ITPH: Colonial North America (1702-44)

[John Fredrick Parker]

So this period has a lot going on in it - Queen Anne’s War, the latter Golden Age of Piracy, the Great Awakening, James Oglethorpe’s Georgia, and general demographic and economic expansion, to name a few. So let’s say, with no PoDs prior to 1702 or falling outside of North America, you were tasked with changing the situation in continental North America (not counting mainland New Spain) as much as possible, prior to 1744.

Where would you start? And depending on what we come up with, how are the Anglo-French conflicts of the mid-18th Century (OTL, King George’s War and the French and Indian War) affected? And while we’re at it, how do the decades following said alt conflict(s) play out?

 

[King Nazar]

Decisive French Victory in the War of Spanish Succession which gives the Bourbons hegemony in West Europe. Austria loses Hungary and the Jacobites get restored in Britain in 1715.

I think it’s possible that a Jacobite England could lose control of its North American colonies a lot sooner. Perhaps some kind of ‘Cromwellian’ Republics form in New England.

With the English colonies divided and weakened, France will dominate North America. That will butterfly away the historic King George War and French and Indian War. In the long term this will probably become a French-wank.

 

[John Fredrick Parker]

with no PoDs prior to 1702 or falling outside of North America

@King Nazar I was kind of hoping this thread could focus on what could have changed in North America, as opposed to changing things in Europe and how they'd affect North America.

As an example -- FWIG, during Queen Anne's War, Spanish Florida was widely depopulated, with the only surviving colonial outposts being Penescola and St Augustine, both of which came under siege during the war (the former by the Creek Confederacy, the latter by Carolina colonists). If one or both of these outposts had fallen, would that mean that Britain gets Spanish Florida earlier? And if so, what does that mean for French Louisiana? After all, the only Gulf port the French had at the time of the war was Mobile, which isn't far from Pensacola.

 

[M79]

Assuming John Churchill dies early and that Marlborough joins him soon after, you could toss the entire War of Spanish Succession in an entirely different direction. If OTL Philip V refuses for any reason the Spanish lands likely get recombined with the Austrian Hapsburg domains under future Charles IV, perhaps indivisibly so. This opens the possibility of a united Franco-Spanish kingdom emerging in a generation under Philip V if the French totally win out or a super-Hapsburg kingdom if the Austrians come to advantage. If the French dominate, the Stuarts may come to power, and Henry Stuart might become a great King if Charles dies early. Austria might also push this under the wrong circumtances. Change the outcome of the War of Quadruple Alliance in 1717-1720 and Philip V of Spain could come to rule France *and* Spain as one nation, perhaps adding much or all of Italy as well. England, perhaps under s Stuart king, is pushed into a very strange anti-Philippine alliance with Portugal perhaps becoming a target and distracting Vienna from the Russians and Austrians on her border. With each war the borders of colonies in the New World may shift or colonies might be taken by other powers, Spain may come to rule Georgia and the Carolinas while Cuba could become a British colony or Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and/or much of New England become French. Follow-up conflicts only exacerbate the situation in the New World and abroad.