How early would you need to change American colonial history to guarantee an Anglo-American sovereign relationship close as Anglo-Canadian in 1883?

[unprincipled peter]

I'm giving a narrow-minded focus only to this particular bit, but if we have "limited to the eastern seaboard" America, then all they need for completion is East Florida - particularly its 1783-1819 border at the Suwanee River to match Georgia's then-boundary of the Altamaha - and Nova Scotia - INCLUDING New Brunswick but NOT Ile-Royal (Cape Breton and PEI) - to directly connect to Maine.

Spain or preferably France (why would Spain care on holding West Florida if it doesn't hold East?) territorially secures New Orleans and the Mississippi watershed if it holds West Florida, while France holding Ile-Royal allows it one of the two keys into the Gulf of St. Lawrence (the other being Newfoundland, French-settled Plaisance being ceded in 1713 and its inhabitants... er, explicitly relocating to Cape Breton as the Colony of Ile-Royal) and thus a lifeline to Canada in particular and New France in general. The mainland Maritimes of NS/NB and East Florida becoming British in time gives a bit of expansion room to Americans while giving them a miniature security buff since they're protected north-to-south via the Appalachians down to the Altamaha/Suwanee Rivers.

In effect, have East Florida and New Brunswick (not just Nova Scotia) captured by Britain and West Florida successfully devastated by the Creeks during Queen Anne's War so Spain just abandons "Florida" in general to France (West) and Britain (East) and Britain has indisputable control over the eastern seaboard and Newfoundland as claimed since the 1580s. That may actually help keep things a bit more stable on the ground for colonial North America without small rival colonies pestering one another (Spanish Florida neighboring Georgia, British Nova Scotia surrounded by French Ile-Royal and rump Acadia/New Brunswick) but instead long, de-jure borders defined by geography against and easy access within.

No doubt Nova Scotia will quickly become an extended part of New England and East Florida that of Dixie in time, culturally, as well.

In a world where France holds the Canadian half of New France, they're also going to hold the Louisiana/Illinois half, too. The F & I War started over border disputes, specifically Ohio. Outside of a time traveler convincing Britain to willingly give up disputed border territory, I'm not sure how you get Britain to do so. At best, you can reasonably delay the conflict to a point where France is better able to defend New France.

Under Spain, prior to losing it to Britain, there was only Florida. Britain was the one who split it in two, adding to West Florida a bit of Louisiana taken from France

 

[Fabius Maximus]

While the geopolitical situation was different, the juggling of priorities was different, and so on, an analogy I could draw is that the southern secessionist movement, despite many southern citizens (yes including whites) lack of personal enthusiasm for the idea and cause, had quite solid political elite, community leader, judicial, police and military support across the southern seceding states when the chips came down to fighting. Yet the rebellion was defeated, the southerners became fine patriots again, who despite nostalgia about the rebellion, never attempted secession again, merely cosplayed from time to time. [Lack of full enforcement of the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments and Reconstruction era Civil Rights laws, and lack of tolerance for policies of Reconstruction era state government, indeed, violent opposition to all those things may all be bad and illegal, but what it was not, was another secession attempt, or refighting the Civil War. It was just wiping the moral icing off the Union preservation cake.]

An even more striking analogy would be the Social War in ancient Rome. Basically, Rome's Italian allies (who were theoretically equal and independent states, but in practice subordinate vassals) wanted Roman citizenship, but Rome refused to grant it to them. Eventually, in 91 BC, the allies declared independence, and founded a new, federal state called Italia. After a few years' fighting, the Romans ended up offering them citizenship in exchange for laying down their arms. The vast majority of the Italians accepted, and that was pretty much that. There were a few hold-outs, but these all ended up being crushed, and everybody, Italian and Roman alike, just sort of moved on and forgot about the war.

The analogy with the American colonies is pretty obvious: both Americans and Italians wanted political representation, and both declared independence when they were denied this. Of course, the Americans got enough foreign aid to win their independence war, whereas the Italians didn't, but if the Americans couldn't win outright, I can easily see their rebellion ending the same way as the Italian one. It even be called the "Social War" as well, by analogy with the original* Roman one.

* As it happens, there had been two "Social Wars" in ancient Greece before the Italian rebellion, but I believe they were given their name by later historians because they started in similar circumstances to the Roman one. So the American one would actually be the fourth Social War.

IMO, once things get to a "we're all going to band together and fight for freedom from tyranny", the situation has gone too far for a likely "we're all happy to be part of the British Empire" outcome. The rebellion can be defeated, but those defeated will teach their children to hate the British. It'll be the great cause that needs to rise again situation. Now, maybe after crushing the rebellion, Britain realizes they can't keep the empire forever by force, so they grant a dominion/autonomy, but it's much, much easier to come to that realization before things erupt into bloodshed.

Lots of rebellions have been defeated and never come back. There's no reason to suppose the American one will be any different, assuming the aftermath is handled sensibly by Britain.

 

[raharris1973]

And by this point it looks like late, post-Lexington and Concord PoDs have a healthy lead, with the Olive Branch Petition being the big favored choice at 13 votes.....

One thing I would ask the group for opinions about, since we have two basic "clusters" here:

We have the "late resolution" cluster, where revolutionary, Continental Congress agitation and armed resistance starts, and it gets resolved either through a) late diplomacy and *significant* confederal concessions of the Olive Branch petition, or b) military defeat of Continental forces, mainly through not having sufficient French aid and running out of resources.

Then we have the "early resolution" cluster, where the American rebellion is simply prevented or preempted or squelched, by a) Americans being bent/broken to Parliamentary taxation earlier, or b) Americans being coddled, carved out, consistently exempted from Parliamentary levies beyond what they thought appropriate or raised themselves, or c) New France is never removed.

What might some of the differences between the development of America be, between the former, and the latter, in particular in the areas of economic development and economic damage? Also in the long-run development of the institution of slavery and the slave trade and slave labor market throughout all the Colonies, and voluntary immigration flows into the colonies?