On 10/24/2021 1:23 AM, Chrysi Cat wrote:
> On 10/23/2021 10:02 PM, Louis Epstein wrote:
>> The Horny Goat <lcraver@home.ca> wrote:
>>> On Thu, 21 Oct 2021 02:53:38 -0000 (UTC), Louis Epstein
>>> <le@top.put.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> The Horny Goat <lcraver@home.ca> wrote:
>>>>> On Wed, 20 Oct 2021 00:50:26 -0000 (UTC), Louis Epstein
>>>>> <le@top.put.com> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> The Horny Goat <lcraver@home.ca> wrote:
>>>>>>> On Mon, 18 Oct 2021 20:13:38 -0000 (UTC), Louis Epstein
>>>>>>> <le@top.put.com> wrote:
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> The Horny Goat <lcraver@home.ca> wrote:
>>>>>>>>> On Mon, 18 Oct 2021 00:15:53 -0000 (UTC), Louis Epstein
>>>>>>>>> <le@top.put.com> wrote:
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>> There is no POD before 1812 so the Lousiana Purchase and Lewis &
>>>>>> Clark
>>>>>> expedition happen as in OTL.Orleans Territory has become the state
>>>>>> of Louisiana before it becomes a crown colony.The rest of the
>>>>>> Purchase
>>>>>> is Missouri Territory.
>>>
>>> Thanks for the clarification on the Louisiana Purchase territories - I
>>> knew Louisiana had become a state by 1812 but was unclear whether the
>>> remainder was still a single territory or had been chopped up further.
>>> I was not at all in doubt who owned those lands in 1812 :)
>>>
>>> (Obviously in OTL it DID get chopped up between 1812 and 1860 but I
>>> would have to refer to my books to get the details - I don't have
>>> state dates of joining the Union committed to memory except for AZ, AK
>>> and HI - the latter two being during my childhood and AZ as the answer
>>> to who were the most recent presidential candidates not to be born in
>>> a US state. The answers to that are Goldwater - born two years before
>>> AZ statehood - and McCain - born on an overseas US naval base (which
>>> ought not to be that big a surprise as his father was a serving
>>> Admiral))
>>>
>>>>> In the context of 1812 I cannot imagine the Louisiana Purchase
>>>>> territory all being ruled from New Orleans particularly once railway
>>>>> construction began.
>>>>
>>>> OTL Missouri Territory as of 1812 included the Louisiana Purchase
>>>> EXCEPT for the already-formed State of Louisiana,and was based in
>>>> St. Louis...that's what would be inherited by the Empire.
>>>> Between then and 1834 it might or might not be redivided or
>>>> reorganized.
>>>
>>> I completely agree - I'm just saying once railway construction starts
>>> that pretty much mandates either statehood or separate territory
>>> status for quite a few places.
>>
>> Railroad construction is pretty limited by 1834.
>> I suppose after the slavers are suppressed there might
>> be plans for a transcontinental route that would not enter
>> Mexico.
>>
>
> This, however, is also a case of "being in the Empire might speed up the
> timetable anyway"; UK rail technology ran ahead of US into the 1880s at
> least IOTL. Think about what the UK had by the time of the driving of
> the Silver Spike on the Kansas Pacific at Strasburg, in particular, but
> most of that had already been completed before the Golden Spike a year
> before.
>
> Well, assuming that Horny's wrong, and someone in London decides to try
> to keep all of Louisiana. If they instead just let Spain, as an
> erstwhile ally. have the Kaw, Platte and Yellowstone watersheds, then
> there's really no great need for a railroad west from St. Louis to much
> of anywhere. I suppose Council Bluffs is still a good place for a town,
> and to run a railroad to, but I'm not sure anything *resembling* a great
> route from there up the Missouri's left bank and then out to the Oregon
> Country exists (and out to Vancouver or points north is WORSE). North of
> South Pass, the Rockies are a BEAR to cross.
>
> There is a REASON the Great Northern and Canada Pacific railways were
> completed around the start of the C.XX, and it's not *just* that the
> demand for them didn't exist until then. Even the tunnel-free routes
> needed tech that 1860 wouldn't have IOTL, let alone the 30s.
>
> If you don't have access to the Great Divide Basin (or South Pass, but
> the rationale for letting Spain->->Mexico have the Great Divide Basin
> and NOT South Pass is pretty limited) or to the path OTL's Southern
> Pacific--ATSF combined line (which in Horny's version of this timeline
> is VERY safely within Mexico except at its head, where you can see BNA
> across the river from OTL-Atchison) traces, you really don't have a
> great reason to want to railroad across the continent sooner than that.
> You may WELL have a very good reason to want to increase the speed of
> WATER transportation and in particular to build either the Nicaragua or
> Panama canal, but of course those canals *also* require tech that can't
> exist much before 1890. Though an overland ship-transportation railway
> may be available sooner and even transshipping everything and having
> shipping routes timed to intersect at ends of a "normal" railway might
> be a thought.
>
>  And THEORETICALLY, there's a bottom limit for time on water--EVEN ONCE
> YOU HAVE STEAM AND POSSIBLY EVEN IF THE TURBINE COMES EARLY-- that isn't
> less than 2 1/2 weeks between New York (Washington almost CERTAINLY
> having been reduced to a near ghost-town) and Vancouver [WITH some sort
> of crossing at Central America, rather than rounding the Horn!] and may
> well be greater, though still much better than you'll get without rails
> if you cross the land instead.
>
> Basically, British North America with Louisiana and Oregon but without
> the right-bank-of-the-Missouri basins is likely a backwater west of the
> Minnesota River-Mississippi River confluence and east of Celilo Falls,
> indefinitely. OTL-Missouri might be the exception.
>
> It also has very few extra mineral-resource locations over what the
> Empire had access to IOTL. There's a reasonable part of OTL-Montana and
> the Iron Ranges of OTL-Minnesota, but otherwise, the
> Kansas-Oklahoma-Arkansas-Missouri lead belt is in Mexico by this time
> after having become Spanish after the reincorporation of the States, and
> the Cascades and Oregon Coast Range are much more heavily hit for timber
> than for ore.
>
> The problem is, the British have no way of KNOWING that without the
> entirety of what Washington claimed to be Louisiana, they're basically
> buying a white elephant that will bleed lives--and not all of them clad
> in red-- if settled and money if the First Nations are allowed to
> continue to remain entirely nomadic. (Of course, if they DO claim the
> entirety, we get back to how NIGHTMARISH the Adams-Onis southwestern
> border was, and how no one will know it for decades because even the
> first New Mexican settlers in OTL-Colorado were already US citizens as
> the border had crossed THEM.)
>
> Americans having an annoying knack for filibuster of the non-Senate
> sort, they *may* sneak into Mexico and find out how much more
> mineral-rich that country is. They obviously can't force a
> Mexican-American war before the Second American Revolution, but perhaps
> after it, if Westminster or the Palace think that they need the "Pike's
> Peak" or California gold to recover?
>
>
>
>

