A bit ago, Frank Hart posted design based on gap80's clipping from a The Simpsons comic with a weird map of the USA. The Alternate Historian picked it up on Twitter, too.
It could just be a hastily-drawn image to highlight the joke of "blue, Billy Graham-approved, family values states" the Flanderses planned to visit, or it could be an example of a wildly different timeline. Several people pointed out the loss of New England, the strange gains of southern Ontario and Quebec (not to mention Chihuahua), expansive Texas, and the jumble of other state lines including the Upper Peninsula being part of Wisconsin rather than Michigan. Is there one POD that could've caused all this? After some thought, I suggest:
September 6, 1664 - Second Anglo-Dutch War Begins with Defense at New Amsterdam
After success in the 1652-1654 war between its maritime rival, many in England sought to bait the Netherlands into a second war with more gains than simply setting back the House of Orange. English Colonel Richard Nicolls sailed with orders from Charles II granting lands between the Delaware and Connecticut Rivers, which were already populated by Dutch settlements, who had already demonstrated their authority in the region by seizing control of New Sweden to the south in 1655. Nicolls offered generous terms for surrender, which many of the Dutch burghers of the colony thought they should take. Peter Stuyvesant, the governor famed for his daring in battle as much as he was his strict rule, saw that the colonists were unwilling to fight when they could continue to prosper as English citizens, so he forced a battle by sending his son with a covert team to attack the warships at night. Several small boats were set aflame and send downriver into the sides of warships. Although the damage was minimal, Nicholls and the English were enraged, and it became clear that they would wreak vengeance on the colony. The Dutch were in no position but to defend themselves, which they did against an ongoing English three-day barrage.
The Dutch had limited gunpowder in their reserves to fight back, but the English were far from home, and the few settlers in Connecticut had little to offer in reinforcements. The two harassed one another until Nicolls finally had to retreat empty-handed. Europe was outraged, and the Second Anglo-Dutch War continued until a Dutch victory in 1667. The Treaty of Breda secured New Amsterdam as a Dutch holding for the time, though it would eventually fall in the 18th century with English settlement outpacing Dutch numbers in the region. Colonial skirmishes threatened to spark a new Anglo-Dutch War, which Dutch governors feared would devastate their economy that had already been weakened as London outpaced them. New Netherland was sold and reorganized into a large colonial unit along with Maryland from the Potomac River to the Hudson River.
Settlers continued to push westward into Native territory in the Ohio Valley and upriver of the new New York colony in Pennsylvania. Parliament attempted to prevent destabilization by preventing settlement by colonists, an issue that would be listed among others such as self-governance and taxation as revolution began in the 1770s. New York's diversity proved instrumental in the American Revolution, contributing troops and materiel to independence. Efforts were made to invade Canada, though Montreal proved impossible to hold without a suitable naval force in the St. Lawrence and Great Lakes. The region remained conflicted for another generation until invasion north of Lake Champlain in War of 1812 secured Montreal and Quebec, trapping British forces westward instead of trying to invade from Detroit with the British still able to supply by the river. Settlers panicked, many British fleeing en masse past American lines, and Tecumseh led his confederation with making a treaty with the Americans.
Success in the north prompted much stronger British response in the south. Blockades locked up the Gulf Coast and around the Florida Peninsula as far north as the Satilla River in Georgia, cutting off American supplies and frustrating trading partners among the Cherokee and Muscogee Creek. British agents were quick to step into the role of supplying the tribes, spreading the war and prompting American settlers to flee as British ones had done in Upper Canada. The war dragged on into 1816 with much of the South in flames and America's celebrated General Andrew Jackson killed in a hit-and-run raid along the Mississippi from British-held New Orleans.
With British naval strikes continuing along the East Coast and Atlantic trade disrupted, New England states became infuriated with the American war hawks refusing to give up the "right by conquest" to lands in Canada. The election of 1816 proved the final straw, and Massachusetts led the secession of its eastern territory along with New Hampshire and Rhode Island. Western Massachusetts responded by seceding and joining with Connecticut to remain in the United States. There was no real end to the war in sight until Bostonians offered to broker peace, leading to negotiations that secured the Federal States' independence along with a new northern border set at the 49th Parallel to defend British native allies and settlers who depended on the fur trade.
Americans celebrated the gains of Quebec and Canada, which would both become states in years to come. Led by Tecumseh, peace was also made among the natives in the South, which was facilitated further by new states. Southern Georgia was split from Savannah into its own state, Apalachee, and the Mississippi territory was separated into regions that would become four states: Cherokee south of Tennessee, Choctaw in the northeast, Alabama in the southeast, and Mississippi in the west. Like the South, the Ohio Valley also had reorganization with Ohio going westward to the Mississippi and a much wider range of protected Shawnee land joined to Kentucky.
Some Americans called for "Indian removal" to free up land in the South for white settlement, but their opinions were drowned out by men such as Davy Crockett, who would be a representative and senator from Tennessee for decades. Instead, settlers looked westward, advancing the opportunities for statehood in territories west of Missouri. American encroachment across the Red River and the Sabine River into Mexican Tejas prompted the Mexican-American War. The war would end with American purchase of the southwest, including California, Nevada, Great Salt Lake, Arizona, Chihuahua, and Texas. This would be the final continental expansion for the United States, giving it is familiar 43-state shape for centuries to come.
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In reality, Peter Stuyvesant surrendered New Amsterdam peacefully.
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