| abstract
| - Starting in 1774, the Quebec Act forbids French and Catholicism in Quebec, spurring the Quebeckers to join the North American Revolution. By the end of the war in 1783, all the colonies in North America have revolted and joined the United States of America. There are 16 states, but 13 signed the Articles of Confederation originally, still leaving the new nation with 13 stripes. Upon the signing by the remaining states, it was realized that adding new stripes for each state would ruin the design, making the field look pink, so it was set to 13 stripes. The United Empire Loyalists moved into Patagonia, a sparsely populated region at the time, as well as into Africa, increasing British interest in both continents. Britain, which had used Hessian soldiers during the war, brought along a contingent of several thousand Hessians to Patagonia to secure the region. Eventually they settled into a region called Neu Hessen, later handed over to the Prussian crown and settled by more Hessians and Prussians, becoming New Prussia. In 1798, what stayed a Quasi-War in our timeline blew into a full-scale war between France and the fledgling United States, leading the French to cede French Guiana and St. Pierre and Miquelon to the new nation, and recognize her neutrality. The United States, which had captured Guadalupe and Martinique, returned the islands to France. In 1812, the British-American War began over impressment, trade harassment of American ships, and inciting Indian attacks on the frontiers. With most of her army engaged with Spain abroad and in South America, and with Rupert's Land sparsely defended, the Americans seized it fairly rapidly. The war had several battles in the Caribbean and in the continent, where the Americans seized Jamaica, Bermuda, and the Bahamas from the British, and the British burned Washington DC. By war's end, the Americans had forced Britain to cede their North American claims, while recognizing their right to Patagonia, and ceding the Guyana territory, which some Americans had objected to earlier. Jamaica was returned to Britain as well, and reparations were paid to the British Hudson's Bay Company, and those who wished to stay were allowed to do so as citizens of the US. In 1803, the US bought Louisiana, Guadalupe, and Martinique from France when Napoleon needed the funds for his efforts in Europe. In 1819, the US bought Florida and Cuba from Spain. Roberto Bolivar, a federalist who in this timeline had spent time in the United States, and had studied in the US as it fought against France and the UK, emboldening him to fight for New Granada the same way. He even garnered some free soldiers from the US forces in Guyana and American Guiana to fight Spanish forces in his territories. By 1819, the Republic of Colombia was declared, and had secured its independence from Spain by 1821. The victorious Colombian forces held a convention at the urging of the American President, who sent Pierre Martin, his Secretary of State, and several other representatives and scholars to help them draft a constitution, which is finished by the fall. It divides Colombia into 12 provinces, each headed by a governor, each sending 4 Senators to a federal senate, and sending proportional representatives to a national house of representatives. A President and Vice-President preside over the federal region, but do not interfere in Provincial matters without authorization of the Governors. This Republic is recognized as an American trading partner, and Americans and American businesses set up operations there. With a more generous American influence business-wise and moderately immigration-wise, the United States of Colombia grows and develops along federalist lines into a successful, democratic country. Mexico declares its independence from Spain in 1823, and continues to have endemic instabilities. By 1836, American settlers in Texas declare their independence, and succeed in securing their own nation in 1837 from Mexico. In 1840, the Republic of the Rio Grande declares its independence, and with another influx of Americans and now Texans, this nation succeeds as well by fall of 1840 to secede from Mexico. In 1841, the Republic of the Yucatan attempts to secede, but is re-absorbed when the Mexican President promises a restoration of the 1823 constitution. By 1846, however, Mexico attacks an American envoy and military detachment in the RRG, sparking the Mexican-American War, wherein the US defeats Mexico and claims the northern portion of Veracruz straight across the continent. The remnants of Mexico are set up as a Republic and reorganized to be more democratic, but this state too will eventually fail. In 1848, Cuba was admitted as a state in 1856 when the population of freemen reached 60,000, provided that the other northern state of Manitau join as a free state. By 1861, however, the Southern States seceded from the US on the basis of the northern states overwhelming them politically and in population and economics. This led to a Civil War amongst the two factions, with the Confederate States of America fighting against the United States of America. The Confederacy fell in 1865, shortly after Lincoln's re-election. The north forced the southern states to adopt the 14th, 15th, and 16th amendments (freed slaves, made all those formerly held in servitude citizens, and extended voting rights in federal elections to former slaves), and to take part in Reconstruction, which amounted to rebuilding the destroyed infrastructure of the