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Post by Otto Kretschmer on Mar 3, 2023 16:10:01 GMT
OTL early colonization of North America was done by the Puritans and the Quakers.
What if it was just the Quakers? How would it influence the culture of ATL United States?
Quakers being more peaceful than other Christian groups would certainly influence the culture in this direction. Could we then see red mergence of a political entity that is pacifist? Would the American Revolution even happen at all?
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Post by Carolus Orlandus on Mar 3, 2023 16:35:25 GMT
I'll take a stab at this.
Assuming all the OTL Thirteen Colonies were colonized and inhabited by the Quakers, I could see a more cordial relationship between the British colonists and the indigenous natives. Meaning that assimilation and Christianization would be much smoother gradually over time.
However, British colonization is primarily settler-based as opposed to the Iberian (Spanish and Portuguese) way of colonization by sending men over instead of large families to settle. Eventually, the natives would succumb to the Old-World diseases just like IOTL. And besides the viral conditions, opportunistic colonists would also do their absolute damnedest to buy and use the land from the natives unless the colonial governments stopped that from happening.
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Post by Max Sinister on Mar 4, 2023 11:43:51 GMT
In the long run, the Quakers alone won't cut it. They were a small group, and North America is big...
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stevep
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Post by stevep on Mar 4, 2023 13:42:43 GMT
The other issue is that being pacifists Quakers won't be very effective against hostile tribes, of which there will be some and even less so against the French and Spanish threat, or even the Dutch and Swedish settlements in what's now the eastern US.
Of course while they and the Puritans were prominent among the English settlers there were a lot of other groups, such as the Catholics in Maryland, let alone that Virginia started to be settled even prior to the Puritan landings.
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Post by Max Sinister on Mar 4, 2023 14:11:10 GMT
The other issue is that being pacifists Quakers won't be very effective against hostile tribes, of which there will be some and even less so against the French and Spanish threat, or even the Dutch and Swedish settlements in what's now the eastern US.
Of course while they and the Puritans were prominent among the English settlers there were a lot of other groups, such as the Catholics in Maryland, let alone that Virginia started to be settled even prior to the Puritan landings.
If this leads to a fragmented North America, it'd make a very interesting TL.
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Post by diamondstorm on Mar 30, 2023 17:54:19 GMT
Here’s the thing, the Quakers weren’t founded until either the late 1640s or early 1650s as part of the fallout from the English Civil War. By 1650 or so there were already 50,000 European settlers in North America. Hence I don’t think this is possible due to timing.
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