What is the best way to have the US broken up into several nation states of various sizes? A a post civil war break up or failed articles of confederation?
Best way to have a balkanized US?
- Thread starter big_ben_mi
- Start date
I would say the latter. As the first choice simply would not make much sense with it being polarized to simply the USA/CSA, and further balkanization would not reall make sense, at least in my eyes.
Flubber
Banned
Just to be sure, are you talking about a US which is balkanized after it's founding or are you asking about that part of North America where the US is being balkanized?
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Absolute best way? That, pretty much. By the time of the Civil War, you already have at least one pretty well defined power block that, even if it loses the South, is eventually going to throw its weight around.
Strangling the US in its metaphorical crib is a great way to make sure you eventually get a bunch of countries rising from the ashes.
The Louisiana Territory will probably eventually still prove to be too much hassle for France (if it still gets it from Spain). And the northern territories of New Spain/Mexico will probably be still sparsely populated.
Lots and lots of room for groups people who don't particularly like the situation they are in to go out and set up camp.
Another way might be having the War of 1812 go bad for the US. Really bad. By this time the US already has nominal control of 2/3rds of what would become the US (non-Alaska version). Have that implode into a series of countries without having another country swoop in and pick at carcass and you might have the recipe for what you are looking for.
Yeah I'm think for the balkanization to come after the founding so that the nations seem somewhat familar but different at the sametime. I was thinking maybe the constitutional convention fails? What would happen to the Northwest Territory in a failed union?
Anaxagoras
Banned
I'm playing around with a TL in which George Washington dies in an accident on a bridge while riding home to Mount Vernon after the Constitutional Convention (as very nearly happened IOTL). Consequently, the Constitution is not ratified because one of the main reasons it received support was the assumption that Washington would be the first President. No Constitution pretty much guarantees a balkanization over the next few decades.
I also think that a CS-Victory TL can provide multiple opportunities for additional balkanization. Texas may well split from the rest of the CSA, especially when oil is discovered. While there was limited separatist sentiment in California IOTL, there could have been more in a CS-Victory TL. There are many possibilities.
I also think that a CS-Victory TL can provide multiple opportunities for additional balkanization. Texas may well split from the rest of the CSA, especially when oil is discovered. While there was limited separatist sentiment in California IOTL, there could have been more in a CS-Victory TL. There are many possibilities.
Flubber
Banned
Okay, that means we're looking at a post 1787-89 period.
Wait a minute. You want things to fall apart after the US is founded but now you're talking about a failed Constitutional Convention? If the convention fails there is no US to begin with.
Prior to the Constitution the US existed much like Germany and Italy existed prior to their unification. The US is more of a geographical description or at best a loose alliance than an actual nation-state.
It depends on how and when the union failed. It could be part of British Canada, it could independent, different parts of it could be both those things.
I imagine it would be partitioned between Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Canada.
Flubber
Banned
Not exactly. The colonial era land claims many US states carried into the Constitution with them were incredibly screwy things, which isn't surprising when you remember that colonial charters based borders on things like latitude, suspected mountain ranges, rivers which weren't mapped, and other chimeras across a continent whose width was only guessed at.
Check out this link for a quick overview of most of those, to our eyes, screwy claims.
Let's take Pennsylvania. Thanks to a royal sea-to-sea charter, Connecticut had colonial claims to roughly the northern half of Pennsylvania until it ceded them in the 1780s. Pennsylvania also didn't have a border on the Great Lakes until New York sold it the Erie triangle and New York didn't make that sale until competing claims between NY and Massachusetts about what is now the western half of NY were settled.
Colonial claims meant most of the Old Northwest and all of the lands immediately west of PA technically belonged to other colonies/states. Virginia had huge claims and, as the North American portion of the Seven Years' War showed, little compunction in defending those claims. As I note, PA wouldn't even have a Great Lake port from which to reach the Old Northwest without a land sale by NY.
A lot of these screwy colonial land claims were settled either under the Articles of Confederation or because the new Constitution was in the offing. Abort the Articles or Constitution and there's going to be a lot of wrangling in the Old Northwest.
The book How The States Got Their Shapes would be a good starting point for this discussion because the states in a balkanized, post-ARW, North America aren't going to resemble anything we're familiar with.
How easily would the various states get into actual conflicts over these land disputes? I would think that they would be vary wary of fighting each other at least at first.
