What if Spain never joined the 7 Years War/French & Indian War?

Well, you mention the family pact in the first sentence. Would that be OK for the Bourbons to stay out of such an important war? Louis XV wasn't exactly the strongest French king; what will people think if even his relatives - who own the French Bourbons their throne - won't listen to him?

Maybe an even earlier revolution in France? Not that I wouldn't mind.

Let's build off the discussion so far!

1. Spain stays out of the war because my original PoD, Barbara and then Ferdinand living longer. Spain loses nothing to Britain in war or peace, and also gains nothing from France in compensation.
2. France peaces out of the war as the loser, having suffered an additional British campaign that seizes New Orleans in 1762, and adds all of Louisiana to the winnings Britain walks away with in 1763. [Although the settlement might come some months earlier than OTL, because of no need to cajole Spain to also quit].
3. Pontiac's rebellion happens in the Ohio Country/Great Lakes west and inspires the Proclamation line to limit and control Colonial western settlement in Indian western lands. British soldiers, merchants and administrators take up residence in Quebec and Montreal occupied province. They also arrive in New Orleans, Lower Louisiana, but in smaller numbers, to keep guard on the Francophone population, profit from such Mississippi commerce as there is, and ensure there's no political hanky-panky between the Francophone Creoles of New Orleans/Basse-Louisiane and Santo-Domingo. One consequence of the existence of a British occupation regime in western Louisiana is that Acadiens expelled or dispersed from Nova Scotia during and immediately after the 7 Years War do *not* choose to reassemble in these years in Louisiana to become the 'Cajun' people, instead, they mostly remain in France where they sojourned in between or take part in other colonization projects, some of which failed disastrously, like the Guiana effort of 1764.
4. With the Westminster Parliament insisting on its right to tax the English Colonies, and the English North American Colonies free of the fear of being overcome by French and Indian alliances, and none too worried by Spanish Florida, just merely inconvenienced by it.......Anglo-American versus British tensions worsen over the decade 1763-1773.
5. By 1774 in the aftermath of the Boston Tea Party and moves to punish Boston Harbor and Massachusetts Bay Colony, the continent-wide "Committees of Correspondence", the "Association" organizing an effective boycott on British imports in protest at Parliamentary policies on taxation and punitive policies, and the Continental Congress movement are in full swing, asserting the right of the 13, and other English Colonies to the full rights of Englishmen. The Continental Congress invites more than just representatives from the 13 (of those 13, Georgia is the last, most reluctant participant, as a young frontier colony), but also invites delegates to attend from Nova Scotia, from Quebec/Canada (in French and English), and Louisiana (in French and English). The Canadians and Louisianans and Nova Scotians are unresponsive, the former two, mainly because of cultural gaps/differences, the latter because Halifax is such a naval dominated town in a younger colony.
6. After the "shots heard round the world" at Lexington and Concord, or so the combatants flattered themselves, armed conflict broke out between Continental Militia "Minutemen" and British Regulars in 1775. Soon the Continentals raised a regular Army and put Boston to siege. Now *that* got the world's attention, and the war of American rebellion was on. France began to provide covert aid.
7. France openly joined the war on the American side after the American victory at Saratoga, within a year, Spain under King Charles joined the war as well, providing assistance to the Continentals and French through Cuba and Spanish Florida.
8. France's motive was above all, vengeance and humbling Britain. Spain sought, more concretely, to recover Menorca and Gibraltar. Recovery of "frozen Canada" was not important to France, and France disclaimed intent to recover it when negotiating alliance with the Americans, who actually had launched a failed invasion/occupation of it early in the war. Louisiana, or at least western Louisiana (west of the Mississippi) was at the time of the Franco-American Treaty (1778) so far from the focus of the action in the northern colonies that it was not covered or mentioned in the treaty, and the British garrison seemed both distant and unassailable, and the local population, quiescent. The Americans made it well understood they were set on absorbing the lands east of the Mississippi they had been kept from, the Kentucky and Tennessee country being settled, and Ohio country.
9. While Canada remained solidly held by the British garrison and river flotillas ever since the American retreat of 1775, the British position in southern Louisiana was a different story. The British fleet ended up hard-pressed by 1780 dealing with both the French and Spanish fleets and Colonial privateers, trying to manage support for troops ashore, blockade of the Americans, and superiority at sea, while protecting their Caribbean positions. In these circumstances, French formations coming out of Toulon, and further staging out of Port Au-Prince Saint-Domingue, joined Spanish forces from Florida and Texas in a pincer attack on New Orleans and Baton Rouge. This was a fine supplement to French operations in direct support of the Continentals on the Atlantic seaboard. The Franco-Spanish compelled surrender of British fortresses in lower Louisiana, proceeded the Franco-American victory at Yorktown by about three months, and revived France's claim western Louisiana and the port towns of Biloxi and Mobile east of the river. Peace talks began, and the remainder of the war was haggling, which saw Bourbon attempts to weaken Britain further, British naval recovery, and British punishment of the Dutch.
10. In the 1783 Treaty of Paris ending the war, the United States was recognized as an independent state, controlling all 13 Colonies,and controlling all formerly British designated Indian Country between the Ohio river, Mississippi, districts of Bilkoxi and Mobile, and Spanish Florida. It also received the land that had been designated between 1774 and 1783 as part of the province of Quebec that was located between the Great Lakes, Lake of the Woods, Mississippi river, and Ohio river. Spain retained Spanish Florida, marked by St. Augustine in the east and Pensacola in the west. There was a degree of ambiguity left open as to how much of a "bulge" "dome", or "triangle" extended north of the west Florida panhandle and west of Georgia and the Apalachicola River, with an agreement for Spain and the USA to survey and demarcate the frontier in greater detail later. France recovered from Britain all of the Louisiana territory west of the Mississippi river, and to the east of the river the "Isle of New Orleans" to control the full port and river mouth, and the parishes and ports immediately to the east of Biloxi and Mobile bay. Britain was left with Upper and Lower Canada, north of the Great Lakes, New York State, and the Maine counties of of Massachusetts.

