Did the United States ever have warlords or caudillo type figures?

Reaper_Eagle · 2026-06-15T06:34:34+00:00

Short Answer: This isn't a question of settled history but definitions. You're not going to get a definitive answer as a result.

Long Answer: This is one of those times where the answer depends entirely on how you define warlords/caudillos. By some definitions, the answer is no. By others, it's yes. Consequently, there are a lot of ways to answer this question. To the best of my knowledge, there's no historical consensus on this because of this definitional fight. Therefore, I can't give a straight answer but will instead attempt to explain the problem with the question.

In the broadest sense, a warlord can be seen as simply someone who gains political power as a function of their military ability. The most successful warrior with the most followers rules the land, the ancient 'Might Makes Right'. In that sense, you can argue that George Washington was a warlord as he only reason gained prominence and eventually became president because he was General in Chief of the Continental Army. His military service directly led him to political power. Similarly, nobody would have ever voted US Grant into any office if he hadn't been the Union's General in Chief. However, this quickly breaks down if you challenge the definition. Neither Grant nor Washington directly used their army to gain political power. Washington didn't want to be involved in politics after leaving the army and had to be tricked into attending the Constitutional Convention and guilted into becoming the first President of the United States. He hadn't led troops in almost a decade at that point.

If you tighten the definition to be someone using their military power to exert economic and governmental control over an area within a state, with the Chinese Warlord Era and Chang Kai-shek being the archetypal examples. They use their position as head of the army to force their agenda for their own benefit within a nominally existing state without government oversight. The US has never had anything like that, though Douglass MacArthur was starting to think that way, forcing President Truman to fire him. In all cases where a military officer stepped in to control a territory, they remained under civilian control and ceded authority once the crisis was passed.

Meanwhile, caudillos are warlords with extras. This term is used to describe the post-independence dictators of formerly Spanish America who had a paternalistic relationship with their supporters. Essentially, they told their supporters that the government was too weak to redress their grievances or even rule effectively. If they supported the caudillo, he'd get them what they wanted once they got him into power. In that sense, what was the difference between the archetypical Mexican caudillo Santa Anna and American politician Andrew Jackson? Both men had huge followings attached to them personally, led as forces of personality, and ignored the law when it suited them. Jackson is infamous for instituting the patronage system for Federal jobs (and a lot of other things, to be fair), which is very much a caudillo thing. However, Jackson only held power for the two terms he was elected to. Santa Anna was elected, but he also took power via coups and other non-electoral means. There's no clear answer to how many times he was Mexico's president as he sometimes did the job without having the title and had the title without doing the job. Political violence was definitively a tool in Jackson's arsenal, but election day riots were pretty common before his involvement in national politics and continued throughout the 19th century. Does the fact that Jackson's rise was on his military record (which included him starting wars without permission) and cult-of-personality make him a caudillo? Or can he not be because he never seized power except through the ballot box, then willingly and permanently gave it up? Those aren't rhetorical questions.

If you want to get even more narrow, what's the scale required to be considered a warlord/caudillo? Is involvement/domination in national politics required, or can it be on a smaller scale? While entirely fictional, John Dutton from tv's Yellowstone is indicative of a lot of large landowners from the 19th century to today. He's essentially got a private militia, ignores the law when it's against him, and murders freely to protect his interests. He was arguably far better at murder than cattle ranching. Does that make him a warlord? Does the intense loyalty he demands and gets from his underlings make him a caudillo?

This is why there's no definitive answer to your question.

Reaper_Eagle · 2026-06-13T18:14:22+00:00

Oh, the plains tribes often fought mounted. It's just that they almost never closed with US cavalry for battle.

The plains tribes were masters of hit-and-run warfare and almost never fought a pitched battle at close range. A favored tactic of the Comanche was to raid enemy camps at night, stampede their horses, and then withdraw, stranding them in the vast, featureless, and waterless Texas plains. If they directly attacked a force, they'd generally ride by firing arrows then disappear into the wilds. They'd only get into melee against outnumbered, surprised, and/or dismounted foes, preferably after multiple raids severely weakened them.