Flubber
Banned
Well states like Massachusetts and Connecticut aren't going to be sending troops into what we call Ohio to try and enforce colonial land claims as there's really no way for them to get there. Virginia, OTOH, can and did send troops into the Ohio and there are other claims that could create troubles. Delaware and Pennsylvania didn't have a settled border, for example, while NY and MA could tangle in the Albany region thanks to competing claims in western NY/Vermont.
Then there's the prospect that post-break up polities could resurrect colonial land claims for their own purposes. Imagine a unified New England (or super-Massachusetts) going to war with New York over Vermont while bringing Pennsylvania in as an ally on the strength of signing over Massachusett's colonial claims in western New York.
Things would get very weird until an equilibrium of sorts was reached or until an European power or powers stepped in to enforce a peace.
The last was the primary unstated fear behind the Constitutional Convention. Too many influential men in too many states were fearful that a balkanized or otherwise weak United States would invite European "fishing".
That's one of the problems with a "US immediately falls into total chaos/ each state becomes it's own separate nation" timeline. Fear of the European powers and especially Britain are going to make them play nice with each other for a while. No, I think it should fall into chaos...gradually enough that interests set in and nobody panics and realizes the entire country is collapsing. I think it would be most feasible if it split in two first, maybe on a New York vs Virginia axis, and then had another split.
So, POD should be at the Constitutional Convention, where something will change to increase regional enmity, followed by a split a decade or two later.
To some extent, I think a truly balkanized US post-independence is impossible. The country can split into maybe three or four chunks at most. Any more than that, and the most similar nations would re-unite for protection, increased trade, etc. In areas that are highly culturally similar, anywhere in the world, partition is an oddity and an uphill battle, so I really do think there's a logical maximum to how many different countries the US could have ended up as, post 1783 anyway.
Flubber
Banned
That is the major problem with an immediately balkanized United States and any POD which works around it going to include a very different ARW, Britain, and Europe at the very least.
The trouble there is that the Articles failed both quickly and noticeably enough for enough of the right people to panic and take action. A different post-ARW US government might drag that failure out long enough for the interests you mention to set in, but I don't see how or where a balance could be struck; i.e. having this slow motion failing government handle the nation's post-ARW issues just well enough to limp along for a few decades without either being strong in the first place or easy meat for European meddling.
I see a three-way New England vs. Mid-Atlantic vs. Virginia/South as most plausible with the smaller states being annexed by the larger ones.
If a Constitutional Convention does occur I see it as eventually unifying the original colonies. Some sort of replacement for the Articles is coming out of the convention because too many people who matter want a replacement. A constitution which, for whatever reason, doesn't produce a government which every colony/state can accept, it is going to produce a government which enough colonies/states are going to accept.
The "Ins" are going to very quickly do better than the "Outs", economically, diplomatically, in western land claims, you name it, so much so that the "Outs" are eventually going to want to join no matter what their original reservations were. Look at Rhode Island for example, it avoided ratifying the Constitution for three years and only did so when threatened with tariffs that would hinder it's access to US markets.
A "partial" US operating under an "alt" Constitution is going to absorb all the original colonies unless a European power "re-colonizes" one or more of the hold-outs.
Agreed and for the reasons you state.
Would there be a way to split the fledgling nation into two nations? Maybe If we went with something between say 1789-1812? It would be neat to see a war between two major factions, one with British support, and possibly Britain ends up with the NW Territory as the Dominion of Michigan
Flubber
Banned
It's already been mentioned and for the time period you suggest: A much worse War of 1812.
Towards the end of that war, the New England states met in Hartford to draft a resolution. They'd generally opposed the war, saw most of their trade vanish, and were not happy with way the war was going. While the resolution wasn't exactly a set of demands or a threat to secede, it did contain some rather strong language and it could have led to all sorts of nastiness.
In the OTL, the Hartford resolution and it's commissioners arrived in Washington about the same time that news of Jackson's victory at New Orleans did. Let's just say the commissioners didn't press the issue.
Also in the OTL, British agents were at work at the Hartford Convention.
You've just described Jared's excellent Decades of Darkness time line. While the POD is Jefferson's death in office, the US splits over the War of 1812 and the Old Northwest becomes part of Canada.
As for that being "neat", I don't think you'll find the world that results very "neat" at all.
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Would you see eventually a bismarck type figure come about uniting the various factions into a united nation later in its history?
Getting a division into a few smaller states is certainly possible with either POD. Fragmentation is unlikely, except of the American South in a Confederacy wins timeline. The CSA was founded with the idea that any state could leave at any time for any reason. Every election and every major political decision risks the Confederacy losing states.