France did not start off the war with super-grand ambitions for Louisiana, but, since it was on operationally achievable objective and was won in battle, the victory there generated great enthusiasm at home, and French troops were received with warmth by the local Creoles and Catholic clergy. This made the French insistent on holding on to the territory as an additional token of victory in the peace, and the Americans preferred, all things being equal, that the territory go with its weaker French ally than its stronger, nearer, British erstwhile enemy. That didn't stop the inveterate Ben Franklin from once suggesting that the United States could resolve the dispute by taking on that territory. He said it with smile and a half laugh but was answered with frowns. The British, and especially Bourbon powers, already thought the Americans were doing far too well in the settlement. The reach was par for the course for Franklin, who had earlier suggested to the British gifting Canada to the United States, "for assuring future Anglo-American friendship". Nice try, Ben.

Louisiana was France's largest token from winning the war, but in economic terms, the sugar islands of Tobago and Dominica were probably far more valuable.

Spain got only part of what it wanted. It got Menorca back, but not Gibraltar, which held on throughout the war.

The young United States went on through its early development.

Soon enough, the colonial and naval ministers of Louis XVI found their use for the Louisiana territory in the strategies of France. It would be developed to be the breadbasket and meat larder for the Caribbean sugar colonies like Saint-Domingue, Guadalupe, Martinique, Dominica, Tobago. Some more Frenchmen than before were interested in colonizing due to increased urban and rural poverty and the rising price of food in France between 1784 and 1791. Also, some Canadiens from Quebec, a bit miffed or upset that London had broken its territorial promises of a very large Quebec province and had begun allocating lands of Upper Canada to Anglo-American loyalists, chose to migrate to Louisiana, becoming know there as the "Canajun" population among the less literate types. And even some Acadiens who not settled or fit in well in France or Caribbean colonies moved on to French Louisiana, becoming the more obscure, "Cajun" group.

