As the title says, what would the effects of having France and England unified under a single crown at some point (presumably during the Hundred Years War, but the exact point of departure doesn't really matter) be on the colonization of the North American continent, assuming that the Americas are still discovered and so on? I have to imagine that it will have some effect, and I know it's probably been discussed here before, but I'm still curious...
WI:Franco-Anglia and North American colonization?
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Nah, I don't figure that'll be the case. The way I figure, the fact that France is so much bigger and richer than England will mean that it will end up being the center of any union sooner or later. I read an argument to that effect here a while back, and it persuaded me pretty well.I think you mean Anglo-France...
It probably depends on who has prominence and when, who provides supporters. I personally take the Anglo-Gascon Camp, based on "Who supports the King", but I understand the Franco-Anglo argument as well, and don't find much fault with it.
However, and this is the big one - this Empires colonial policy might not be that different from the English, and may well be dominated by them (whether they are comparable to OTL English is another matter). France is large, and pretty wealthy in and of itself, England less so. Meanwhile, France also needs to ensure 3 land borders are secure. Their English territories mainly need to focus on fortifying the south east coast.
My image of this Empires New World, would be a combination of English, French, Gascon, Breton, Norman, Dutch, Walloon, Flemish, Irish, and Parisian.
Why Dutch? Its the best place to invade England from. It is rich, and would be a useful addition in Europe. Plus, this Empire securing the Rhine would be a wise idea, having the Northern Netherlands as territory and taxable land is a boon. Most of those people who aren't core to defending the eastern borders, or who are less prominent, could find freedom in the New World, an alternative to cultural assimilation. In which case, this Empire has a HUGE population to form colonies from. It may even have the strength to simply push Spain aside, taking control over the Atlantic and Caribbean, and either isolating, or co-opting Spanish Viceroyalties.
As to details, it really depends on the structure of the Empire when it starts to colonise. It could be mostly disorganised and then reorganised under Viceroyalties. It could take colonial charters, it could be small trade posts that then are used to conquer Native American tribes and bring them into the Empire.
I'd take a stab at the latter, simply because this sort of Empire has much more strength to throw around, and compared to some of its former constituent Empires, it now has more hands that are quite free to do so.
Granted, I could see the Kingdoms being dominated by the English early on, but I think in the end French population and wealth would tell--it's similar to the Imperial Federation problem of having India immediately becoming the dominant element in the Empire, just not quite as acute.
Quite a reasonable point of view, indeed.
Sure, Franco-Anglia has considerable power in Europe, but it has considerable problems as well. Already IOTL the French had considerable internal problems, and now there's another--tensions between the English and French portions of the empire. Regardless of how much they might like to carve out a Rhine border and smash Spain to bits and take its empire and so on and so forth, the kings and/or queens are going to be pretty busy holding their empire together. Too much to conquer? Probably not, but enough to slow them down, at least. Moreover, doubtlessly whenever it did get into a war the rest of Europe would tend to ally against it--granted, they did IOTL, and now the English, who tended (later on) to be a formidable opponent to France are on their side, but...conquering the Netherlands and holding it would be hard. A Rhine border would be easier, but still hard.
I have to admit that my ulterior purpose here is to imagine a North America which develops largely along the model of assimilating the American Indians into a trade and defense relationship with the overseas Empire, or in other words what the French did in most areas of New France except Canada, Acadia, and New Orleans proper, as opposed to driving them away and settling the land with Europeans. (I know this is a simplistic picture, I'm drawing a broad outline here) It occurred to me that the obvious way to do that would be to simply remove the very populous and therefore militarily strong English colonies from the board, and the easiest way to do that would be to have England be in a union with France and so more preoccupied with European matters, and anyway probably politically dominated by French interests more interested in extracting wealth from fur trading and similar endeavors than in settling colonies. Hence, the question, to see whether that would actually do what I would like it to do.
