No Puritan immigration to North America?
- Thread starter Hnau
- Start date
hard to say, better question is what happens to England with out militarized Puritanism....
Both good questions I dare say
Charles not being an asshole changes the whole history of democracy. Or are we assuming that we have a civil war anyway?
Cause if he keeps his head on it´s hard not to take it into account.
As for America there will be other settlers because it´s good land. But without the same religious tradition it´d have some interesting changes.
Charles not being an asshole changes the whole history of democracy. Or are we assuming that we have a civil war anyway?
Cause if he keeps his head on it´s hard not to take it into account.
As for America there will be other settlers because it´s good land. But without the same religious tradition it´d have some interesting changes.
A good POD to prevent Puritan migration to America would be Charles' older brother Prince Henry not dying in 1612. Henry was very Calvinist in his own religious beliefs, and he was apparently well-liked by the more militant Protestants in England. Had he lived to become king he probably would have gotten along reasonably well with these Protestants, and it's unlikely he would have favored the high-church Anglican bishops like Laud. Henry living would remove a lot of the causes that radicalized the Puritans in England and led to the civil war, and also remove much of the incentive for Puritans to move to America.
What effects this might have on America are hard to tell. Puritan colonies like Plymouth were already settled before Henry would become king, assuming James dies per OTL. But in this scenario Plymouth might wither and die out for lack of new colonists. Maybe there would be more colonization in Virginia; Henry was apparently interested in exploration and colonization, and as king he might have taken a more active role in promoting it.
What effects this might have on America are hard to tell. Puritan colonies like Plymouth were already settled before Henry would become king, assuming James dies per OTL. But in this scenario Plymouth might wither and die out for lack of new colonists. Maybe there would be more colonization in Virginia; Henry was apparently interested in exploration and colonization, and as king he might have taken a more active role in promoting it.
Then we have a multilingual America, Spanish in the south, British in the Georgia to Maryland center, Swedish to the north in Philadelphia, Dutch north of them in New York, and French in what is now Canada, with more British in Newfoundland. No pilgrims settling New England and conquering New Amsterdam, no British conquest of Canada.
New Sweden is unlikely to survive, the Dutch were in a much stronger position but I still think an English settlement in New England is more likely than not. It's not like the Mayflower was the first attempt. Gosnold's attempt at Cuttyhunk and pretty successful Popham Colony demonstrate English interest in the region meaning some sort of English settlement is a near certainty.
I agree about New Sweden. If we go with Prince Henry surviving, though, it raises the possibility that the zealous Protestant King Henry IX might seek an alliance with that zealous Protestant king of OTL, Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden (who was very popular among English Puritans, BTW). Maybe we could see an Anglo-Swedish alliance sealed by a marriage to Gustav's daughter (with Henry or Henry's ATL son, depending), and New Sweden coming to England as part of her dowry.
I think it's likely the English will settle New England too. What's interesting though, is ITTL, instead of fleeing royal tyranny to seek religious freedom, zealous Protestants will settle New England in the name of England's godly king. Down the line, this completely changes how the American colonists think of their own relation to England, and how the English think of them.
That founding ideology only really got emphasised in OTL post the Revolution for obvious reasons and at least imho the development of colonial self-interest and identity and gradual divergence from the mother country is inevitable in any colonial venture. All the different founding story would mean is that if a couple of hundred years down the line the American colonies self-interest and the Crowns diverge then the rebellious colonials will have to search a bit harder for justification.
At the end of the day the 13 Colonies rebelled because they didn't want to pay taxes to fund military protection they didn't need any more after the conquest of Canada. The rest was just rhetorical justification.
America would never be the powerhouse of higher education that it is today. The Puritans, for all their faults, were pretty hardcore when it came to establishing themselves as a literate society (so everyone could read and interpret Scripture), and while religious zealotry waned and waxed over the course of the 18th and early 19th centuries, that emphasis on universal education remained.
That sort of education model wasn't present in the southern and middle colonies, where primary education was restricted to the upper classes, who hired tutors for that purpose. The New England colonies provided the precedence for the establishment of local schools supported by taxes taken from local residents.
That sort of education model wasn't present in the southern and middle colonies, where primary education was restricted to the upper classes, who hired tutors for that purpose. The New England colonies provided the precedence for the establishment of local schools supported by taxes taken from local residents.
I don't think that's true. There were structural reasons why New England developed the education system it did while the South didn't. The South was a primarily agrarian society based on cotton plantation where frankly an education wasn't necessary for almost anyone. The upper classes learned how to operate their plantations by watching Daddy and the slaves weren't allowed to read.
The North is always going to be more likely to develop as an urban society with towns and cities and with significant urban centres comes middle class burghers who care about education. If you look at Britain in this and earlier eras in those areas where the social structure developed beyond landowner and peasants with the growth of trading and industrial centres like Manchester and London with a generation you had a top quality network of schools and universities. Those area's that didn't (e.g. Nortumbria, much of Ireland) waited until the 19th and 20th centuries.
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Oh, I thought we were talking about the effects of zero immigration to the New England.
iddt3
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They didn't want to pay said taxes without representation. Post revolution American taxes skyrocketed, the issue wasn't the cost, but the lack of voice in the political process.
I think we can all agree that that is unlikely, New England is viable and the locals aren't strong enough to stop a European power colonising the area. The only question is who and when and based on the fact that the Mayflower was the 3rd attempt in a short period of time even if it is butterflied away or fails England is most likely to settle the area.
Yes and No. I've been doing some research on the era and imho the entire thing was an accident. In 1770 apart from a tiny number of radicals almost no one wanted to break with Britain and the Crown but as things snowballed out of control all sorts of other issues popped up. And the thing that set the snowball rolling was Britain wanting to get money out of the colonists for military protection they didn't need any more. If you had held a referendum in 1770 to choose between taxation and representation or no taxation and no representation (status quo) based on what information we have no representation would have won a landslide. Now imho it is still astonishingly ungrateful as Britain had just spent a massive amount of money beating the French and Spanish in order to protect the 13 colonies and provide space for expansion but there you go. At the end of the day everybody won, America got to be independent and we got to refocus on India and the rest of the 2nd Empire which was far more beneficial to the Home Isles than the American colonies.