Debt from the war with Britain, and other long-standing structural problems and inequities with tax collection, causes the French Revolution to break out over 1789-91. Furthermore, it leads to war with neighbors in 1792, and the execution of King, proclamation of the Republic and war with *all* neighbors, including Britain and Spain, in 1793.

The young, weak United States under the second Washington Administration stays neutral in Anglo-French war, besides residual pro-French feelings of some.

Despite the so-called "common border" between French Louisiana, and British North American Upper Canada and Ruperts Land, the war of the first Coalition in the 1790s barely affects their mutual colonial border given the great distance of that prairie land from centers of power and army deports. Occasional raids by trappers, rangers, mountain men and allied Amerindian tribes, burning stockades and stealing horses and livestock are about all the "war" amounts to. Things are similar on the mountain and prairie frontiers of French Louisiana with Spain's Nuevo Mexico colony and Texas colony. For many stretches of the border, bodies of French or Spanish troops or adventurers cannot get to the opposing side without being captured and skinned alive by Comanche first. Things get a little bit "spicier" in the waters of the Gulf of Mexico and shores of New Orleans, Biloxi, Mobile, with occasional British naval bombardments and French privateering, and in the years 1793-1796, mutual raids across the Louisiana-Florida border between French and Spanish forces. After the defeat of Spain in the mainland, and Godoy's policy of subservience to and alliance with France from 1796, the Franco-Spanish New World skirmishing ceases, and indeed, Spain yields eastern Santo Domingo to France.

Britain enjoys naval superiority over France but is dispersing its activity among enough anti-French activities with European and Mediterranean allies that it is not making a concentrated effort to *wipe out* the French position in Louisiana or the Caribbean. Not that it counts for much of anything, but the Federalist governments of Washington and Adams make it known they would be displeased with alterations in the territorial status quo of North America, among the big three European powers. This is for simple balance of power reasons. In the Caribbean, the British have a rising awareness that disease is a big price of doing the business of sieges and invasions in the region.

Meanwhile the French in New Orleans are enjoying a decent revenue and supply situation as commerce down the Mississippi from American trans-Allegheny settlement grows and producers spend in the city's warehouses and wharves, while New England and other shippers come to dock.

During the Adams Administration, especially second half, the vulnerabilities of the Louisiana position are used to convince both French privateers, and foreign affairs officials of the French Directory to tone down their obnoxiousness to avoid the level of scandal and confrontation that we saw in OTL's "XYZ Affair" and the Franco-American Quasi War. Anti-French, pro-British, militaristic rumblings by Federalists like Alexander Hamilton, about potential raising an Army to conquer Louisiana, filter through to French authorities in Lousiana, causing them to make defensive preparations to be sure, but also to communicate cautionary warning through the grapevine to French Caribbean skippers, privateers, and ports, and ultimately to French ports and Directory officials.

Thus, actual Franco-American War, or Anglo-American versus French war, culminating in a campaign to seize Louisiana, is avoided.

The Jefferson Administration even more hopes to avoid Franco-American war, but cannot completely relax, and feels increasingly uncomfortable with any foreign hands controlling New Orleans.

Opportunity finally comes when, Napoleon finally realizes two things. He is unable to suppress the Saint-Domingue/Haiti revolt, after foolishly trying to reinstate slavery on the island, and the Peace of Amiens is about to fall apart, bringing about renewed war with Britain, with his Navy weaker than ever.

As a result, in 1803, Napoleon sells the entirety of the Louisiana territory to the United States, bequeathing the United States the territory it received in OTL, despite a "bonus" additional 20 years of French investment in the territory, and a surplus perhaps 20 to 40,000 additional Francophone resident inhabitants of the land than we saw in OTL.


Like in OTL, Jefferson proceeds to have Lewis and Clark survey the territory, and beyond, into the Pacific. And Napoleon goes on to proceed with his European martial triumphs, and follies, including Trafalgar, the Peninsular War, the invasion of Russia.

The Peninsular War and the destablization of Spain lasting into the post-Napoleonic period puts the Spanish American empire in the coffin and nails the lid shut, but an interesting question is what exactly stays as part of the remnant.