The British controlled India (that is, all of India or close enough, not merely large portions of the country) for about a century and a half and never gave it any kind of serious political representation; indeed, the very fact that any British Empire that aspired to any kind of equality between the colonies would be dominated by India was a major deterrent to plans for an Imperial Federation. Any reasonable setup for a union of the crowns of France and England is going to have a substantial and politically important role for the former, and if it's to affect colonization it has got to endure much longer than British India. Those two factors mean that the situation is not comparable.
Read the Lord Darcy books by Randall Garrett. His POD is Richard the Lion Heart not dying at Chaluz and defeating Philip. The Plantagenets become kings of France as well as England. He discusses the new world at some length. Effectively colonization by a feudal culture as opposed to a modern culture.
Napoleonrules
Banned
So you're saying you want NOT an Angevin Empire situation (which would never have set French representation in Parliament) and instead you're looking at a union of the nations, not a personal union (which if you're talking about England winning the 100 years war, that's what you're talking about, because an Act of Union 1707 isn't going to happen in this case like between Scotland and England)
Napoleonrules
Banned
A successful England and France in a personal or dynastic union (an actual union of nations is ASB, or else burden is on you to prove how it's possible) means Scotland has the opportunity to be successful in planting colonies. Less pressure on England to want to snap up New Netherland (which Netherlands would still snap up New Sweden most likely) because there's more open areas to concentrate on instead due to less competition. Could see New England and New France and Louisiana be "Anglo-French" while Virginia to Georgia be Scotish with New Netherland in between.
No, my point is that to survive long enough to actually do any colonization, a state incorporating territory in France and England is going to have to give the elites in both France and England significant political power, or else it will be a fragile thing that will blow apart as soon as it meets some great stress. The nobility of France isn't going to lift a finger for a king that surrounds himself with the English and doesn't care to listen to the opinions and perspectives of the (rich, important, powerful) people of their fair land, and vice-versa for a king that surrounds himself with the French and doesn't care to listen to the English nobility. We already saw this in the Hundred Years War itself, along with other examples of enduring personal unions. You simply cannot have a personal union between two states that endures without creating political structures that give the elites of both states power.
But, if both states have power, then France, being the richer and more populous of the two, is likely to gain the upper hand over England in internal policy debates eventually. England will still have influence, of course (or else the union would not endure), but France will have more influence by virtue of its importance in the union.
Napoleonrules
Banned
They are two separate nations who happen to share a king. There is no reason for there to be internal policy debates, just as there wasn't between Hanover and the UK.
Sure there were. Parliament bitched all the time about doing anything for Hanover and about how the kings were doing anything for Hanover, versus working on Britain. And so it didn't endure very long; if there had been any actual support for continuing the union, then Victoria wouldn't have been an issue, but there wasn't, so she was. Sharing a king ipso facto creates internal policy debates, if only about the relative importance the king sets on each territory and how much time and energy he spends on advancing the interests of one territory versus the other. Without some mechanism for settling these debates which accommodates the views of both sides, one country or the other is sooner or later going to decide that it's better off outside of the union with its own king, rather than sticking together and sharing.
This doesn't really happen until the 14th century. Henry IV was the first native English speaking king, I believe. The English Nobility had more in common with their French counterparts then the lower classes.
One thing you need to consider is, "What is France?" At the time of the third crusade, what we call France was four different Kingdoms.
Importantly, the 'French' isn't just one entity. Occitan, Gascon, Breton, Norman, etc are all distinct groups this early on. Instead of English being a partner to France, it might be superior, or a partner of each of those groups. I always thought that the most practical approach would be for the King of France to set up small Parliaments - including continental versions of the '40 Shilling Freeholder' (many who would end up being of English or Gascon stock). That'd help keep the union intact, by both giving the nobles more authority and protections, but at the same time, strengthening the King with freeholders.
Thank you.
It is MUCH easier to hold than some other Empires *looks at the HRE*. As for tensions between different parts of the Empire... I think you're overstating some issues. The issue is if their interests clash, and influence over the King. The French nobles may well want their version of the Magna Carta, so that they don't feel like 2nd class nobility.
I honestly don't think you'll get all you want. There are too many people in this Empire that would go west, chartered or unchartered, and set up territories that are their own, but nonetheless, seen by other powers as "Angevin" and as such any aggression by them seen as a problem caused by the "Angevin".
