Part 76: American Decolonization
Part 76: American Decolonization
The Second Global War and its aftermath changed the New World permanently. France and Spain had lost most of their North American colonies to Commonwealth occupation. Over time, though, the Americans grew increasingly tired of occupying such a large and hostile area, and the government was split over what to do. Some wanted to integrate them as new provinces, while others thought it’d be better if they were established as client states. Meanwhile, the Spanish increasingly saw the writing on the wall for their New World empire, and were entering into negotiations to create separate dominions from their South American viceroyalties. The population of Spanish South America was larger than that of Spain itself and growing far more rapidly (especially after the First Global War, when a massive amount of Spaniards left for South America), so there was no way to hold onto it long term.
Aside from the expensive occupations, the Commonwealth of America was booming after the war. Spirits were flying high, the cities were booming and the time from 1916 to 1928 became known as The Golden Dozen (you can probably guess how it ends if you’re familiar with how OTL’s 1920s ended). In South America, Brazil was experiencing a boom in their cities as millions of immigrants from Europe (primarily from Spain and Italy) flooded into the country during the Late 1910s and most of the 1920s, to the point where over half of Montevidéu’s population was born in Europe, and other Brazilian cities like Sao Paulo, Rio, Porto Alegre and Assunção weren’t that far behind.
Still, the main focus is on Spanish and French America in this update, so I’ll get back to that. In 1920, the Commonwealth of America began the process of withdrawing from the territories they’d been occupying. The Commonwealth also negotiated with political figures from the occupied territories and with the French and Spanish to develop a plan for the post-occupation map of North America. The Commonwealth outright refused to allow the return of the Bourbons to North America, while the French and Spanish wouldn’t accept any Commonwealth client states, so a compromise was reached to release Mexico, La Floride, Cuba and Hispaniola as independent Republics. Meanwhile, The Spanish passed the American Dominion Acts in 1924, releasing the three South American viceroyalties as self-governing Dominions. The French also negotiated the return of Terre-Bourbon, much to the chagrin of Anglo-Australians, who were by this point becoming much more in favor of complete independence.
A new era had dawned in The Americas. With the exception of some Caribbean islands, the British in Patagonia and the Dutch in Guyana, the New World was officially decolonized, which would serve as a spark for independence movements elsewhere in the world, but that’s a topic for another time.
