English Canada/French Carolina: A Timeline

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mrcubfan415

Gabingston said:
800px-Mapa_del_Virreinato_de_la_Nueva_Espa%C3%B1a_%281819%29.svg.png
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So Honduras was called Comayagua at this point? Interesting!

In the present day IOTL, Comayagua is a city in Honduras: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comayagua
Apparently, it's famous for its colonial architecture, and is also home to the oldest clock in the Americas! :D

(Edit: Updated the first sentence)
 
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Gabingston

Gabingston

I'm thinking of some war between Russia and the Ottoman Empire over control of the Balkans. Maybe there's a revolt in Greece against Ottoman rule, and the Russians, wanting to aid their Orthodox Brothers and weaken the Ottoman Turks throw their support behind the rebellion.
 
Gabingston

Gabingston

I've been planning on a Portuguese Northern Australia, but I'll be honest, a Prussian/German Northern Australia is quite tempting, hear me out.
Portugal at this point is a small European country that is way past its glory days in the 16th and 17th centuries. They have the colonies of Brazil, Angola, Moçambique and the West Coast of India, they're pretty overextended is what I'm saying. Meanwhile, Prussia has been a rising European power for the last century, by this point having established hegemony over Northern Germany, and while they'd never been a colonial focused nation (Bismarck in particular viewed colonies as a waste of resources IOTL, but he may be butterflied here), having a colony would cement them as one of the big boys of Europe. With Northern Australia being one of the last sparsely populated (because most of it looks like this) and uncolonized regions of the world, this would be a prime location for a German settler colony (by "prime" I mean that 90% of it is a dang-near uninhabitable wasteland, but at this point there is nowhere else to go for a settler colony). That being said, Portugal has the nearby colony of East Timor, while Prussia would have to navigate the entire Atlantic and Indian oceans to get Down Under, but hey, if the Danes and Swedes can colonize New Zealand, I don't see why the Germans can't colonize Northern Australia, or at least parts of it.
An idea I have about this is that Portugal will colonize the Northern Territory, while Prussia will colonize Northern Queensland (north of the Tropic of Capricorn basically). At the very least, I'm gonna have a Prussian New Caledonia, just as a consolation. However, I'ma leave it up to you guys, so I present to you a strawpoll over the fate of Northern Australia (which will not be good for the Aborigines, but that's a topic for another time). https://www.strawpoll.me/18568117
 
Gabingston

Gabingston

Ok, the poll so far is 4 votes for Northern Australia being entirely Portuguese, and 2 Votes for A split between Portugal and Prussia, and one of the votes for the latter happens to be from me, so I think it's safe to say that Northern Australia will be a Portuguese colony. I'll get to work on the Portuguese Australia update.
 
Gabingston

Gabingston

Le Quotidien
1 Septembre 2019​
The previously mild 2019 hurricane season has now gotten a lot more interesting, and a lot scarier too. After skirting by Puerto Rico, quite a relief for the island, which has seen several devastating storms in recent years, rapidly grew into a monstrous cyclone, with winds of 300 Kilometers/Hour. The storm is forecast to parallel the east coast of Florida, although landfall on the mainland is still a possibility. Preparations have been taken to reduce the impact of the storm, both in the case of a landfall or of a near miss.
 
Part 44: Portuguese Australia
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    • Gabingston

    Gabingston

    Part 44: Portuguese Australia​

    The Portuguese Empire had been in decline for a good century or so by the Mid 19th Century. Once viewed as a European powerhouse, Portugal was now viewed as a backwater, overshadowed by its semi-independent dominion of Brazil, which was dozens of times larger than the motherland and had long surpassed it in terms of population. Portugal also still possessed the colonies of Angola, Moçambique, East Timor, Diu and Goa, but it was clear by this point that Portugal wasn’t the superpower that it’d once been. In order to boost Portuguese prestige, the crown began to search for a new colony.

    The conclusion of the search was that the best place left to colonize would be the unclaimed northern part of Terra Australis. The colony of East Timor was nearby, and while most of northern Australia was utterly useless for agriculture, it was speculated based on the recent gold discoveries in the south that there’d be rich mineral resources. Thus, on the Fifteenth of June of the Year of Our Lord 1800 and 54, the first fleet of Portuguese Australia departed from Lisbon. Five and a half months and over 15,000 miles later, they arrived in Terra Australis, founding the city of Advento (named because they arrived at the beginning of Advent). The settlers constructed a fort on top of a local hill, built a pier for fishing and for arriving ships and, most importantly, they cleared land and planted sugar. Sugarcane had long been a ridiculously valuable cash crop, fueling the European colonial empires in the New World. The French colony of Saint-Domingue was the most profitable colony in the world, and other sugar colonies were not far behind, including Portuguese Brazil. There’s no need to get into the cruelty and inhumanity of the system of enslavement that made the sugar industry possible, at least at this moment, and it’s not relevant to this post, because the Portuguese decided not to use African slave labor in their Australian colony.