As such, it is easier to charter colonies (if handled by a Parliament, one of those may simply just do it), then try and prevent it. People are going to move west if the life is going to be better.
If you want what you're looking for, you want to see if there is a way to tie the Iroquois ideas of government into the colonies and "Anglo-France". You could probably hard-sell/threaten the Iroquois and other groups to join if they had similar legal protections/powers to colonials, which is easier if this Empire is already used to granting a Parliament of 'Nobles' and 40-Shilling Freeholders. It isn't hard to make that Elders and 40-Shillings.
But that requires a much more involved approach to colonisation. Which isn't entirely impossible. Whilst short term decisions would need to be made locally - longer term decisions like "Bring the Iroquois into the Empire by peaceful means, by the end of the year, or invade" - is something that the Monarch can decree from Paris.
I'm not sure I should comment because I am not very sympathetic to the ulterior goal, which aims at the Franco-English union essentially sitting on English colonizing capacity somehow and limiting the larger combined kingdom or kingdoms to playing just the role France did in the New World OTL, only also preempting any English competition whatsoever, or anyway whittling it down. And of course if England and France are fused together dynastically, French and English colonies can't go to war with each other without one of them being in rebellion against their shared monarch (or both are in rebellion). Thus perhaps we could have settlement very much as in OTL, only since by royal fiat New France and New England are two countries under one ruler, just as their homelands are, they must never fight each other. But you really don't want any English at all because even a stunted English settlement on OTL terms would disrupt and alienate Native peoples.
But first of all, England remains England. If your combination realm lasts from 1400 or whatever year it starts to the present day, I can see England getting more Frenchified than OTL, but there is no reason to think the English language will vanish, or that the culture will become indistinguishable from French. And being in a different setting--England being as you said poorer and smaller, it is going to be more hardscrabble. The English will want to go somewhere, a certain proportion would anyway.
What you want is for England as we knew it OTL to be removed from the colonizing pool somehow, or anyway diverted--if your focus is on Frenchifying North America, or more accurately having the general French pattern of light-touch contact via trade networks be the predominant one so that any intensely European settled and demographically dominated areas will be limited in extent I suppose, and the majority of the continent evolves from Native societies. If you don't care about other parts of the world then maybe the English can be diverted elsewhere, into the Caribbean or Central America or somewhere in South America maybe. Wherever the English don't go where they did OTL is an opportunity for some other European group with similar inclinations to the English, or bad enough if more restrained, so French power has to keep them out too. Best approach is to preempt settlement there by expansive groups by establishing settlement by nonexpansive groups--but being non-expansive, of course they will have little punch of their own, and the combination of their tripwire effect and overwhelming French power regionally must substitute for the tenacity on the ground that the OTL English settlements had.
I don't think a union of England and France is the way to get the result you want, or maybe you can if you settle for slightly different terms.
A monarchy that balances regard for English and French interests about equally, or in proportion to respective populations, will not want to resist English desire for settlement and expansion. The monarch must consider every category of subject or as you said, the unconsidered ones will rebel eventually. Until industrial transformations, England remains relatively poor, therefore her people are willing to emigrate.
Perhaps the kindgom as a whole can distract the English people with some alternative action that takes priority? Supposing for instance that the French adventure had diverted so much English attention that England's various rival neighbors in the islands--Scotland, but also a remnant of Wales, perhaps one that surges back from a rump state during a weak reign--oh, say, right around 1600 or so. Ireland--what if rouge Anglo-Norman lords have been becoming Irish-Norman and one of these families manages to unify Ireland in defiance of any fealty they may inherit to the English crown. So right in the period where OTL English settlement began surging into Virginia and New England, and spread form there, instead the English "wing" of the kingdom is bogged down trying to overcome opposition within the British isles--and any energies left over for colonizing are exercised in Wales and Ireland. The upshot is over a century or two, Ireland and Wales are incorporated and brought under the shared crown and very Anglicized, and Scotland might suffer the same fate in the lowlands, with the Highlands being claimed but hard to govern. This might divert English interests for a while and greatly delay projects for overseas colonization.
