raharris1973
Well-known member
Our story begins in the reign of England's Henry VII, when he patronizes Italian navigator Zuan Caboto's attempt to cross the Atlantic at the northern latitudes to find the Far East. Caboto, or John Cabot's, 2nd attempt at sailing west in 1497 succeeds and lands at a New Found Land, or Terranova for those trying to be all fancy and Latin about it.
Here's a link to his voyage. 1497 voyage - John Cabot - Wikipedia
It is on Cabot's third voyage, of 1498, where history diverges from our own. In OTL, the route of that voyage is unknown, and there is doubt that John Cabot made it back alive, but also some fragmentary evidence he did.
In this world, this voyage, which was equipped with trading goods makes it back to Newfoundland, where he does a circumnavigation, and leads him to voyage further west, into the estuary of the St. Lawrence, looking for China. He ends up making landfall in the estuary, safe contact with natives, has crew members make some further reconnaissances overland and up-river, makes some trades of his stock of mostly decorative textiles for a haul of furs, plant specimens, Moose antler racks, what turns out to be pyrite (fool's gold) and a couple convinced, curious, or tricked natives, with Cabot and crew and cargo all making it safely back to Bristol.
In OTL, the minimal account Cabot gave from one voyage without any attested native in-person interaction, and no real precious metals found (just some pyrite nuggets) was enough to have Henry VII support continuing expeditions by Cabot, his son, and others like William Weston through the King's own death in 1509. In the altered circumstances, the prospect of a river to follow and a potential pathway to another shore and then Asia, all while doing some trade with Algonquins and trading for some decent value furs, encourages the King and Bristol merchants to invest even more in the first decade of the 1500s.
By 1503, the Crown and Bristol move from sponsoring seasonal fishing camps to attempting year-round multi-purpose settlements for fishing, fur-trading, Indian trade, and advance provisioning of further western exploration both on Newfoundland the island and Newfoundland the mainland, since the name is applied to the whole landmass. The mainland colony attempts are made on the banks of the new Thames river (St. Lawrence).
Of the first three English colonial attempts, none last more than a year. None of the English settlements established in North America (in OTL Canada) up until the last year of Henry VII's life and reign end up lasting 5 years. But the English keep coming, for fish, fur, adventure, missionary work. Some things are learned from the failures. And by 1509, settlements are established that last on the sites of OTL St. Johns city and Quebec city.
Some of the money in fish and furs, and exotic hoopla of Amerindians paraded around London, and the ultimate success of the colonies, and level of investment of the Bristol merchants and English churchmen all adds up to the point that upon his accession to the throne, Henry VIII is actually committed to continuing and expanding his father's exploration project, rather than, like OTL, utterly indifferent to it.
He's even willing to irritate his new bride Catherine of Aragon, and father-in-law, Ferdinand, by interloping at longitudes deeded by the Pope to Spain. He is mostly circumspect however, generally directing English colonial settlements, even royally sponsored or patented exploratory voyages, well north of what the Spanish started calling Florida in 1513 and generally north of the latitudes where Spain and the Pyrenees lay in Europe.
Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, and the St. Lawrence Valley might not be quite as cold in the 1500s as it became in the 1600s. The local Amerindians won't be as dead either at first, as it will take a little time for certain diseases to become endemic, and the English won't be in a military position to enslave Canadian natives for hard labor for a couple generations. They should be more populous and stronger, but also more worth trading with. I don't know if 1500s Englishmen would be quite as prone to be sending over their women as at high rates as they did in the 1600s and 1700s, so there might be more English-Indian mixing. Also the first generation and a half of English settlers will be Catholic before Henry VIII splits from the Church.
English settlement won't necessarily be a mass phenomenon, but from a low base, compounding over time from the early 1500s, in North America, Anglo-Native people descended from explorers and reliant on English trade and Christianized will boom in population, and among people who are mainly native culturally and even genetically, those with some English or European admixture will have the most numerous surviving descendants. Where settlement towns and farms grow large or settled enough, there may be modest but nontrivial female migration, which sets things up for major growth in an all-'English" population in the relatively cool, low-disease environment over time.
