Path: ...!eternal-september.org!feeder3.eternal-september.org!news.eternal-september.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail From: William Hyde Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written Subject: Re: "Drakon" by S. M. Stirling Date: Mon, 17 Jun 2024 21:04:58 -0400 Organization: A noiseless patient Spider Lines: 66 Message-ID: References: <0001HW.2C0BDD05000713EB7000090E038F@news.supernews.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Injection-Date: Tue, 18 Jun 2024 03:05:38 +0200 (CEST) Injection-Info: dont-email.me; posting-host="9d8274aa93d1647cdf3ca98c1d9931dc"; logging-data="1071493"; mail-complaints-to="abuse@eternal-september.org"; posting-account="U2FsdGVkX193/nZycrRzd0+/0oVV+u6u" User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; WOW64; rv:91.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/91.0 SeaMonkey/2.53.18.2 Cancel-Lock: sha1:hexmv34+s0qyB1oraaBXA5hoVek= In-Reply-To: Bytes: 4169 Lynn McGuire wrote: > On 6/17/2024 5:26 PM, William Hyde wrote: >> Lynn McGuire wrote: >>> On 6/16/2024 11:48 AM, Robert Woodward wrote: >> . >>> >>> The single trigger event is when George Washington exiled the 120,000 >>> Loyalists to South Africa instead of Canada after the USA >>> Revolutionary war. >>> >>> In our reality, the 120,000 Loyalists were exiled to Canada from the >>> USA. >> >> I assume here that the attribution to Washington is in the book only, >> and that you know that in history he did nothing of the kind. >> Washington was far smarter and more just than that. >> >> Unfortunately, the citizenry at large and various state governments >> were not. >> >> But the vast majority of loyalists stayed behind, and played a role in >> the politics of the new nation.  The last laws against former >> loyalists were repealed a few years after the war, though local >> prejudice lasted much longer. >> >> And Canada certainly did not receive 100k of loyalist immigrants. >> >>  > I had no idea that this really happened in the late 1700s. >> >> Not mentioned in high school history? >> >> William Hyde > > https://www.britannica.com/topic/loyalist > > "Congress recommended repressive measures against the loyalists, and all > states passed severe laws against them, usually forbidding them from > holding office, disenfranchising them, and confiscating or heavily > taxing their property. Beginning in March 1776, approximately 100,000 > loyalists fled into exile. (This was between 3 and 4 percent of the > total number of settlers in the colonies, which is estimated at > 2,500,000–3,000,000 during the Revolutionary period.) The largest > portion of those who fled ultimately went to Canada, where the British > government provided them with asylum and offered some compensation for > losses in property and income; those who met certain criteria (based, in > part, on when they left America and their contribution to the British > war effort) were known as United Empire Loyalists in Canada." I assumed you meant Washington the person, not the Capital, as it didn't exist yet. Yes, there was legislation, as I mentioned, and those laws were part of the reason that loyalists formed voting blocs in the last years of the century. But we didn't get 100k. After all, if you are a loyalist from Georgia, do you really want to grow turnips in Upper Canada, or sugar in Jamaica? And if you're a urban type from NY, do you chose Montreal or London? When I was a kid there were still people who added "UE" to their names as descendants of the loyalists. It's been a long while since I've seen that, though. William Hyde