South and ensuring the blacks did not incur undue violence against them. During this time, a large number of former slaves emigrated from the former confederacy to Liberia, a de facto US colony in Africa, which gained nearly 1.2 million emigrants, mainly from Cuba and the deep south. President Lincoln was shot during a play, and his VP, Pierre Duchesne from Quebec, continued his policies, and rallied his faction of Republicans against the Radicals who wanted a harsher treatment of the south. They attempted to impeach him, but he garnered a coalition led by Senator Johnson from Tennessee, and they defeated the Radicals. The Republican party gradually developed in the 19th century into a party of business, immigration, and former slaves, freedom, with former abolitionist as well, while the Democrat party developed into a party of thinly veiled elitism/class distinctions, distrust of authority, and eventually socialism. Eventually the parties switched roles, with the Democrats, under Governor Wilson of Vermont and several other proponents of eugenics, becoming advocates of a more powerful national state that could guide men into a fitter role in life, while the Republican party gradually grew to desire a smaller federal government, absorbing much of the former states' rights advocates into the existing pro-business atmosphere of the party. Luckily, the Democrat party's more radical elements were purged after the election of Fitzgerald Daniel Roosevelt and his attempted implementations of Wilson's policy positions during the Great Depression, but their refusal to support important Civil Rights Legislation during World War II led to a more-or-less permanent minority status for the party afterwards. In Europe, German states led a Frankfurt Parliament which ended without succeeding in joining the many German states, but did result in the Prussian Constitution having greater freedom from censorship and providing for peaceable assembly of citizens. By 1866, however, Prussia and Austria came to war over who would be the dominant power in the German states, with Prussia defeating the Austrians. Austria then formed a dual monarchy with Hungary, and Prussia formed the North German Confederation. In 1870, Prussia declared war on France, and led the German states against them, with their ally, Italy, this time fighting against Austria-Hungary in addition to France. Germans in Bohemia and Moravia, under Prussian goading, fought against Austria, with their Czech allies who were promised greater say in their government than they otherwise had in Austria Hungary. By 1871, Prussia had defeated both Austria-Hungary and France, crowning a German Emperor in the Versailles palace. This Kaiser united Prussia, the German states, Alsace-Lorraine, Luxembourg, Austria, and Czechia in a Groß-Deutschland country. Italy was rewarded with the Küstenland (Austrian Littoral), Nice, and Savoy. France reclaimed those lands in 1878 from Italy, while Germany was stuck mediating a conflict with Russia and the Ottoman Empire. Greece, operating under the Megali Idea since 1848, and being spurred by the filibuster, William Walker from the US, succeeded in making inroads against the Ottomans into Thrace and Smyrna. By 1878, this Megali idea had spilled over into the Russian-Ottoman War, which lasted two years, and cost the Ottomans over 3 million Turks across Asia Minor. Under German negotiation, the Treaty of Berlin gave Smyrna to Greece, and portions of OTL Bulgaria. Constantinople was left out of the conference. The 1897 Greco-Turkish War, however, finally rested control from the increasingly fractured Ottoman Empire of the City. Over the last 20 years, a population vacuum was filled with Greeks who migrated to western Anatolia and aided the war effort. Several causes of World War I had come together over the last 40 years: increasing German colonialism infringing on French trade, the growing closeness of Britain and Germany, France's alliance with Russia, Ottoman anger at losing Constantinople to the Greeks, and a complicated web of secret treaties. The spark, however, was a Serbian-Bosnian war within Austria-Hungary that led to France declaring war, then Germany and Italy, the Ottomans, Russia, and with the invasion of Belgium, the British. Americans, under President Theodore Williamson, and VP Carter Mitterand from Louisiana, tried to stay out of the war, but were dragged in when the French bombed a US passenger ship (which was later found out to have been smuggling supplies to the British). By the end of the war, France received most of the blame for starting the war, and was severely punished under the Treaty of Versailles. France lost all her colonies, which were divided amongst Britain and Germany, while the Americans were promised business access to the new territories, and France was forced to pay heavy war reparations. Due to the severe losses from the war, a breeding ground for radicalism sprang up, leading to a communist takeover in France, much like in former Czarist Russia, now the USSR. Charles de Gaulle, a veteran of the Great War, was charged with investigation of some fringe parties that sprang up. He found the PSF had taken some radial tinges to it, and he liked what they had to say. He began speaking, and became one of the main draws to the Parti socialiste de France, renaming itself to the Parti nationalsocialiste de France. He attempted a takeover of the government in 1924, but was arrested and jailed.
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