English Canada/French Carolina: A Timeline
- Thread starter Gabingston
- Start date
I think the English and Dutch would switch places with the Pilgrims and Puritans near the Hudson and the Dutch in New England.
Since I'm still unsure of what direction South Africa will go in, I'm gonna leave it to you guys. Here's a strawpoll on what happens in South Africa.
strawpoll.com
What Happens in South Africa? - Online Poll - StrawPoll
What's your opinion? Vote now: Peaceful end to Apartheid, Apartheid continues to 21st Century, Peaceful disintegration of South Africa, Civil War...
strawpoll.com
Alternatively, the Dutch could invite the Pilgrims and Puritans to settle in the New Netherlands colony, maybe in somewhere like Long Island.
Wasn’t the Hudson Bay Area the intended destination for the Mayflower though? So they ultimately would get to it before the Dutch could.
On another note, I feel like this timeline has been a bit utopian. I mean, we haven't had a major war since the 1910s, no horrifying dictatorships like Hitler, Mao or Stalin, no mass atrocities like the Holocaust or Holodomor. I obviously don't like dictatorships, wars and genocides, and if I'm being honest, that's probably why this world hasn't seen many of them. It's all been a trend towards moderate Republics or Constitutional Monarchies, without any extremist totalitarian ideology arising. Granted, there are parts of the world that I haven't talked about in a while, and I've thought that some sort of major war in East Asia is likely, but I'm not sure what the war would be over. As for South Africa, I'm sure a civil war there would be full of atrocities and bloodshed, so that might be a sizable dose of dark realism for this TL, if that's the option that wins the poll. It's hard to write about dark subjects, but I'm writing a history TL, so that's just what I'll have to do.
I don't think this would've been the best location for a colony.
They were aiming for the Hudson River, basically OTL's New York City.
Deleted member 147978
I guess your TL is a little blessed then. A world of lukewarm Republics and Constitutional Monarchies, it seems.
Deleted member 147978
@PGSBHurricane @Gabingston
If the Puritans/Pilgrims did settle in the Hudson River Valley, could we be seeing the alternate development of ATL NYC?
If the Puritans/Pilgrims did settle in the Hudson River Valley, could we be seeing the alternate development of ATL NYC?
Which I find unrealistic. Surely there has to be some equivalent to North Korea out there.
The Pilgrims would probably still name their first settlement Plymouth, as that's the port in England they left from. I'd expect a Pilgrim-settled NYC to still become a huge metropolis, simply due to its advantageous geographic position at the mouth of the Hudson River and with having a fantastic natural harbor. Same with a Dutch New Amsterdam, although I don't think it'd wind up as big as OTL's NYC.
The issue is that, only the Puritans would permanently settle in OTL New England, because that area is very barren, so folks who go to the New World for economic reasons would abandon that place. So ITTL, the OTL New England would be contested between the English in Hudson valley and the French in Canada.
It can be just as big as OTL NYC, as long as it is a part of a powerful state/empire like the OTL US or the OTL British Empire, the Hudson Vally region is just perfect for a megacity.
Keep in mind that the Dutch were the first Europeans in Connecticut (courtesy of Adriaen Block, whom Block Island in Rhode Island was named for) and arguably created the first permanent European establishment at the Fort of Good Hope (what would later become Hartford, CT) in 1633. So maybe it isn't so implausible for the Dutch to get to New England or at least parts of it.
I don't think this would've been the best location for a colony.
They were aiming for the Hudson River, basically OTL's New York City.
It would be much smaller than OTL New Netherlands, because:
1) The Pilgrims were unusually large as a group at that time (20,000 - 40,000).
2) The Dutch Republic was the best place to live in the world at that time, so why emigrate?
3) It was a barren land, and nowhere near as good as OTL NYC for a port in terms of location.
My plan was for OTL's New England to be split between the French and the Dutch.
At this point, you should do what you like. Sorry if we managed to push you away from this idea.
No, you guys didn't. If anything you're helping me flesh out ideas. I'm still pretty split on what to do.