Meanwhile, assuming that the French branch of the kingdom included a limited, chartered company charged with developing profitable relations with the Native Americans, giving them an extra century or two to develop their web of alliances with no threat from English or any other settlers, then if the English belatedly, around 1750 or so, start seeking territories in America, perhaps given that Eurasian diseases are liable to decimate Native groups and that the French expansion pattern was not universally uniting--they would identify a rivalry and choose one side to aid, attacking the other Native group, it seems maybe there would be patches of territory on the Atlantic coast abandoned by decimated and defeated native peoples, and English settlers might be invited to settle well defined patches of land, while forbidden to expand beyond them. Since this prohibition would be part of the original settlement charter it could be accepted, at least by the first few generations, ungrudgingly. Meanwhile the pro-royalist Native allies will hit bottom and then demographically start to accumulate numbers, and absorb elements of European cultivation and other items of culture and probably intermarry with their English neighbors. Farther inland the same process, with much lighter intensity of contact but for a much longer time, has been going on and the interior gradually becomes a strongly Native cultured bunch of Metis.
I don't know if that is close enough to what you want. Note that in a rosy scenario for the monarchy, what starts out as a kingdom of two distinct peoples evolves into at least seven peoples--conquered Welsh, Scots, Irish and evolving Anglo-Colonial/Mixed and Franco-trader/Metis. This monarchy has a proclivity for adding national feathers to its cap.
I agree with RougeTraderEnthusiast too that a lasting Anglo-French union of any kind will have the interest of conquering or otherwise absorbing northward, up the North Sea coast from Flanders through Holland and on up to Denmark, if not beyond. At any rate the southern part of the Lowlands--reason being, as noted by RTE, England's border to worry about is the coast. Specifically the southeast coast is already covered as long as the union with France holds--to threaten from the south, some pretty long sea miles have to be traversed to avoid running afoul of French Atlantic based pickets. But Flanders is right there; in the hands of a hostile power it threatens both core kingdoms. Flanders must fall! And so on, albeit with lesser intensity, up the coast. Filling out borders toward the Rhine northeastward is the next priority, emphasized by getting control of the lower Rhine as well.
Is it ASB that Franco-England can do this? Well, first of all now France incorporates the strength of England, and is not distracted by English schemes against her. Second, OTL I believe France in the late medieval/Early Modern period did a lot of messing around in Italy, which from my naive view strikes me as optional. Conflicts with both Italian interests and Spanish seem likely to loom no matter how much France puts these regions on the back burner, and in fact it is natural for France to have Mediterranean interests and schemes.
I think I would lean on the English interest and English strength being added to account for the sewing up of the North Sea salient. I suppose acquiring Flanders will be the most vigorously opposed step, but if it does fall, then farther north will be held more weakly.
So perhaps the western part of the kingdom is tied down and distracted from transAtlantic adventures by the nearby adventures surrounding them in the North sea and the British isles.
If this scenario suits you, it is my best attempt at trajectory patching your proposed starting point and your intended ending point. If it does not suit the latter well enough--perhaps you need to consider that what you want is to nerf English settlement, and that perhaps incorporating England into France is too clever by half, and you might go for the simpler solution--the British isles must be crushed somehow.
Might a POD involving the defeat of Elizabeth by the Spanish serve you just as well or better? The Armada was hopeless, but what if the funds that went to the Armada OTL went to Parma's forces in the Lowlands, and he was able to surge forth and subdue all the rebels and incorporate Dutch shipbuilding, skilled crews, and most of all deny hostile Dutch remnants any base, so that the naval resources the rebel Dutch pinned Parma's forces to Europe with OTL are now available to try to escort them across the short strait to England instead. Escorting Parma's invasion was the Armada's function OTL--supposing Parma can get some long range guns comparable to the English guns, and put them on Dutch hulls in sufficient numbers to punch a hole through the defending English fleet, and Parma can land his armies, it is game over for Elizabeth. She might survive in exile but the conquest of the kingdom seems foregone. England under the hand of the Hapsburgs might be just the thing to prevent the English settlements.
