WI Britain gets Florida circa 1713

[John Fredrick Parker]

OTL, they got it for a time after the Seven Years War (in 1763); but what if they got it 50 years earlier, after the War of Spanish Succession? I asked something like this a few years ago, but didn’t get much response:

FWIG, during Queen Anne's War, Spanish Florida was widely depopulated, with the only surviving colonial outposts being Penescola and St Augustine, both of which came under siege during the war (the former by the Creek Confederacy, the latter by Carolina colonists). If one or both of these outposts had fallen, would that mean that Britain gets Spanish Florida earlier? And if so, what does that mean for French Louisiana? After all, the only Gulf port the French had at the time of the war was Mobile, which isn't far from Pensacola.

What do you guys think?

 

[Umbric Man]

I really suspect that it'll become "the Fourteenth Colony".

Spanish Florida was quite underpopulated even without the knowledge it got screwed over more in Queen Anne's War. I think we'll see a repeat of 1763 fifty years early: the remaining Spanish colonists leave for Cuba than live under a Protestant king, and South Carolinian and Georgian colonists begin moving into the St. Augustine and neighboring areas. But unlike OTL where these Anglos were Loyalists and moved out AGAIN in 1783 only for no Spanish civilians to return - and hence Patriot Americans move into Florida as the primary European element outside mandated Spanish soldiers and administrators - these Anglos have time to gestate a society and become a fellow Georgia and not a southern Nova Scotia (which saw New Englanders moving into it at the same time as the Dixies moving into East Florida), one that will be young and weak in economy and population, like the said Georgia, but also like it sign onto the Continental Congress and Declaration of Independence.

Some interesting butterfly effects may be in the exact borders of British East Florida, perhaps? France captured Pensacola from Spain in 1719, which is in the same time period, but this is obviously butterflied by France and Spain being allies in Queen Anne's War. But I can see a hybrid of a reverse 1763 with Spain ceding Pensacola to France a la France ceding New Orleans and Louisiana to Spain, while also pulling a 1783 and having East Florida's border be the Suwannee River - because Britain only beseiged and in TTL captured St. Augustine and not Pensacola, and also to both provide buffers to Louisiana and Mexico while denying Britain any Gulf of Mexico coast and ports. And the Suwanee River lines up nicely with the Eastern Seaboard's watershed boundaries. Perhaps in TTL if butterflies are fairly to completely dead for the bigger aspects of history this means a future USA will make West Florida a state (but it'd need a new name, I doubt Britain would specifically give "East Florida" as a name to Florida if it has none of "West Florida", it'd remain just "Florida"), or we see Alabama with a much bigger coast!

 

[John Fredrick Parker]

I really suspect that it'll become "the Fourteenth Colony".

Well don't forget, the PoD is before the establishment of Georgia; Darien isn't too far from St Augustine as the crow flies, and Savannah's practically on South Carolina's border.

But I can see a hybrid of a reverse 1763... a la France ceding New Orleans and Louisiana to Spain, while also pulling a 1783 and having East Florida's border be the Suwannee River - because Britain only beseiged and in TTL captured St. Augustine and not Pensacola...

Well, the Creeks besieged Pensacola TTL; they may or may not also be taking it TTL. In any event, I'd agree that France ceding the Bayou to Spain (since they only have Mobile as of the PoD) makes a fair bit of sense, since they're potentially in a much more precarious position of defending said thin stretch of land.

 

[Umbric Man]

Well don't forget, the PoD is before the establishment of Georgia; Darien isn't too far from St Augustine as the crow flies, and Savannah's practically on South Carolina's border.

True, I did forget. I can see Georgia still forming in TTL with the vast, empty-of-Europeans expanse of land between Charleston (even Beaufort, SC) and the repopulating-St. Augustine, much like North Carolina came to being between already-established South Carolina and Virginia. It would still be useful to have extra men, settlements, and government on the ground with how precarious travel was on land back then.

 

[Umbric Man]

Likely St Augustine is incorporated into this colony.

Perhaps, but they did carve out colonies from others like New Jersey and Pennsylvania from what was officially New York/New Netherland, Delaware from Pennsylvania, and OTL Georgia was carved out of officially South Carolinian land. Britain was not leery about splitting up its coastal strip into ever more provinces.