Meanwhile -- It's not like King Francis of France will miss this entirely. In OTL's 15-teens he expressed his irritation at the arrogance of the Treaty of Tordesillas. Also in OTL 1522 he commissioned Giovanni Da Verrazzanno to do something about it and explore the Atlantic seaboard of North America. And some intrepid Frenchmen, pirates, fishermen, brazilwood rustlers, had been dropping in on the Americas occasionally for a decade or two by then.
Francis will certainly back up Verrazzanno here. Verrazzano will explore the Atlantic coast from the Cape Fear river (North Carolina) to Nova Scotia and Newfoundland. See: Viaggioverrazzano.jpg (369×457) (wikimedia.org). Only in this ATL, upon Verrazzano's return, Francis will feel competitive pressure not just from the Spanish to his south (Cortez's simultaneous conquest of Mexico and Magellan, Ilocano & Pagafetta's circumnavigation) but from the English to his north.
He will re-hire Verrazzano and send other explorers to do immediate follow up voyages and make settlement attempts. Immediate aims of follow-up voyages would be up the Cape Fear river, looking behind the outer banks to see what the next land is, journeying up the hudson river, seeing what's around cape cod. He missed the Chesapeake and Delaware Bays first time, so they might wait. Based on initial familarity with coasts, the first French settlements would probably be attempted in the area of New York City, New Jersey, Long Island, Rhode Island, and the Cape Fear, Outer Banks area. There could easily be half a dozen failed settlement attempts before a couple stick. But some colonies should be sticking firmly by about 1535 or 1540 when their religious wars blow up. The colonial area would probably stick with the names V. gave them, Francesca for the landmass (Nova Gallia when being all fancy and Latin) and Nouvelle Angouleme for the Manhattan area.
The main lines of business would be fishing, fur-trading, of course people would *also* be hunting around for gold, and especially from the southern French colonies, pirating off the Spanish. The French will probably eventually figure out tobacco, including the blending of southeastern USA tobacco with Caribbean/South American tobacco to make it more marketable.
With a start in all these crucial places on the Atlantic coast from Cape Fear to Cape Cod, even if there isn't much settlement (and there would always be some, plus decent natural increase in any colonies from New Jersey north) as early as the 1520s-1540s, I think the French would be favored to preempt the whole Atlantic coast between Spanish Florida and English Nova Scotia or Maine before the Swedes or Dutch can even get started (or win independence).
Here's a link to his voyage. 1497 voyage - John Cabot - Wikipedia
It is on Cabot's third voyage, of 1498, where history diverges from our own. In OTL, the route of that voyage is unknown, and there is doubt that John Cabot made it back alive, but also some fragmentary evidence he did.
In this world, this voyage, which was equipped with trading goods makes it back to Newfoundland, where he does a circumnavigation, and leads him to voyage further west, into the estuary of the St. Lawrence, looking for China. He ends up making landfall in the estuary, safe contact with natives, has crew members make some further reconnaissances overland and up-river, makes some trades of his stock of mostly decorative textiles for a haul of furs, plant specimens, Moose antler racks, what turns out to be pyrite (fool's gold) and a couple convinced, curious, or tricked natives, with Cabot and crew and cargo all making it safely back to Bristol.
In OTL, the minimal account Cabot gave from one voyage without any attested native in-person interaction, and no real precious metals found (just some pyrite nuggets) was enough to have Henry VII support continuing expeditions by Cabot, his son, and others like William Weston through the King's own death in 1509. In the altered circumstances, the prospect of a river to follow and a potential pathway to another shore and then Asia, all while doing some trade with Algonquins and trading for some decent value furs, encourages the King and Bristol merchants to invest even more in the first decade of the 1500s.
By 1503, the Crown and Bristol move from sponsoring seasonal fishing camps to attempting year-round multi-purpose settlements for fishing, fur-trading, Indian trade, and advance provisioning of further western exploration both on Newfoundland the island and Newfoundland the mainland, since the name is applied to the whole landmass. The mainland colony attempts are made on the banks of the new Thames river (St. Lawrence).
Of the first three English colonial attempts, none last more than a year. None of the English settlements established in North America (in OTL Canada) up until the last year of Henry VII's life and reign end up lasting 5 years. But the English keep coming, for fish, fur, adventure, missionary work. Some things are learned from the failures. And by 1509, settlements are established that last on the sites of OTL St. Johns city and Quebec city.