In OTL it was, after the 1820s, Cuba and Puerto Rico. In this ATL, Florida might end up as a surprise, sleeper adjunct and remnant to the Spanish empire, lasting at least a few decades beyond the early-mid-1820s.

On the one hand, it was quite proximate to the USA, boding ill for its survival. But, quite importantly, it never faces the OTL 20 years loss in Spanish control, evacuation of Spanish-loyal population, and all accompanying discontinuities, between 1763 and 1783. Also, its sailing distance to Spain and Cuba is comparatively short, contrasted with South and Central America. Like Cuba, it is "on the way" to all the other colonies, so would probably be a support base for Spanish revolutionary suppression forces. While a continuous colony, it is relatively small, dependent, and aware of its vulnerability to the Yankee colossus, so unlikely to have a local Creole independence movement.

While planters in the southern United States were irritated with Florida's existence as a refuge for renegade Indians and runaway slaves, employed as soldiers even by Spanish officials, and this would only worsen as the cotton south developed. And of course the southerners like the idea of getting cotton usable land for themselves, in the Napoleonic and post-Napoleonic period, Spanish imperialism was transforming to become more "congenial" to the southern "way of life". While successfully rebelling Spanish colonies generally abandoned and abolished slavery, slavery had a rebound and renaissance in Cuba and Puerto Rico in the early 1800s, fueled partly by the in-migration of refugee planters fleeing the Haitian revolution and perhaps the weakening of some sugar competitors. Spanish Florida could easily get more "plantation-y" and cooperative with cross-border slave patrols in the teens, twenties and thirties of the nineteenth century, much like Cuba was.

I think they'd stay Royalist, and the French republic would have a hard time projecting power. Especially if they have to fight Britain.

New Orleans is a nice place IMO... but then, I'm no French nobleman.

Haiti had a revolution, although this might have been caused by special circumstances.

For Haiti, yes, French whites were far outnumbered by black slaves, slave escapee populations of black or mixed race “maroons” in remote interior hills and mullatoes, both free and slave. The French whites largely remained loyal to France through its fast moving revolutionary changes. Very importantly, one of the Governors, sonthonax (you should look him up), took jacobin revolutionary rhetoric as a mandate to officially announce a policy of emancipation in the Haiti/sainte-Domingue colony.

Now *emancipation*/slavery abolition did not have undivided support among white French colonists, nor as much support as loyalty to revolutionary France. It was probably unpopular among a majority of French whites, and was not universally supported by mullattoes or the island’s free people of color.

As for the contrast with a continued French Louisiana colony, it is not quite fair to say that black slaves were or would have been only a small part of the population. Actually, among the non-Amerindian settlers (Amerindians were difficult to count and generally uncounted in the territory) 50% or a little more in colonial times were likely black slaves. Population statistics of Louisiana territory were heavily skewed by demographics of the greater New Orleans and gulf coast area, which were very plantation-heavy.

Also, while the British would be a threat in wartime to a French Louisiana government loyal to the revolutionary republic (as they would be a threat to any of the French Revolutionary island colonies in the western hemisphere, or Guiana), it is not quite correct to say Louisiana would be greatly outnumbered by *British* colonists right next door.

The far north, barely white settled regions of Louisiana would have borders with British Hudson Bay Company land, lightly populated with mostly transient fur traders, and perhaps a short border with the far west of the newly developing Upper Canada colony of Britain. The greatest length of French Louisiana’s eastern border, mostly along the Mississippi would be with the United States. In the 1790s, this would mean mostly with Amerindians formally under USA protection and sovereignty, and increasing numbers of Anglo- American, not British colonists. The white Americans probably won’t start matching the French in numbers along the Mississippi until 1800, though the pop between the Alleghenies and Mississippi might by 1796. The Anglo-Americans would be on trend to outnumber French Louisianians over time, but this won’t be by a multiple of two or more in the border area until around 1810-ish and get steeper beyond.