Alternate Congress of Vienna

  Well autocratic by my terms.  Still formally a democracy but basically a lot more centralised in terms of power and disapproving of alternative viewpoints.  Plus no matter how popular it is and how willing the proponents of such a policy are to try democratic means and negotiation, any attempt to leave the union is OUT!  Similarly in Europe, whatever is the core of the continental empire he desires, whether imperial Rome, the HRE, France at its height or a Prussian Germany areas like Bohemia and the Polish, Dutch and Swiss 'marches' will become totally Germanised, regardless of what their people want.

  He is generally a little more flexible in his American empire in that it becomes very tolerant of religion and abolishes slavery early on, generally without much conflict, but blindly assumes not only that those steps are easily practical but that everybody who comes under American 'rule' are happy to do so rather than resisting vigerously.

  As you say far too early for the US to get all of Canada, even if somehow they were invited or wished to attend an European Congress.  Unless somehow Napoleon managed to get his army across the Channel, in which case there would be far greater butterflies!  Could see some gains on the fringes but the US isn't really strong enough to take much of Canada, or hold it against a vengeful Britain seeking to liberate its people once Boney goes down.

  If the US got a more powerful navy earlier then possibly it could do what it did with Florida, making Spain "an offer it couldn't refuse".  Taking control and then offering some compensation. 

I don't see any reason why TTL USA should be any less democratic or liberal because of earlier, greater territorial extension, nor I have any good reason for them to wish to be different given the circumstances. I do not have any ideological love or hate of democracy for its own sake. I often support it since I acknowledge a lot of the time it is the overall least harmful and most efficient available form of government, but I'm not blind to its serious flaws, such as demagoguery, tyranny of the majority, and pursuit of the least common denominator.

Theoretically speaking, I'm a big fan of libertarian anarchism at heart, even if I acknowledge it is effectively impractical and harmful at our current level of development and in a scarcity economy. How I yearn for the Singularity to make it possible. Since it makes little theoretical difference for me for social coercion to come from the will of one all-powerful dictator or millions of morons dominated by their impulses and prejudices, in different historical circumstances and scenarioes I can support democracy or authoritarianism according to what I perceive as the greatest practical benefit. Moreover, while I can often support democracy for its practical and utilitarian benefits, I acknowledge no benefit, validity, or redeeming value to nationalism and Balkanization whatsoever, they have been more or less as beneficial as cancer and plague to mankind.

The caveman urge to divide people according to insignificant cosmetic features, useless linguistic residues of our tribal past, or vicious, pathetic superstition has reaped but misery, strife, and waste for mankind, the more it gets suppressed, the better. Humans may be hardwired to work best in platoon-sized groups, but evolution made that kind of society impractical long ago. Past that point, all models of society are equally artifical, so there is no good reason not to expand their borders to the greatest size current technological level would afford, or at least as close to as historical circumstances would allow. As far as I'm concerned, people can have self-rule... by voting for their representatives in the Terran Federation, and all appropriate levels of devolved government from local to global, nothing more, nothing less. But if you ask me any support, sympathy, patience, or respect for say the Brexiters, Scots, or Catalans to set yet another harmful and divisive border, I have absolutely none to give.

Democratic choice of government and secession are two entirely different things, no matter how much partisans of nationalism like to mix them together.



Since we achieved the Neolithic level of development, mankind has always had much more linguistic differentation than it has any productive use for, and usually it is an obstacle to cooperation and progress. If an imperial hegemony leads to lose some of it in Europe or elsewhere, it cannot be but for the better. If the Romans are the ones to unify the continent, Latin shall be the lingua franca, if the French French, if the Germans German. It doesn't make much of a difference to me, except I tend to regard certain languages superior to others in ease of use (e.g. Latin script vs. Chinese characters).



I tend to be confident a sizable portion of people shall be more mindful of opportunities for peace, prosperity, and efficient government than of their tribal urges. There are plenty of example in history when practical benefits defeat nationalism.

I do hope you have a good name for British South America than Hispanic Canada 2.0.

Surely the British government can think of some geopolitically fitting name (perhaps British Platine something) for their Southern Cone colonies, and 'Hispanic Canada 2.0' is of course tongue-in-cheek, but unlike the British ruling elites this AH author is rather creatively challenged about names.

