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From: William Hyde <wthyde1953@gmail.com>
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
Subject: Re: "Drakon" by S. M. Stirling
Date: Mon, 17 Jun 2024 21:04:58 -0400
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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 loyalists were repealed a few years after the war, though local 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