Future timeline ideas and planning
Greetings, fellow Alternate Historians. For the past three and a half years, I’ve been working on the moderately successful timeline of English Canada/French Carolina. With a POD in the Anglo-French War of 1627-1629, I have gone through over 300 years in the timeline. I have now reached the...
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Part 125: African Adventures Part 3
Part 125: African Adventures Part 3
For the final part of the African Adventures trilogy, we’re gonna focus the entirety of our attention on the Republic of South Africa. Growing out of the Dutch Cape Colony and becoming independent in 1837, South Africa had expanded from the Cape across the southern reaches of the African continent, going as far north as the Zambezi. The gold and diamond rushes of the late 19th Century drew in over a million European immigrants, mainly from The Netherlands, the German States and Scandinavia. South Africa was easily the most European country on the continent, with whites making up 3/8ths of South Africa’s population, and the mixed-race, Dutch-speaking Cape Coloureds making up another 1/8th of the population. The western part of the country (OTL’s Western Cape, Northern Cape and Namibia) had a white majority or plurality, while the Cape Coloureds made up a significant portion of the population in the west, particularly around Kaapstad.However, what about the native black Africans? Western South Africa hadn’t been settled by the Bantus by the time of the Dutch colonization, so the region was still inhabited by the Khoisan peoples who’d lived in the Southern part of Africa for tens of thousands of years. The Khoisan had a generally small population of hunter-gatherers and nomadic pastoralists before the Dutch arrival, and they’d been devastated by diseases and conflict with settlers after the Dutch colonization, so with the exception of some of the more remote desert regions, the former Khoisan homeland was now primarily inhabited by Europeans and Coloureds.
Further east, however, is where things get more interesting. The Bantu peoples from Central Africa had migrated south over a period of centuries, and around the time of the Birth of Christ, they reached what is today South Africa. The Bantus either displaced and/or assimilated many of the Khoisan groups of the Highveld, and considering their more sedentary lifestyle of agriculture and herding, they had a much higher population than the Khoisan. The Bantu regions of South Africa were the site of violent and bloody conflicts in the Early-Mid 19th Century, as much of the region was depopulated by the expansion of Shaka Zulu’s empire. Meanwhile, Afrikaners from the Cape Region were beginning to expand away from the Cape towards the interior, where they came into contact with the various Bantu groups. The Bantus and Afrikaners fought in a series of brutal wars over the Mid-Late 19th Century, which were ultimately won by the Afrikaners due to their more advanced technology and tactics. By the turn of the 20th Century, the South African Republic had subdued all of the Bantu chiefdoms of the interior, and the Bantus were reduced to an underclass.
However, by the latter part of the 20th Century, things were beginning to shift. First, the demographic balance that had defined South Africa during the Early-Mid 20th Century was beginning to break down. Due to being more urbanized and wealthier, the White South Africa birth rate had begun to decline by the middle of the 20th Century, and while it didn’t drop as low as it had in parts of Europe (although Europe’s birth rate is likely a bit higher than IOTL), it’d still dropped to around replacement level (2.1 children per woman) by the 1980s, meaning that the White population’s growth was slowing rapidly. The flow of immigrants from Europe (largely from The Netherlands, the German states and Scandinavia) largely dried up, due to rising living standards and lower birth rates. Meanwhile, the Black birth rate remained high, at about 3.5 children per woman in 1980. This meant that the Black proportion of the South Africa population increased considerably starting around the late 1950s, growing from half in 1950 to 5/8ths by 1980. The Black population growth also translated into internal migration, as Western South Africa, which had previously had a rather small Bantu population was starting to see hundreds of thousands of Bantu migrants pouring into the region. Bantu shantytowns began to pop up on the outskirts of Kaapstad adjacent to middle-class White and Coloured neighborhoods. This Bantu population growth and migration irked the South African government and much of the public, even in the more liberal Cape region. While the status quo was sustainable with a slight Bantu majority, a Bantu supermajority could make the entire system unsustainable. A mass Bantu uprising would be incredibly difficult for the South African Government to put down, even with superior firepower. Well, the South African government was about to find out if it could win against the majority Bantu population, because at the tail end of the 1970s, things began to go downhill, but that is a story for another day…