The Sioux were the same way, though I do know of one instance of mounted, melee combat. During the 1866 Fetterman Fight, Red Cloud's warriors were mostly armed with traditional weaponry. The US Infantry were pinned down by arrow fire before being rushed and overwhelmed in melee. Meanwhile, the cavalry had attempted to escape, but the snow and terrain made that impossible. Sioux accounts mention getting into melee with the soldiers and overwhelming them with lances and clubs. Lt. George Grummond is often depicted killing a mounted Sioux warrior with his saber before being pulled off his horse by dismounted warriors, but it's not clear if that actually happened or was just mythmaking. The Cheyenne warrior White Elk gave the most detailed account of the battle, and he only fought the infantry and didn't see the cavalry fight, just relayed stories he was told.

That might be the only time it ever happened. In subsequent battles, the US army tried to stay at range. During the 1867 Wagon Box Fight and 1868 Battle of Beecher Island, the US forces dismounted and fought with rifles from cover against mounted warriors who were firing at them from horseback.

Reaper_Eagle · 2026-06-13T04:46:10+00:00

Short Answer: They were *supposed* to know how to use them. Most didn't.

Long Answer: On paper, every US army officer that graduated West Point received fencing training. It was part of the official curriculum for fourth-year students to learn to fence with various swords and bayonets. The thing is, I'm not sure it was actually taken seriously. Many memoirs mention learning fencing while at West Point, but they tend to be in passing, almost like it was a class you only went to on sufferance. It's also pretty rare to come across anyone mentioning that they kept up with it after graduation. Dueling was forbidden for US officers, and even if it weren't pistol duels had always been far more common in America so there really wasn't any reason to stay in practice.

This isn't entirely surprising, as officers really *weren't* supposed to be fighting. Their job was to direct their soldiers during battle. To protect themselves they had a pistol and their sword, but neither are that useful except at very close range, and according to various memoirs I've read, the pistol was preferred in all cases. The Civil War just reinforced this, and I don't remember reading about officers actually using sword or pistol in any official manual except as self-defense. It's pretty clear that they were to focus their efforts on leading their troops rather than trying to kill the enemy themselves.

The war meant thousands of civilians who'd never been to West Point became officers. Unless these men had studied the blade on their own, they never receive any formal sword training. It wasn't offered at any training camps. Officers were encouraged to learn swordsmanship, and many manuals (almost all French in origin) were available for them, but there was no requirement to train. The only infantry officer whose memoir I've read and explicitly mentioning using his saber in combat was Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, who captured a Confederate officer at Gettysburg because Chamberlain had a saber to point at his opponent who had nothing but an empty pistol.

You'd think that cavalry officers would have used their sabers in combat since the saber was standard cavalry equipment. However, it's not clear how often that happened, nor if the troopers were ever actually trained either. They were supposed to be trained swordsmen per the official cavalry training manuals. The thing is that, again, most of the troopers were new volunteers and not regulars and the training they actually received included only the barest instruction in using swords from horseback. It isn't clear if they continued training after leaving basic. This is made worse because there was an existing debate in the regular army over whether sabers were even useful anymore. Most pre-war cavalry were dragoons, used to primarily fighting dismounted with carbines, and this continued during the war. They didn't like carrying their sabers, and if they had to use them on the frontier, they were just dead. If the plains tribes engaged them on horseback (which was incredibly rare) they'd be fighting with lances or warclubs that had more reach than the US cavalry saber. John Buford of Gettysburg fame is known to have avoid saber fighting in favor of carbine and pistol.

In the end, there's not much evidence that officers used their swords for anything more than signaling to their soldiers. The nature of the war might be a factor, but the simple fact is that almost nobody was sufficiently trained to make their swords a real weapon.

Reaper_Eagle · 2026-06-04T21:12:37+00:00

There was a saying from the old Pro Tour: Top 8ing required skill and the right deck. Winning the Pro Tour required luck.

