How could the Oregon dispute have gone differently?
- Thread starter Krasno
- Start date
Apparently during the mid 1840’s (Wikipedia says 1844,) there was quite the debate within American society upon which the fate of the state of Washington and Oregon depended (shortly before Texas became a state of America and the Mexican-American war began). You could get a war between Britain and the USA over the Pacific Northwest if gold is discovered way earlier (Again, Wikipedia states that a gold rush happened in the Yukon between 1896 to 1899).
RE a larger Russian Alaska. Alaska was of marginal value to Russia. It was just too far away from Moscow. You have to travel all the way across Russia before you are even close to it.
Re British Seattle. Same problem as the Americans had. The only sensible way to get there is by wagon train. To compete with OTL's Oregon Trail you have to violate US territory or build a port on the north bank of Lake Michigan. Your starting point for the land route is thus in line with St Louis.
The Americans still have an advantage though. Thanks to their larger population they have more potential colonists to go than Canada does.
Nothing like a high handed land grab. to get you in first. There is still the "Texas" problem. More American colonists than people of the ruling (British/Mexican) power.
You can have a debate on the subject in New York, Bioston or wherever but if a load of colonists move into an area the talk becomes moot.
For a different outcome to the Oregon dispute a PoD where less Americans go there may be required. That means they go elsewhere. How about an earlier Californian gold rush?
The British didn't really go overland, they went by sea. Going overland was dangerous and expensive. Most of the first American colonists who arrived only survived because they bought goods from the HBC on credit. If the HBC tells them to pound sand, they probably starve.
If you are sending large numbers of people by sea then it is going to be dangerous and expensive. Every ship has got to go via Cape Horn twice, unless you want to make every voyage a one way trip.
The HBC could tell American colonists to pound sand, but that does not mean that local factors will. Nothing to stop them buying supplies on credit then selling them to Americans for even more credit.
...so what? Tons of OTL Canada was settled by Americans. If the British somehow manage to get a diplomatic settlement on more or all of Columbia District, there is no reason that the American settlers there would pull a Texas any more than they did in e.g., Alberta, especially when they would likely be dependent on British authorities/companies for supplies and essential goods as well as potentially protection against Native Americans (not sure how much that was an issue in that region).
That's what happened in OTL. If the factor had just decided to follow company policy they would have starved.
Exactly. The difference is spelled the RCMP (and its various pre-decessors) - the British Empire have the police force and then the military force behind that to enforce their borders and laws. You simply can't filibuster the British in this era.
Except that the Americans who settled in Canada know they were in Canada. From at least 1825 Americans thought the border was the 49th Parallel not the Columbia River. The U.S. wasn't going to give up its rights to the vast inland waterways of what is now Washington State without a fight. In the 1840's the whole British population of British Columbia numbered around 1,200, and most of them worked for the trading company. The Americans coming along the Oregon Trail were settlers not just fur traders, or merchants. Numbers count and the British could see the writing on the wall. The British could sell things to the Americans, but they couldn't rule over the place, they had no means of enforcing a claim over the people moving in.
That's exactly what's usually missed in all the "pull a Texas" scenarios that assume inevitable US expansion across the continent. Settlers - farmers - come to settle, to establish fixed abodes, to invest lots of work into clearing land and building homesteads. They'll come and stay because they have a reasonable expectation of being able to peacefully and legally occupy the land that they put so much effort into improving. They're not a bunch of fur traders who will come and go as they please, regardless of local authority.
The Texas anglo settlers came to a region that they thought was under a friendly local jurisdiction that guaranteed their land and their slaves. The flow of settlers dried up every time the Mexican government made noises threatening these (particularly the slaves). American immigrants to Canada, barring some malcontents in the 1830's, accepted local jurisdiction because they were there to make homes, not as the vanguard to an invasion.
In Oregon the British were unable to exert similar jurisdiction because the 1818 treaty guaranteed joint use of the area. Barring this, a very small amount of police power would have either dried up the flow of US settlers entirely or cause the pioneers to accept British law, just as in Canada.
What police powers? There was nothing there, just a trading company. The U.S. had an agreement that said it wasn't British territory. The settlers formed their own local governments and militia. The U.S. Army moved troops into Oregon south of the Columbia River, there were no bodies of British troops in British Columbia.
The HBC was certainly armed and organized to police its own employees and in the event of conflict with the indigenous. They could certainly tell a wagon train "You can't settle here" and they could bring in more armed people if needed. They didn't do this because Britain had a treaty with the US and because it might have started a war, treaty or no treaty. These were valid concerns, but the idea of an inevitable flow of pioneer farmers overwhelming the area wasn't. People - not trying to put words into your mouth specifically - tend to read too much into the Texas example.
You just set it up yourself. The trading company didn't even try to keep American settlers out of the territory because there was a treaty between the UK and the U.S. saying they could settle there. Once the Oregon Trail was opened American pioneer farmers were going to overwhelm the area, and nothing was going to stop that.
Because there was a treaty there. The whole premise of this thread is presumably a different Oregon Treaty dividing the territory between the UK and the USA differently. And again, so what if the region is overwhelmed by American pioneer farmers? There's no reason that that means it ends up revolting to America or something, they'd just stay under British and later Canadian rule, like other parts of Canada that were settled by Americans.
Maybe they could have reached some sort of agreement to split the territory along the Columbia, with the U.S. getting sovereignty over Oregon and the British (then Canadians) over what is now Washington? Britain gaining Alaska from Russia after an ATL fall of Petropavlovsk could be the POD – leading to more interest in a robust British dominion on the Pacific Coast and a Klondike Gold Rush that benefits Vancouver instead of Seattle, which probably remains a backwater.
But I don't see how to stop the massive inflow of U.S. settlers. Oregon is going to be American. Only question is does an agreement then divide Oregon territory that let's the British hold on to Washington.
But I don't see how to stop the massive inflow of U.S. settlers. Oregon is going to be American. Only question is does an agreement then divide Oregon territory that let's the British hold on to Washington.
Is there any chance that a Cascadian state arises in Washington and Oregon? Not an independent state, but rather a state that is given large amounts of support by the British and the Americans in return for neutrality?
They wouldn't be? There would just have been a different treaty in the first place.