They might also prevent France from setting up their trade empire in New France, but does it matter to you who does that as long as some European does? What if it is Flemings, or Spaniards, or even English adventurers, who do the French thing in the St. Laurence and Great Lakes region?
But first of all, England remains England. If your combination realm lasts from 1400 or whatever year it starts to the present day, I can see England getting more Frenchified than OTL, but there is no reason to think the English language will vanish, or that the culture will become indistinguishable from French. And being in a different setting--England being as you said poorer and smaller, it is going to be more hardscrabble. The English will want to go somewhere, a certain proportion would anyway.
What you want is for England as we knew it OTL to be removed from the colonizing pool somehow, or anyway diverted--if your focus is on Frenchifying North America, or more accurately having the general French pattern of light-touch contact via trade networks be the predominant one so that any intensely European settled and demographically dominated areas will be limited in extent I suppose, and the majority of the continent evolves from Native societies. If you don't care about other parts of the world then maybe the English can be diverted elsewhere, into the Caribbean or Central America or somewhere in South America maybe. Wherever the English don't go where they did OTL is an opportunity for some other European group with similar inclinations to the English, or bad enough if more restrained, so French power has to keep them out too. Best approach is to preempt settlement there by expansive groups by establishing settlement by nonexpansive groups--but being non-expansive, of course they will have little punch of their own, and the combination of their tripwire effect and overwhelming French power regionally must substitute for the tenacity on the ground that the OTL English settlements had.
I don't think a union of England and France is the way to get the result you want, or maybe you can if you settle for slightly different terms.
A monarchy that balances regard for English and French interests about equally, or in proportion to respective populations, will not want to resist English desire for settlement and expansion. The monarch must consider every category of subject or as you said, the unconsidered ones will rebel eventually. Until industrial transformations, England remains relatively poor, therefore her people are willing to emigrate.
Perhaps the kindgom as a whole can distract the English people with some alternative action that takes priority? Supposing for instance that the French adventure had diverted so much English attention that England's various rival neighbors in the islands--Scotland, but also a remnant of Wales, perhaps one that surges back from a rump state during a weak reign--oh, say, right around 1600 or so. Ireland--what if rouge Anglo-Norman lords have been becoming Irish-Norman and one of these families manages to unify Ireland in defiance of any fealty they may inherit to the English crown. So right in the period where OTL English settlement began surging into Virginia and New England, and spread form there, instead the English "wing" of the kingdom is bogged down trying to overcome opposition within the British isles--and any energies left over for colonizing are exercised in Wales and Ireland. The upshot is over a century or two, Ireland and Wales are incorporated and brought under the shared crown and very Anglicized, and Scotland might suffer the same fate in the lowlands, with the Highlands being claimed but hard to govern. This might divert English interests for a while and greatly delay projects for overseas colonization.
Meanwhile, assuming that the French branch of the kingdom included a limited, chartered company charged with developing profitable relations with the Native Americans, giving them an extra century or two to develop their web of alliances with no threat from English or any other settlers, then if the English belatedly, around 1750 or so, start seeking territories in America, perhaps given that Eurasian diseases are liable to decimate Native groups and that the French expansion pattern was not universally uniting--they would identify a rivalry and choose one side to aid, attacking the other Native group, it seems maybe there would be patches of territory on the Atlantic coast abandoned by decimated and defeated native peoples, and English settlers might be invited to settle well defined patches of land, while forbidden to expand beyond them. Since this prohibition would be part of the original settlement charter it could be accepted, at least by the first few generations, ungrudgingly. Meanwhile the pro-royalist Native allies will hit bottom and then demographically start to accumulate numbers, and absorb elements of European cultivation and other items of culture and probably intermarry with their English neighbors. Farther inland the same process, with much lighter intensity of contact but for a much longer time, has been going on and the interior gradually becomes a strongly Native cultured bunch of Metis.
