have abolished slavery still OTL because abolitionism would continue to always be present. Actually the US would have technically abolished slavery sooner under Britain in the 1830's
 
Nah, the Spanish were dead set to not allow them in, if I remember right. Federal Republic Mexico they ain't, who did made that mistake.
Strange. https://tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/mpl01 shows that Spain was willing to allow some foreign immigration. In Texas, Moses Austin's original land grant in 1820 was from the Spanish government. Granted, it required the foreigners be Catholic, but that's scarcely any different than Mexican requirements that Moses Austin's son secured from the Mexican government after Mexican Independence.
Also, by 1820 Nacogdoches was experiencing an influx of Anglo-American immigration which may not have been directly tied to the pending impresario land grants.

I'm not sure I'd agree that Spanish acceptance of immigration would be lower than Mexican, but you'd not hear me disagree that a stronger Spain would have an easier time cutting off the spigot than a weaker Mexico.
 
Strange. https://tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/mpl01 shows that Spain was willing to allow some foreign immigration. In Texas, Moses Austin's original land grant in 1820 was from the Spanish government. Granted, it required the foreigners be Catholic, but that's scarcely any different than Mexican requirements that Moses Austin's son secured from the Mexican government after Mexican Independence.
Also, by 1820 Nacogdoches was experiencing an influx of Anglo-American immigration which may not have been directly tied to the pending impresario land grants.

I'm not sure I'd agree that Spanish acceptance of immigration would be lower than Mexican, but you'd not hear me disagree that a stronger Spain would have an easier time cutting off the spigot than a weaker Mexico.

Yeah, it was already mentioned this was more like a cycle of accepting and not accepting. Moses succeded in 1820, but he had spent years before unable to get one. The people moving into Nacogdoches in 1820 was more a result of the Panic of 1819. IT drove people westward in search for cheaper land to buy (another big butterfly, if no USA means no Panic of 1819, or at least, not as strong; also, the Panic was what made Moses try again in getting a land grant in the first place after he had quit). The real influx of American immigration started in 1824, when Mexico passed the 1824 Colonization Law (the Impressario land grants).

And your'e right the Spanish would've had a better control of the situation. For once, the Colonization Law might've not even passed.
 
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Britain would have abolished slavery still OTL because abolitionism would continue to always be present. Actually the US would have technically abolished slavery sooner under Britain in the 1830's
That would be nice. But the logic that a greatly expanded empire would behave in the same manner as OTL seems a thin reed.
Let's agree that if one presumes a British North America, then it seems likely we'll see colonial representation within Parliament. Civil unrest in the colonies necessitates this eventually.
Others have said, rightly so, that putting the vast cotton production of the southern colonies into the domestic British imperial economy will drastically change the balance of power vis a vis cotton and slavery. It will also affect the balance of power in parliament.

It's not inconceivable that in a world where British mercantilism is going strong, (and cotton production is pretty much a classical example of mercantilism), cotton production could climb to as much as 300,000,000 lbs by 1830 if the cotton gen was invented and if British textile mills developed as IOTL. These are not guaranteed things (what is in Alt history?) and changing those would change the underlying economics.

I tend to agree with those earlier who see a mighty bi-continental British Empire wouldn't be the same liberalizing nation that in OTL it became, at least not as early. The economics would seem to me to work against that trend in the 19th century. But, that's just my opinion and YMMV.

(edited an incomplete sentence.)
 
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And your'e right the Spanish would've had a better control of the situation. For once, the Colonization Law might've not even passed.
And that's why someone should distill the information here and start a timeline. :biggrin: Exploring why a stronger Spain would result from a failed ARW would be an interesting read, or the converse, how a weaker Spain results in even greater fragmentation... depending on the direction the TL author wishes to take it.
Feel like writing at TL? ;)

J/K
 
The French revolutionaries were heavily inspired by the Americans, if Washington fails, the French will certainly be discouraged

Nah, the ideas and the right people were there. And if the American Revolution fails, then it means that France is still broke, just with nothing to show for it.
 
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