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Finished up something I've had on my computer for a while.
In this world the British failed to take Quebec, and although the French had to give up a sugar isle or two they held onto OTL and lost the rest of Arcadia, they managed to hold onto most of their north American possessions in the peace treaty. The US revolution was delayed, but not prevented: the colonies were continuing to grow in strength and self-confidence, while the English continued to look down their noses at "colonials", continued to try to make them pay their fare share of taxes, end illegal smuggling, and still housed their soldiers in their homes. The average British colonial was pissed off at what they considered British military incompetence rather more than terrified of the French, and before the 18th century was over British America was calling itself These United States. (The name United States of Columbia was tried on for size, but eventually dropped).
US citizens would and did push west, and there were various US-French clashes from early on, which turned into a US landslide when the combination of several elements - the example of their own revolution, along with French intellectuals being French intellectuals and the Bourbons being the Bourbons - set off a French revolution, which rendered French assistance to New France either intermittent or unwanted, depending on who was in charge at the moment in Paris or what the British Navy was doing. By dint of heroic efforts, more French and other Catholic settlement during the extra decades of French American existence, and the expenditure of a lot of Indians[1], the Canadiens managed to hold onto the Illinois territory while setting up a shaky Republic, but lost most of the territory east of the Mississippi and south of the Great Lakes: the remnants of the Iroquois confederation were evacuated across the Ontario.
Fortunately, the US was distracted by another outrage against their Manifest Destiny, the British and Spanish having seized the less populous but strategically useful southern end of the French empire in Louisiana. It would take an alliance of convenience with the Canadiens to gain control of the lower Mississippi and incidentally push the British out of the Canadian arctic, although they held on like grim death to Nova Scotia and Newfoundland. A border was established which left the nicer bits of the Great Plains to the US and the horrible weather and Indian filled northern bits to the newly renamed "Republique du Canada."
The last push west to the Pacific and the bloody fight with Mexico a couple decades later essentially soured the US on further adventures, but there would be one more 19th century war as the slave states decided federal government reluctance to admit Texas as a slave state was intolerable. It was a shorter war than OTL, the Confederacy being smaller (if also possibly even wackier), and it also improved US-Canadian relations, the government of Canada being strongly pro-union (slavery having been banned back in the First Republic era). Admittedly, some Canadien "ultras" saw this as an opportunity to pay the US back for former losses, but the Prime minster of the time considered them a bunch of merde-heads.
The rather troubled first sixty years or so of US-Canadian relations led to a strengthening of US Catholic-phobia, and various restrictions were passed for a while on Catholic immigration: as a result the US in this world has fewer Irish but more Scots and Scots-Irish. (There has also been more British immigration to Australia and South Africa, including a fair number of Loyalists post-revolution, but oddly enough neither state has become a terrifying racist expansionist dictatorship as a result). The US was also slower to become a great industrial power with some of its best industrial raw materials areas in Canadian hands, although increasingly free trade compensated for that. The US was also less active in the Pacific, never took Hawaii or the Phillipines, although it did do some central American filibustering and picked up Puerto Rico when the Syndicalists took over Spain. Unlike OTL, Canadians are known in the US for their emotionalism and political turbulence, and reputedly all have fiery tempers, although that may be more projection. A much bloodier 19th century led to an earlier centralization of US power and more of a military tradition - interestingly, the US today is both more militarized, in terms of mass participation (it still has a draft) and less militaristic: war is not a glorious show.
In the 20th century, Canada and the US have in fact become close if sometimes quarrelsome allies: the old world has had its wars and tyrannies as OTL, if a rather different cast of characters, and the American powers have cooperated to fight for freedom (and money). Today the US is perhaps 2/3 the superpower it is OTL, while Canada is somewhere on the level of France or maybe Germany - if larger and more populous than OTL, it simply hasn't been able to match the US in numbers. Together with their other allies abroad, they navigate the dangerous waters of the 21st century together.
[1] Indigenous Canadians are not entirely a happy people - while the Canadiens have never followed the "only Good Indian is a Dead Indian" philosophy, after the Indians were no longer that useful as military auxiliaries, the varies treaties and freedoms and "sacred Indian lands" tended to vanish down the memory hole as the Canadiens energetically tried to make good (North American) Frenchmen out of them. This has led to understandable bitterness in this modern era.