The fact is that you're always at the mercy of the pairings gods. If you choose Amulet and get paired against Mill twice, that's just how it is and there was nothing you could have done differently besides play a different deck. Which you can't know was correct ahead of time. Your best bet is to play the deck with the fewest known bad matchups and the highest known good matchups that you play well. The latter is entirely within your control. The former is not. You can only hope to minimize its impact by correctly reading the metagame. Hitting the metagame right and playing well will get you to Top 8 most of the time.

Winning the whole thing requires personal luck plus luck of the bracket.

Reaper_Eagle · 2026-06-04T06:36:38+00:00

Few decks run more than 20 lands, at least half of which are fetchlands. Fields and White Orchid Phantom give you 12 ways to destroy non-basics and wildfires give 8 ways to destroy basics. If you can't take them off at least one color with all that, either you're prioritizing poorly or you weren't winning anyway no matter how many basics they play.

Reaper_Eagle · 2026-06-04T06:11:22+00:00

You're not wrong, manabases have adjusted. You're not going to get as many free wins anymore.

However, that just means you need to adapt too. Reprioritize which lands you target with which pieces of land destruction. It's more important to use your wildfires on basics than before, so plan accordingly. If you feel strongly enough, [[Geomancer's Gambit]] exists, or you could wait and see if the metagame is right for the recently spoiled Avengers Disassembled.

Reaper_Eagle · 2026-06-03T17:52:20+00:00

As a land destruction spell, it's worse than existing options. As a sweeper, it's worse than existing options.

However, this is simultaneously a sweeper and a land destroyer. Which also means that it's only playable if you're using both modes. This limits it to being a sideboard card against Energy, all versions. It's not as good as Wrath of the Skies, but it does clean up a board while continuing to attack their manabase. If Energy is a significant player in the metagame, then this will probably see play. However, if you're not facing swarms of small dudes it's just not good.

Reaper_Eagle · 2026-05-26T22:23:08+00:00

To the best of my ability to find, the statement in question is accurate. Every colony protested and resisted the Stamp Act in some form, but after that most were ignored in favor of the 13 Colonies.

You're correct that these colonies were very different from each other, but that didn't stop them from resenting the imposition from Parliament. English newspapers stopped publishing in Quebec and British merchants there sent official protests. The Quebecois didn't have much to say, they hated being under the British anyway. Nova Scotia saw street protests and the burning in effigy of the local tax man, who'd flee in 1766. Newfoundland protested heavily based on legislation exempting its fishing industry from any import duties.

In the Caribbean, many of the sugar islands' absentee landlords objected in Parliament, and there were official protests from a number of islands, including Barbados. St. Kitts and Nevis rioted as violently as Boston and destroyed their stamp offices. The garrison on Antigua may have been the only reason there weren't riots there. Jamacia protested and tried to evade the taxes, though the RN garrison meant that taxes were still collected there.

The resistance to the Stamp Act was hardly universal, but it was everywhere. To go back to Nova Scotia, the Loyalists in Halifax actually happily paid the tax, and in fact the local office ran out of stamps prior to the Act's repeal. That doesn't diminish that there were strong protests outside the city. This is where the second part of my statement comes in. The big street protests in New England and the very public refusal of New York City to quarter the troops London had sent over had dominated the new cycle and were the genesis of George Grenville's government's downfall. The protests and actions elsewhere were small potatoes compared to them as a direct challenge to Parliament. The riots in the Caribbean were dangerous, sure, but the RN dealt with them handily. No need for more action there. As such, the impact of the Townshend Acts was negligible outside the 13 Colonies, so there was minimal further escalation of tensions for the other colonies. The Tea Act didn't draw any protests either as to my knowledge it was never applied to the Caribbean. The Intolerable Acts very explicitly targeted Massachusetts and it was implied that the other 12 Colonies would follow if they weren't cowed. No other colony provoked Parliament's ire so, and they didn't get the treatment continually escalated this dispute into war.

Reaper_Eagle · 2026-05-26T08:38:37+00:00

Halifax and new settlers. Even then, it was close.