    Just a year and a half after the colony’s founding, the first Indian coolies arrived in Advento, hired to work on the sugar plantations as indentured servants. Originating largely in the areas that were under Portuguese rule on the West Coast of India, the Indian coolies could basically be considered one or two pegs above African slaves, the only difference being that Indians worked for 5-10 years and had the option to return home. Other indentured servants came from China and Southeast Asia (the Philippines in particular). By 1870, the population of Portuguese Australia was 34,000, of which 18,000 were Indian, 8,000 Portuguese, 5,000 East Asians and 3,000 others, including the first mixed-race Mestiços. The colony quickly spread up and down the northeastern coast of Terra Australis, to the north there was Baía Trindade, and to the south was Necessidades. The British, being age-old allies of the Portuguese didn’t really mind Portuguese settlement north of them, and they quickly set a border at 23.5 Degrees South, or approximately the Tropic of Capricorn. Now having their border set at the Tropic, the Portuguese Colony adopted the name of Capricórnio (the Portuguese word for Capricorn) and got on their merry way.​
     
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    • Gabingston

    Gabingston

    So, my thoughts on Greece are that the Greeks revolt, get swiftly crushed by the Ottomans, but the Russians intervene on the side of the Greeks. Here's one minor issue with that: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crimean_War
    IOTL when there was a war between Russia and the Ottoman Empire, Britain and France both intervened on the side of the Ottomans. Now, it may be different ITTL, considering that the Russians are supporting a Rebellion ITTL, but it's still a possibility. What do you guys think?
     

    mrcubfan415

    Gabingston said:
    So, my thoughts on Greece are that the Greeks revolt, get swiftly crushed by the Ottomans, but the Russians intervene on the side of the Greeks. Here's one minor issue with that: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crimean_War
    IOTL when there was a war between Russia and the Ottoman Empire, Britain and France both intervened on the side of the Ottomans. Now, it may be different ITTL, considering that the Russians are supporting a Rebellion ITTL, but it's still a possibility. What do you guys think?
    Click to expand...
    I think Britain might support the Greeks (like they did in WWII IOTL). Dunno about France though. *shrugs*

    Edit: France would probably support Greece as well. IOTL, France established diplomatic relations with Greece just three years after Greece gained independence from the Ottomans. According to Wikipedia’s article on Greco-French relations (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/France–Greece_relations), they have “strong cultural and historical ties”.

    Edit 2: Apparently, both Britain and France ended up supporting the Greeks in their War of Independence IOTL: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_War_of_Independence#Foreign_intervention_against_the_Ottomans
     
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    Part 45: Greek Revolution
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    • Gabingston

    Gabingston

    Part 45: Greek Revolution​

    Ahh Greece, the cradle of Western Civilization. Home to some of the West’s greatest philosophers, scientists, theologians and conquerors, Greece still held a large cultural influence on Europe and European-colonized regions over the millennia. However, despite its cultural clout, Greece at this point was merely a province of the Turkish Ottoman Empire, as it had been for the past four centuries. Greek Nationalism had been building up for the past century or so, and by the 1850s, there was widespread discontent across the Greek-speaking territories of the Ottoman Empire.

    Now, the Ottoman Sultan Abdulmejid I was making attempts to reform and modernize the Empire, and there were indeed improvements towards the status of Christians in the Ottoman Empire. However, one minor problem with that was the increased centralization of the Empire, so despite the improvements, the Greeks felt as though they were losing their autonomy, and falling even more under the thumb of the Turk.

    Thus, in the Spring of 1854, a revolt broke out in Thessaly against Ottoman Rule, quickly spreading around the Greek-speaking regions of the empire, before being promptly quashed. However, there was one small little problem for the Ottomans… RUSSIA. The Russian Empire was outraged by the oppression of their Orthodox brothers (even though, once again, things had improved for them, centralization aside, but whatever), and thus intervened on the side of the Greek Rebels, while also supporting Slavic nationalism in the Balkans. Thus, the Greek Revolution turned into the Greek Wars, beginning about a year later in the Spring of 1855.

    The Russians, having a significantly larger army, were able to advance rather quickly along the Black Sea and into the Balkans, as well as fighting their way through the Caucasus. Just as the Russians and the Greeks were outside of the gates of Konstantiyye, the Ottomans sued for peace, considering that losing Constantinople would be a great humiliation, which was exactly the first thing the Russians and Greeks proposed in the peace treaty, to which the Ottomans responded “yeah, not a chance in hell”. Eventually, the Ottos and the Russians agreed upon giving the newly independent Greek Republic everything from the Peloponnese to Macedonia, as well as some of the Aegean islands. Thus, not only was Greece now a sovereign and independent country, but also served as an inspiration for other stateless ethnic groups across the continent to fight for their own independence. I really don’t know how to end this, so I’ll call it a day here.
     
