Quote:
Originally Posted by Daigoro
(SNIP)
Question 25
North America is split between the California Republic, the Louisiana Confederacy, and the Republic of Texas. Is there a Canada there as well? And what are the relations between these states?
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Answer to Q25
The Candian war that drove the British south to settle Louisiana resulted in the division of territory into two distinct entities. The wealthiest, by far, is the independent French-Canadian Quebec. Napoleon opened the front in 1807 as an opportunistic means to district Britain from his efforts on the continent, and the history of decent treatment by the French, and mutually beneficial trading alliances between the Acadian settlers and the Indians, paid off in a big way.
(France still owned the Colony of New France after French trappers and their First Nation allies wholly defeated British colonial raiders and bandits during the Seven Years' War, in the mid-1700s.)
While the flow of arms and supplies from France to Quebec, and thence to the hands of First Nation warriors and trapper guerrillas, remained slow and irregular, it provided enough of an edge to allow Quebec colonial militias to inflict a series of hard-fought losses in battles throughout Ontario.
As the war neared its end and the imminent loss became apparent to all, many of the "Ontarries" fled down the Mississippi and took over territories around the port city of New Orleans. The desperate Ontarries wrested the city from French control, and it formed the basis of the Louisiana Confederacy.
While the Allied Powers eventually defeated Napoleon in Europe, that took several more long and bloody years, which allowed the Quebecois to consolidate their victory. As part of the Treaty of Paris, which marked the end of the Napoleonic Wars, the independence of Quebec was recognized as a
fait accompli.
Quebec's domination of Canada's Atlantic trade allowed them to ascend quickly, and a series of punitive tariffs and other forms of quasi-legal impositions interfered with the ability of British Ontario to do the same. British Ontario struggled to develop until the 1880s, when work was completed on the Niagara Gorge Hydroelectric Authority, and the southeast Ontario began to rapidly industrialize.
Ontario now enjoys close relations with its cousins in Louisiana Confederacy, and the handsome return on the Niagara Gorge investment has caused the United Kingdom to pay far closer attention to its heretofore hard-luck eastern Canadian colonies. Expansion across the Alberta plains has begun again, after stalling for decades, but remains problematic.
Many of the First Nations indigenous to the area know the French have always treated the Indians better than the British have, and in many cases have violently resisted the arrival of settlers. Tacit support for First Nation violence by Quebec, through clandestine distribution of arms, money and other resources, is something the British settlers widely believe, but thus far little evidence exists to support that contention.
That said, the governments of the British Empire and the Louisiana Confederacy, as well as deeply interested parties in Ontario and British Columbia, have begun earnest discussions about the possible construction of a transcontinental railroad from the Niagara Gorge to the Pacific port of Vancouver, BC., with spurs to multiple ports on the shores of the Great Lakes. The Louisiana Ontarries are keen supporters, as they plan to use additional railways to connect the navigable waterways of the Mississippi River Basin to ports on the southern shores of the lakes.
This would create what the Louisianans refer to as the Greater North America Transportation System, wholly under the control of current and former British colonials, in partnership with His Majesty's government.
Question 26
China's throat currently lies under the boot heels of a number of different external powers. Which powers control what sections of China, and how does conflict between those interest play out in the Chinese mainland and offshore territories?