On my part, I have almost no problem at making North America mostly united by letting the British Empire avoid the loss of the 13 colonies with appropriate devolution reform in the 1750s, and subsequent victory against France and Spain to grab New France (like OTL), most of New Spain, and the Greater Antilles. My only problem at this is I regard the US version of the Anglosphere system/civilization rather more efficient and beneficial in the long term than the original British one, so if I have a choice about which one to boost into an hyperpower, I tend to prefer the improved 2.0 version. Then again, if we can concoct an appropriate PoD to turn the ARW crisis from an independence war into a revolution that transforms the British Empire at large into a US-style liberal federation, I'm onboard. Apart from this, my only issue about setting back the PoD at successful reform of British North America is the bigger amount of butterflies that are released for a scenario that is supposed to get fulfilled in the 1810s, and need to be harnessed to make the alt-Congress of Vienna scenario recognizable. 

The Loyalists are a non-issue if the USA gets mainland Canada in the ARW or an (earlier) War of 1812. If they are really serious about leaving rather than becoming US citizens, they shall simply resettle to other portions of the British Empire, it is not as it lacked valuable free space suitable for settler colonization, such as Southern Africa, Australasia, possibly Southern Cone if it becomes British ITTL, to a degree even Newfoundland and the British West Indies which are outside US grasp in this period. Otherwise they shall assimilate in the larger USA if they care about comfort more than loyalism. There was nothing necessary or inevitable about them going to a different part of North America. The French Canadians shall assimilate fine in the USA because its system shall offer them more opportunities for autonomy, equality, and religious freedom (First Amendment, anyone?) than pre-1840 British colonialism. As it concerns the language issue, nobody in the rest of the USA shall have any serious problems with Quebec or even the federal government at large being bilingual or officially agnostic about language.

I tend to assume an earlier War of 1812 would best occur for America in 1807-09, not 1805-06, so in this period Britain is seriously engaged in the Peninsular War and not free to deploy the bulk of its power in North America, yet Napoleon is still the main problem for Britain for the foreseeable future, so the British may easily be prone to write off Canada well before Napoleon falls if the war in North America turns against them from the beginning. Apart from this, a necessary part of the divergence is a much better prepared US military due to political divergences in the 1790s-1800s (no Jeffersonian Presidency, longer Federalist dominance) this shall more than make up for the Natives being stronger. OTL shows royalist France had written off Quebec by the ARW since it made no attempt to get it back at the peace table. So it won't make any difference for them if the USA instead of Britain gets settled Canada in 1783.

The scenario assumes Britain shall act more or less the same way as OTL about the Spanish-American independence wars regardless of US opportunist intervention since the same factors apply: notice the scenario assumes the British get the Southern Cone as a colony and Brazil as a client. Loss of Canada to the Americans would have happened a decade or generation ago depending on PoD, and frankly Canada was not that valuable to the British Empire in this period to build a big grudge about it. Also notice the northern half of New Spain would be of very low value to British colonialism in these circumstances, so London would not care if the Americans make a land-grab about it. The Greater Antilles may or may not be a different issue.

Yes, if Ottoman rule in the Balkans collapses a century earlier than OTL, the vast majority of Muslims in the region shall be kicked out, but so what? The same happened IOTL after 1878 and 1913, a different time shall make no difference. As it concerns the Orthodox, the settlement would only make the ones in Serbia, Bosnia, and Oltenia Habsburg subjects. For most of them there had been a precedent in 1718-39 and it didn't go too bad. Most of them would find Habsburg rule a definite improvement to Ottoman misrule. Serious problems may indeed arise when nationalism becomes popular in the next generation, but this shall be an issue for the future. The point of this scenario is the great powers (except defeated France which is defeated) all make serious gains in their chosen turf, so they allow each other a green light. Yes, these massive losses shall screw up the Ottoman Empire and possibly send it to a fast trajectory to collapse, but ITTL the great powers made a decision they don't care, they shall deal with the issue if and when it occurs.

Please, the Congress of Vienna was pretty much the archetype of a consensus of tyrannical aristocratic great powers blatantly ignoring the wishes of the European peoples and writing the map of the continent in the way they liked. If they had cared about the wishes of ordinary people they had set up a united Germany and Italy, freed up Poland, kicked the Ottomans out of Europe, and strived to keep the best fruits of the French Revolution and Napoleonic reforms instead of imposing an unholy mix of the worst aspects of the Ancient Regime and Napoleonic despotism. ITTL they simply do it in a different way, but it is wholly unreasonable to argue TTL settlement is any more coercitive than OTL because it goes contrary to your wishes for more particularism and Balkanization. Arguably it goes closer to the wishes of the peoples as expressed by subsequent revolutionary movements, such as making Germany and Italy closer to unity, undoing Ottoman rule of the Balkans, and uniting Poland under foreign rule. Certainly the system remains massively vulnerable to liberal-national revolution in the future, and ATL differences make the outcome interesting in this regard, but not necessarily worse, quite the contrary. France is certainly going to be massively revisionist once it recovers, but again, not so different from what it tried to do in 1830-31 and 1854-71, if probably in a more antagonistic way.