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    • Gabingston

    Gabingston

    mrcubfan415 said:
    Did anyone else hear the Spongebob narrator’s voice when reading this sentence? :p
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    "Ah, the sea. So fascinating, so wonderful. Here, we see Bikini Bottom, teeming with life. Home to one of my favorite creatures, SpongeBob SquarePants. Yes, of course he lives in a pineapple, you silly..."
    - French Narrator, 1999
     
    Part 46: Go West, Young Man
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    • Gabingston

    Gabingston

    Part 46: Go West, Young Man​

    With a rapidly growing population, surging immigration from the old world, rapidly expanding railroads and an expansionist mentality, the Commonwealth of America was quickly establishing hegemony over the plains in between the Mississippi and the Rockies. In 1864, the Dominion Land Act was overwhelmingly passed in the American Parliament, granting 150 acres of land to any American or European settler willing to live on and cultivate the land for at least five years (with that number later being expanded in areas less suitable for agriculture). Settlers, both American-born and European immigrants (mainly British, Irish, German and Scandinavian) flooded into the western lands, solidifying Anglo-American control over the west (at the great expense of the Natives, but that’s a topic for another day).

    By 1880, the American Commonwealth had added the new provinces of Dakota, Oregon, Columbia and Nebraska, with a population of 61.1 Million, with Laurentia still being the most populous province in the country at 6.86 Million people. Mount Royal’s population had continued to boom, growing to 880,000 by 1880, while Kirkeston had grown to 625,000. New Scotland’s population as of 1880 was 4,965,000, with the largest city of Saint John being home to 550,000, many of them Irish or of Irish descent. Other cities like Chicago, Sturarton, Toronto and Bawitigong had also boomed over the previous three decades, as the Great Lakes served as the core of the country, while cities were springing up across the west left and right.

    However, westward expansion was by no means limited to the Commonwealth, as the French colony of La Floride had also been expanding to the south. With a rapidly growing population, it was only a matter of time before the Floridiens expanded out onto the Great Plains. As this area was too dry to support cash crop plantations, it was mainly settled by small farmers from out east, including free Afro-Floridiens, who were now allowed to own property (although discrimination, whether it be legal or cultural did prevent many Afro-Floridiens from actually being able to own land). Other settlers to the Floridian Plains mainly came from France, Italy (more on Italian immigration in a future update) and other Catholic European countries. The main driver for settling the plains, however, was the livestock industry, particularly cattle and sheep. The French picked up the Spanish vaquero culture, giving rise to the vacheurs, men who herded and transported cattle across the plains. While herding cattle wasn’t exactly the most glamorous job, the vacheurs later took on a legendary status in Floridian culture, much like the gauchos of La Plata and the cowboys of America. Railroads were also built across the Floridian plains, terminating at the growing city of Hautchamp.

    The plains also became a major wheat growing region, as farming methods were introduced, often times by Mennonites that were emigrating from parts of Russia and Ukraine that had a very similar climate to the plains of North America. Areas that were too arid for farming were home to a large ranching culture, although some tried to farm there anyway, mostly failing (it turns out that ten inches of precipitation per year is too little to support large scale agriculture). Meanwhile, on the West Coast, both Oregon (basically OTL’s Oregon) and Columbia (Western Washington and Southern British Columbia) had been upgraded to Commonwealth Provinces, having full representation in Parliament. Both of the Provincial Capitals, Oregon City and New Westminster were now bustling cities of tens of thousands of people, and while they didn’t compare much to the megacities of the east (at least not yet), they could definitely hold their own on the national stage. Even in areas that weren’t provinces yet, cities had sprung up, such as Edmonton, Saskwaton, Silver Bow and Fort Sutayo, mainly along westward railway lines. Silver Bow in particular grew into a large industrial center due to its copper reserves, and was the largest city between Winnipeg and Fort Vancouver. From Sea to Shining Sea, America had now completed it’s coast to coast expansion, destiny had been manifested.
     
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    • Gabingston

    Gabingston

    I know this is a long way out, but this is one possible way that the economic landscape changes ITTL:
    IncongruousGoat said:
    One interesting twist is that TTL's American tech industry is likely to end up concentrated in and around Boston (mostly because of the availability of capital and world-class higher education), which means that TTL's tech industry will be synonymous not with the perpetually sunny urban sprawl of Silicon Valley, but with the the gray, winding, snowy streets of Silicon Harbor.
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