Things that seem homogeneous and eternal are in fact just a still frame pulled out from the animated reel of history. Here are some maps from the recent North American past:
After the Seven Years’ War France is defeated by the British. There is a three way trade in 1763 (two way trade really because the defeated France is not party to the trade). Great Britain takes over the (north)-eastern part of the New France. Spain gives the British Florida. In exchange for Florida, British give to Spain the (south)-western territory of the New France, stretching from Louisiana.
America declares Independence July 4, 1776.
In 1800 Spain, intimidated by Napoleon in Europe, gave Louisiana back to France by the Treaty of San Ildefonso. Shorty thereafter Napoleon sold it to Thomas Jefferson in 1803 (for cash and to stick it to the British).
New France: During 1682–1763 and 1800–03 (New France Wikipedia):
“French exploration of the area began during the reign of Louis XIV, while French Louisiana was not greatly developed, due to a lack of human and financial resources. As a result of its defeat, in the Seven Years’ War, France was forced to cede the eastern part of the territory in 1763 to the victorious British, and the western part to Spain as compensation for that country’s loss of Florida. France regained sovereignty of the western territory in the secret Treaty of San Ildefonso of 1800. But, strained by obligations in Europe, Napoleon Bonaparte decided to sell the territory to the United States in the Louisiana Purchase of 1803, ending France’s presence in Louisiana.”
The 1803 map wipes French off the American map, in 1812 Napoleon was marching across Europe on Russia with the side trips to Africa. If Napoleon had a prophetic vision he would be able to conquer all the North America for himself, perhaps even South America too. And yes Fort Ross is a Russian outpost in Northern California.
Following the American example Mexicans kicked out Spain during the War of Independence (1810–1821).
If not for the fact that Britain leapt over Spain, Netherlands and Portugal in the colonial business we would be speaking Spanish now, or who knows perhaps even Russian, French or Portuguese. The unexplained omission in these early maps is the Dutch territory centered around New Amsterdam. The dutch would have made all the difference.
1867 Alaska Purchase from Russia.
The mostly landlocked Germany or Prussia has sidestepped the entire age of colonialism.
Naturally missing are the various boundaries of the Indian nations. The maps are the testimony of the imperial decays. Eventually when the spread-out governing becomes ineffective there is a fallout and breakup. Who is to say that the empires known as the USA or Canada are not on the same trajectory now, similar to their mother states? One thing is certain, this evolution is constant and the convergence of the seemingly small events leads to the global shake ups that last centuries.
Complete animated map of North America.
The colonial outlines – all individual maps on wikimedia.
People are obsessed about deconstructing states, governments and the rulers. Conversely, as John Gray points out, the primary function of the government and the media is increasingly the deliberate distraction from the mega trends:
“The Social Animal [Brooks' new book] is an exemplar of political discourse as we know it today; the chief function is to distract attention from intractable realities, which governments and those they govern prefer not to think about.”
There is a sort of symbiosis, people talk obsessively about Obama with full knowledge that he and even his predecessors have only minimal, if any, impact on the “long arc of history”. Indeed Nassim Taleb questions the entire premise of the bankrupt nation-state. Taleb maintains that a governing is possible only on the scale of an urban republic, a micro-polis. His examples are the old Medici Florence, Venice or even the modern Dubai, Abu Dabi, etc. But perhaps the symbiosis between the empires and the kings is more complete than we imagined. In other words, the Presidents distract the attention of the populace because they are incapable of addressing the fundamental mega-problems, in turn the populace talks up the presidents/kings because they intuitively understand it has absolute no relation or impact on their lives. Sort of an abstract Hollywood type storytelling. There is a related passage in John Gray’s take-down of the human rights utopia (national interest):
“If securing rights presupposes an effective state, as early modern thinkers acknowledged and contemporary liberals have forgotten, the human-rights agenda is plainly utopian in much of the world. Many of the nearly two hundred actually existing sovereign states are collapsed, corroded, criminalized or weak. Incapable of maintaining a rudimentary peace, the task of sustaining a government, let alone rights, is beyond their competence. Contemporary human-rights movements have followed recent liberal philosophy in focusing on states as the principal violators of personal liberties; but in many countries it is tribal militias, organized crime or violent fundamentalists that are the larger threat. Anarchy is as inimical to freedom as tyranny, sometimes more so. That is one reason why regimes of the kind that exist in post-Communist Russia and China have secured a certain popular legitimacy.”
I remember questioning the European unification at the precise moment when the CCCP split apart. It seems the European union is succumbing to the mega trend of compartmentalization after all. It might take another generation to formalize the default of the ungovernable and the imperial. But I am leery of the Medici style republics, in Italy or in UAE, it’s always a mafia style dictatorships by a single royal family (Taleb’s bias is exposed here, he is a descendant of such a family that run the northern Lebanese Amioun).
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Fascintaing. Fort Ross, a Russian outpost in Northern California, in 1812; incredible.
It was just an armed “settlement”.
and where did that French ‘comeback’ come from – from 1783 to 1800?
I added a 1803 map with a footnote. I also read somewhere that Mexican holiday Cynco De Mayo is celebrating Independence from France not Spain.
I think there might be a mistake in the map of 1763, with the mid-continental area later covered in the Louisiana purchase. It’s shown as Spanish, I think it should be French.
Take a look at the new note under that map. It shows the map after the trade between the British and Spain.
Thanks Ben, one more place where it looks like there might be a story, is Florida reverting to Spanish rule when the British left in 1783.
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