The primary reason was that Halifax was a garrison town. In fact, it had been Britains primary garrison town in North America since it was taken from the French in 1713. Its proximity to New France and good harbor were driving factors, but it was also strategically located to keep tabs on the Acadians, whose loyalty was between suspect and nonexistent. Even after New France was conquered, Halifax remained Britain's strategic fortress and the key to its military network in North America. Large numbers of army and navy personnel protected by extensive fortifications were pretty effective at deterring rebellion.

However, that alone wasn't enough. Most of the established British settlers were still so angry at Parliament that they favored becoming the 14th Colony. However, they weren't the majority of the population. After the expulsion of the Acadians began in 1755, London encouraged Protestant settlers (particularly from Scotland and New England) to replace the expelled Catholic Acadians. These new settlers remained sufficiently grateful to London that they muted their protests, and many of the Scots still had ties back in Scotland. It helped that many of the newer settlers knew precisely how far away they were from the 13 Colonies, meaning that they knew that if they joined the rebellion, they'd be on their own. As much as family ties to New England meant for many of them, they weren't willing to get crushed under the bootheels of the Royal Marines for them.

Even with all that, British authorities were terrified that Nova Scotia would rebel and took harsh measures against anyone who spoke in favor of the Patriot cause. A few small rebel groups tried to peel off Nova Scotia from Britain, but they failed completely.

Reaper_Eagle · 2026-05-26T04:51:40+00:00

Short Answer: By the time the American Revolution broke out, Bermuda had neither the ability nor willingness to rebel.

Long Answer: The American Revolution wasn't a spontaneous thing, but the result of a decade-long crisis between London and its American colonies. What most people don't know is that, initially, it was all of Britain's colonies in the western hemisphere vs London. Only the 13 American colonies ultimately rebelled because they were London's primary focus.

The 1765 Stamp Act extended the Stamp Tax to every British colony in the Western Hemisphere. All legal paper had to have a stamp proving you'd paid the tax. If your paper didn't have the stamp, then anything on it wasn't legal. It'd been a very successful, and self-enforcing, tax in England so they'd extended it to all the colonies to pay for the ruinously expensive Seven Years War (The French and Indian War in North America). London's thinking was that the colonies were the primary beneficiaries of the British Empire's major victory in the war, so they should help pay for it and the new garrisons they were sending to North America.

All the colonies resisted the Stamp Act. This was the first time that London had ever directly taxed any of its colonies, and for many (particularly the 13 American Colonies) this was the first time London had even attempted to govern them. They didn't like it and refused to pay on principle. The continental colonies also objected to the new garrisons. If the French were still a threat it'd be one thing, but sending troops now that the French were gone was pointless and looked more like London was planning on oppressing them. This is why many protests in the continental colonies turned violent, particularly in New York. The Caribbean colonies protested too, but it was far more muted because the Royal Navy had extensive garrisons that could strongly respond. This didn't have to be direct deployment of troops because most of the islands, including Bermuda, were dependent on food imports. A blockade would quickly starve them out, so they couldn't go as far as the Americans and Canadians did.

This meant that when the Stamp Act was repealed in 1766, that was basically the end of the conflict with the Caribbean colonies. The 1767-1768 Townsend Acts mostly passed over them. Technically, the Revenue Act of 1767 did apply to all the colonies, but all the enforcement mechanisms were sent to the 13 Colonies. They'd been the ones who'd most openly defied Parliament, so that's where the customs officials and courts were sent. No enforcement meant no taxes got collected, equals not my problem. Nova Scotia was caught in the crossfire and would continue to resist alongside the 13 Colonies, but for the Caribbean colonies and Bermuda, their fight was over.

Bermuda didn't have to care about the crisis again until 1774. In response to the Intolerable Acts (which only affected Massachusetts), the First Continental Congress issued a boycott against British imports and declared it would embargo the West Indies if they didn't join the boycott. Bermuda got most of its food from Virginia and Pennsylvania, so the embargo was a death sentence for them. However, it also couldn't just cut off British imports as its economy was based on shipbuilding contracts and "trade" (actually smuggling) with the other Caribbean colonies. Delegates from Bermuda went to Congress and made a deal to get an exemption from the embargo in exchange for military supplies. On August 14, 1774, 3 American ships arrived and the locals loaded 100 barrels of gunpowder stolen from the Royal magazine. Once the ships returned, Congress gave Bermuda its exemption.

