a) Who's going to pick a fight with Britain at this time, let alone defeat them? Germany has the army but no navy. France is isolated and worried about the Germans and Russia is seeking to expand in Asia but also knows its further reaches are vulnerable to attack from sea power and has no interests in the Caribbean.
Russian advisors helped the Ethiopians in the first Italo-Ethiopian War. As for picking a fight, it was not that long since the "Trent Affair" or the Russian fleet hiding out in US ports. The French invasion scare of 1860 has always been mentioned.
Anyone who wants sugar or molasses wants an interest in the Caribbean Sea.
b) Napoleon III's naval programme was the source of a short lived scare which cause some political panic until the RN and British industry showed they could quickly build markedly more powerful ships. Not to mention that while erratic Nappy III was generally friendly to Britain. Plus that's in 1860 and as pointed out at this point France has just got rid of the German occupation and are very worried about their eastern frontier.
Would that explain French operations in North Africa and a few years later in the South and East China Seas? The French were quite active in the Caribbean Sea, especially around Cuba.
There was a naval action during the Franco Prussian War right outside Havanna. Germans lost.
c) Ownership or otherwise has very little to do with the price of sugar and Canada is perfectly safe. No one's going to be stupid enough to attack it, especially not the US, who lack any real army or navy and have also had people murdered by the idiots in Cuba who caused this mess. Washington isn't going to suggest an extremely destructive war to protect Spanish control of Cuba or slavery.
Lacking an army or navy? 38->357 ships
in 2 years, about 80 of them ironclads. 22,000 men to 600,000 men in 2 years? Americans are fighting on home ground and in home waters, have a history of lake and amphibious warfare, and assaulted fortified coasts and ports successfully and have their strongest industries, communications and infrastructure just south of Toronto, Montral and Quebec?
Canada is not really defendable from 1848 forward. See the map for actually how small the chunky bits are.
The war further south would not be to save Cuba for Spain. The war would be to see who controls the Caribbean Sea. Home waters.
It would be interesting to see how fleet trains develop. Except the British do not have any? Americans had to develop collier support for blockading squadrons. Coal powered British warships operating at three to five times their fueled radius of action would have to have the methods devloped from scratchy? Whose coal is closer? There is coal in Alabama. And a fortified port and a naval base. See Map.
The headache would be Havanna. The Cubano (fortified defenses) in 1873 held about 35,000 men. 1898 it held close to 140,000. It would be an indirect hook around the island to operate in the south. How big was the Jamaica garrison?
d) Any evidence of a British decision not to 'take' the Philippines, which would have meant triggering a war with Spain and be an act of blatant aggression. That sort of thing has repercussion even if your one of the most powerful nations in the world. The idea that this wouldn't occur due to some desire to court Japan sound distinctly unlikely.
If your talking about 1941 the Japanese had zero trouble with the US defences in the Philippines because the US controlled defenders obligingly retreat from virtually all of Luzon into a small pocket where they could pose no threat to Japanese interests, allowing Japan to switch forces away from the islands for their other actions in the south. That they managed to hang on against fairly light attack while the Japanese primary forces overran the poorly equipped and organised defences in Malaya and the DEI was a matter of priorities for Japan.
After one has read the document, one may not have the false view of history above.
The "light forces" were in Malaya. The Japanese had to ship Malay campaign veterans and a siege train in to reduce Bataan and then Corregidor. The Filipinos after, continued a guerrila war. They did not fold up like the Malays did.
e) Pardon? Looking at
his wiki page he won some success at land and one small victory over a Chinese force, the bulk of which fled before he could engage them then supported a landing in Taiwan and later blockaded the Yangstze delta rice traffic. Nothing to do with any ability to fight the RN and
a decade after the proposed conflict. What navy did France have in 1873 and why, having just got the Germans off their back would they pick a fight with Britain.
Wiki is not a good indicator.
Background. 1. Background 2.Summary. The French wanted to annex and hold suzerainty over Amman. The subsequent military operations remind one very much of the type of coastal assaults and blockade operations the Union fought against the Confederacy, especially with torpedo rams (Davids) against ironclads. The Chinese withdrew from Fujian on land after Amadee Courbet ambushed their fleet at Fuzhou. The battle of annihilation cost the Chinese 9 of 11 "modern" ships present, while another 10 gunboats (junks) were destroyed. Courbet's fleet was originally scattered, and he had to pull things together. For example: MNS Triomphante, an ironclad, arrived late and almost missed the battle. Most of the fighting on the French side was from his three protected cruisers and the two spar torpedo boats which formed the core of Courbet's line. The Chinese did not run away. They were either boarded, blew up under bombardment (MNS Triomphante was a sharpshooter), were spar torpedoed, or they ran aground. Like the Spaniards of the 1898 Armada, the Chinese fought hard, and they died at their posts.
Hence; I would not be too sure the French in the South China Sea would not be trouble. Especially not after the failures of the RN China squadron in 1856 and 1860 to deal with the RUSSIANS.