I don't know if that is close enough to what you want. Note that in a rosy scenario for the monarchy, what starts out as a kingdom of two distinct peoples evolves into at least seven peoples--conquered Welsh, Scots, Irish and evolving Anglo-Colonial/Mixed and Franco-trader/Metis. This monarchy has a proclivity for adding national feathers to its cap.
I agree with RougeTraderEnthusiast too that a lasting Anglo-French union of any kind will have the interest of conquering or otherwise absorbing northward, up the North Sea coast from Flanders through Holland and on up to Denmark, if not beyond. At any rate the southern part of the Lowlands--reason being, as noted by RTE, England's border to worry about is the coast. Specifically the southeast coast is already covered as long as the union with France holds--to threaten from the south, some pretty long sea miles have to be traversed to avoid running afoul of French Atlantic based pickets. But Flanders is right there; in the hands of a hostile power it threatens both core kingdoms. Flanders must fall! And so on, albeit with lesser intensity, up the coast. Filling out borders toward the Rhine northeastward is the next priority, emphasized by getting control of the lower Rhine as well.
Is it ASB that Franco-England can do this? Well, first of all now France incorporates the strength of England, and is not distracted by English schemes against her. Second, OTL I believe France in the late medieval/Early Modern period did a lot of messing around in Italy, which from my naive view strikes me as optional. Conflicts with both Italian interests and Spanish seem likely to loom no matter how much France puts these regions on the back burner, and in fact it is natural for France to have Mediterranean interests and schemes.
I think I would lean on the English interest and English strength being added to account for the sewing up of the North Sea salient. I suppose acquiring Flanders will be the most vigorously opposed step, but if it does fall, then farther north will be held more weakly.
So perhaps the western part of the kingdom is tied down and distracted from transAtlantic adventures by the nearby adventures surrounding them in the North sea and the British isles.
If this scenario suits you, it is my best attempt at trajectory patching your proposed starting point and your intended ending point. If it does not suit the latter well enough--perhaps you need to consider that what you want is to nerf English settlement, and that perhaps incorporating England into France is too clever by half, and you might go for the simpler solution--the British isles must be crushed somehow.
Might a POD involving the defeat of Elizabeth by the Spanish serve you just as well or better? The Armada was hopeless, but what if the funds that went to the Armada OTL went to Parma's forces in the Lowlands, and he was able to surge forth and subdue all the rebels and incorporate Dutch shipbuilding, skilled crews, and most of all deny hostile Dutch remnants any base, so that the naval resources the rebel Dutch pinned Parma's forces to Europe with OTL are now available to try to escort them across the short strait to England instead. Escorting Parma's invasion was the Armada's function OTL--supposing Parma can get some long range guns comparable to the English guns, and put them on Dutch hulls in sufficient numbers to punch a hole through the defending English fleet, and Parma can land his armies, it is game over for Elizabeth. She might survive in exile but the conquest of the kingdom seems foregone. England under the hand of the Hapsburgs might be just the thing to prevent the English settlements.
They might also prevent France from setting up their trade empire in New France, but does it matter to you who does that as long as some European does? What if it is Flemings, or Spaniards, or even English adventurers, who do the French thing in the St. Laurence and Great Lakes region?
I would have thought you would be sympathetic to the idea of creating a North America that has more (much more) space for Native and mixed peoples, Shevek. I have to freely admit that I was inspired by False Dmitri's Affiliated States of Boreoamerica setting and the idea was to find a plausible method of reaching somewhat the same end of having a massively pluricultural North America with much larger Native populations and more Native cultural influence.
I do, as a matter of fact.
It does indeed, as a matter of fact. I actually don't care too much about what happens in Europe, after all.
Not particularly, though now that I think about it I happen to like the idea of French displacing English as the world's lingua franca...heh heh.
You misspelled London there at the end.
Iknowrite?
Nah, in all seriousness, somewhere like Paris, or a fresh-built capital in Northern France on a major river IS actually a more practical capital. More perilous perhaps. If you wanted to avoid Paris itself, you could go with Le Havre, or Rouen. Settling Rouen with English and Gascon settlers perhaps?