Ugh. "Mexican-British War", obviously, since there's no way the South is
"re"gaining its independence.

>
>
>>>>>>> One aspect to this scenario is that if what is essentially Canada
>>>>>>> and
>>>>>>> the United Stated merged as a result of the *War of 1812, that
>>>>>>> almost
>>>>>>> certainly changes the ethnic balance in Canada and equally certainly
>>>>>>> means an ethnic settlement along the lines of Lord Durham's report
>>>>>>> never happens. That leads to a radically different present day
>>>>>>> outcome
>>>>>>> for the present territory of Quebec than now exists.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> I can't see either Britain or your version of America offering
>>>>>>> French-speaking Quebecers a deal remotely as good as what they
>>>>>>> got and
>>>>>>> I especilally see no way for a dominantly French-speaking state on
>>>>>>> mainland North America in your scenario.
>>>>>
>>>>> But yes I do think your POD of 1812 is dubious given the number of
>>>>> troops required and what in our TL those troops were then doing -
>>>>> though perhaps your scenario is plausible with a slightly earlier
>>>>> (e.g. 1807-08) POD when the British Army was less engaged vs Napoleon.
>>>>>
>>>>> I suggested 1807 because it was well after both Trafalgar and
>>>>> Austerlitz but before Britain was heavily engaged in the Iberian
>>>>> perninsula which was of course the major British land engagement of
>>>>> the Napoleonic wars.
>>>>
>>>> Madison picked a fight with Britain,Jefferson had not done so.
>>>
>>> Yep - and one wonders whether the Napoleonic wars would have ended
>>> earlier without the War of 1812.
>>>
>>> My guess would be no as by 1812 (a) Britain DEFINITELY ruled the waves
>>> after 1805 and the French Navy was a non-entity and (b) other than
>>> carrying on in Spain did not really have the land strength to compete
>>> with the sizes of armies that took the field in 1812-1814 elsewhere in
>>> Europe.
>>>
>>> (In fact the ONLY navy that challenged the Royal Navy even a bit in
>>> that era was the USN which fought an effective frigate war but would
>>> have quickly been smashed in a Trafalgar type battle as they didn't
>>> have 74s nearly on the scale of the RN)
>>>
>>> Britain DID take part in the battles of 1814 mostly in the south which
>>> I know mostly because my mother's 5x great-grandfather was wounded at
>>> Toulouse, 1814. (And after that while many of the men of her family
>>> served it was in the navy not army)
>>
>> -=-=-
>> The World Trade Center towers MUST rise again,
>> at least as tall as before...or terror has triumphed.
>>
>
>

--
Chrysi Cat
1/2 anthrocat, nearly 1/2 anthrofox, all magical
Transgoddess, quick to anger
Call me Chrysi or call me Kat, I'll respond to either!