In this world the British failed to take Quebec, and although the French had to give up a sugar isle or two they held onto OTL and lost the rest of Arcadia, they managed to hold onto most of their north American possessions in the peace treaty. The US revolution was delayed, but not prevented: the colonies were continuing to grow in strength and self-confidence, while the English continued to look down their noses at "colonials", continued to try to make them pay their fare share of taxes, end illegal smuggling, and still housed their soldiers in their homes. The average British colonial was pissed off at what they considered British military incompetence rather more than terrified of the French, and before the 18th century was over British America was calling itself These United States. (The name United States of Columbia was tried on for size, but eventually dropped).
US citizens would and did push west, and there were various US-French clashes from early on, which turned into a US landslide when the combination of several elements - the example of their own revolution, along with French intellectuals being French intellectuals and the Bourbons being the Bourbons - set off a French revolution, which rendered French assistance to New France either intermittent or unwanted, depending on who was in charge at the moment in Paris or what the British Navy was doing. By dint of heroic efforts, more French and other Catholic settlement during the extra decades of French American existence, and the expenditure of a lot of Indians[1], the Canadiens managed to hold onto the Illinois territory while setting up a shaky Republic, but lost most of the territory east of the Mississippi and south of the Great Lakes: the remnants of the Iroquois confederation were evacuated across the Ontario.
Fortunately, the US was distracted by another outrage against their Manifest Destiny, the British and Spanish having seized the less populous but strategically useful southern end of the French empire in Louisiana. It would take an alliance of convenience with the Canadiens to gain control of the lower Mississippi and incidentally push the British out of the Canadian arctic, although they held on like grim death to Nova Scotia and Newfoundland. A border was established which left the nicer bits of the Great Plains to the US and the horrible weather and Indian filled northern bits to the newly renamed "Republique du Canada."
The last push west to the Pacific and the bloody fight with Mexico a couple decades later essentially soured the US on further adventures, but there would be one more 19th century war as the slave states decided federal government reluctance to admit Texas as a slave state was intolerable. It was a shorter war than OTL, the Confederacy being smaller (if also possibly even wackier), and it also improved US-Canadian relations, the government of Canada being strongly pro-union (slavery having been banned back in the First Republic era). Admittedly, some Canadien "ultras" saw this as an opportunity to pay the US back for former losses, but the Prime minster of the time considered them a bunch of merde-heads.
The rather troubled first sixty years or so of US-Canadian relations led to a strengthening of US Catholic-phobia, and various restrictions were passed for a while on Catholic immigration: as a result the US in this world has fewer Irish but more Scots and Scots-Irish. (There has also been more British immigration to Australia and South Africa, including a fair number of Loyalists post-revolution, but oddly enough neither state has become a terrifying racist expansionist dictatorship as a result). The US was also slower to become a great industrial power with some of its best industrial raw materials areas in Canadian hands, although increasingly free trade compensated for that. The US was also less active in the Pacific, never took Hawaii or the Phillipines, although it did do some central American filibustering and picked up Puerto Rico when the Syndicalists took over Spain. Unlike OTL, Canadians are known in the US for their emotionalism and political turbulence, and reputedly all have fiery tempers, although that may be more projection. A much bloodier 19th century led to an earlier centralization of US power and more of a military tradition - interestingly, the US today is both more militarized, in terms of mass participation (it still has a draft) and less militaristic: war is not a glorious show.
In the 20th century, Canada and the US have in fact become close if sometimes quarrelsome allies: the old world has had its wars and tyrannies as OTL, if a rather different cast of characters, and the American powers have cooperated to fight for freedom (and money). Today the US is perhaps 2/3 the superpower it is OTL, while Canada is somewhere on the level of France or maybe Germany - if larger and more populous than OTL, it simply hasn't been able to match the US in numbers. Together with their other allies abroad, they navigate the dangerous waters of the 21st century together.
[1] Indigenous Canadians are not entirely a happy people - while the Canadiens have never followed the "only Good Indian is a Dead Indian" philosophy, after the Indians were no longer that useful as military auxiliaries, the varies treaties and freedoms and "sacred Indian lands" tended to vanish down the memory hole as the Canadiens energetically tried to make good (North American) Frenchmen out of them. This has led to understandable bitterness in this modern era.
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This is a really nice scenario. Gud jub brother