Some of the money in fish and furs, and exotic hoopla of Amerindians paraded around London, and the ultimate success of the colonies, and level of investment of the Bristol merchants and English churchmen all adds up to the point that upon his accession to the throne, Henry VIII is actually committed to continuing and expanding his father's exploration project, rather than, like OTL, utterly indifferent to it.
He's even willing to irritate his new bride Catherine of Aragon, and father-in-law, Ferdinand, by interloping at longitudes deeded by the Pope to Spain. He is mostly circumspect however, generally directing English colonial settlements, even royally sponsored or patented exploratory voyages, well north of what the Spanish started calling Florida in 1513 and generally north of the latitudes where Spain and the Pyrenees lay in Europe.
Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, and the St. Lawrence Valley might not be quite as cold in the 1500s as it became in the 1600s. The local Amerindians won't be as dead either at first, as it will take a little time for certain diseases to become endemic, and the English won't be in a military position to enslave Canadian natives for hard labor for a couple generations. They should be more populous and stronger, but also more worth trading with. I don't know if 1500s Englishmen would be quite as prone to be sending over their women as at high rates as they did in the 1600s and 1700s, so there might be more English-Indian mixing. Also the first generation and a half of English settlers will be Catholic before Henry VIII splits from the Church.
English settlement won't necessarily be a mass phenomenon, but from a low base, compounding over time from the early 1500s, in North America, Anglo-Native people descended from explorers and reliant on English trade and Christianized will boom in population, and among people who are mainly native culturally and even genetically, those with some English or European admixture will have the most numerous surviving descendants. Where settlement towns and farms grow large or settled enough, there may be modest but nontrivial female migration, which sets things up for major growth in an all-'English" population in the relatively cool, low-disease environment over time.
Meanwhile -- It's not like King Francis of France will miss this entirely. In OTL's 15-teens he expressed his irritation at the arrogance of the Treaty of Tordesillas. Also in OTL 1522 he commissioned Giovanni Da Verrazzanno to do something about it and explore the Atlantic seaboard of North America. And some intrepid Frenchmen, pirates, fishermen, brazilwood rustlers, had been dropping in on the Americas occasionally for a decade or two by then.
Francis will certainly back up Verrazzanno here. Verrazzano will explore the Atlantic coast from the Cape Fear river (North Carolina) to Nova Scotia and Newfoundland. See: Viaggioverrazzano.jpg (369×457) (wikimedia.org). Only in this ATL, upon Verrazzano's return, Francis will feel competitive pressure not just from the Spanish to his south (Cortez's simultaneous conquest of Mexico and Magellan, Ilocano & Pagafetta's circumnavigation) but from the English to his north.
He will re-hire Verrazzano and send other explorers to do immediate follow up voyages and make settlement attempts. Immediate aims of follow-up voyages would be up the Cape Fear river, looking behind the outer banks to see what the next land is, journeying up the hudson river, seeing what's around cape cod. He missed the Chesapeake and Delaware Bays first time, so they might wait. Based on initial familarity with coasts, the first French settlements would probably be attempted in the area of New York City, New Jersey, Long Island, Rhode Island, and the Cape Fear, Outer Banks area. There could easily be half a dozen failed settlement attempts before a couple stick. But some colonies should be sticking firmly by about 1535 or 1540 when their religious wars blow up. The colonial area would probably stick with the names V. gave them, Francesca for the landmass (Nova Gallia when being all fancy and Latin) and Nouvelle Angouleme for the Manhattan area.
The main lines of business would be fishing, fur-trading, of course people would *also* be hunting around for gold, and especially from the southern French colonies, pirating off the Spanish. The French will probably eventually figure out tobacco, including the blending of southeastern USA tobacco with Caribbean/South American tobacco to make it more marketable.
With a start in all these crucial places on the Atlantic coast from Cape Fear to Cape Cod, even if there isn't much settlement (and there would always be some, plus decent natural increase in any colonies from New Jersey north) as early as the 1520s-1540s, I think the French would be favored to preempt the whole Atlantic coast between Spanish Florida and English Nova Scotia or Maine before the Swedes or Dutch can even get started (or win independence).