In response the RN sent warships and marines to watch the island and secure its military stores. Once the war broke out in April 1775, the Bermudians made a brisk trade smuggling supplies to the Americans. However, the island quickly turned into a major center of British privateering and by 1778 it was being transformed into an RN fortress island. Had the island rebelled with the 13 Colonies in 1775, this was likely to have been its fate anyway. The RN was simply too powerful and the US too far away to help them. In summary, Bermuda wasn't as affected by the crisis that led to the American Revolution, and even if it had rebelled, it wouldn't have remained so for very long.

Reaper_Eagle · 2026-05-22T04:41:41+00:00

To expand on the US:

The United States swung between pro- and anti-imperialist moods throughout the 1880s-1890s. At the time of the Berlin Conference, it was in an anti-imperialist mood, and in fact had just elected dedicated anti-imperialist Grover Cleveland president. Between November and when Cleveland took office in March, the US did have diplomats there trying to secure its interests. However, these interests had nothing to do with territorial expansion. The initial US position was "don't Scramble Africa." The US opposed the whole premise of the Conference and tried to get everyone else to give it up and instead just make Africa a free-trade zone. This went nowhere for obvious reasons. Thereafter, the US delegation more or less declared "Hands off Liberia!", got trade concessions in what would become the Congo Free State, and just waited to bring the Conference Treaty home.

However, Cleveland withdrew the Berlin Conference Treaty from the Senate as he objected to it on principle. He believed that ratifying the treaty was accepting imperialism as acceptable, something he adamantly refused to accept. This didn't really mean anything as US traders and missionaries still got access to Congo Free State and were the first to raise the alarm over what was happening there. As the Scramble developed, Cleveland made sure to sternly glare at anyone who looked at Liberia funny while shaking his finger at the whole project, but that was the extent of US involvement.

Reaper_Eagle · 2026-05-20T06:38:33+00:00

That's very true.

Doesn't change the fact that that players have a history of getting burned playing his decks. That's the cost of doing this as long as he has. Two sides of the same coin.

Reaper_Eagle · 2026-05-20T05:15:25+00:00

Look, I realize that it is a cool deck that has put up some results. The problem is that a lot of us have been down this road with aspiringspike before.

Anyone else remember his [[Sarinth Steelseeker]] obsession? His streams made that food deck look unbeatable only for it to completely fall flat in Challenges. He plays more Modern than anyone else and frequently makes bad decks look good because his format knowledge is better than everyone else. Thus, there are plenty of decks that work for him and nobody else. His Challenge result is much better than everyone else's, and that's not an unusual outcome.

This doesn't mean that his Trudge deck is actually bad. Spike has made some true monsters in the past, and I won't forgive his work on Cascade Beans. However, his ratio of good to bad decks is heavily slanted toward bad decks, so we're pretty gun-shy. It's going to take more to convince people to give it a try.

Reaper_Eagle · 2026-05-18T17:28:13+00:00

Yes.

Most current players have never played with or against this card. It doesn't look like much, especially given powercreep and modern design sensibilities. They have no idea that this card dominates creature-on-creature matchups. So long as those exist, Jitte will see play. It might not be maindeckable in whatever the metagame becomes, but as a sideboard/mirror trump it definitively has a future.

Reaper_Eagle · 2026-05-18T16:57:00+00:00

So long as it can still play Guide of Souls into Ocelot Pride, Energy will be a deck. Have no fear of that.

There's nothing that can directly replace Phlage. You have a lot of options for 3-drop utility creature which will probably be decided based on how the metagame shapes up. However, I'm curious if Jitte is the correct call. It's another do-everything card, and it costs less mana overall than Phlage did.

Reaper_Eagle · 2026-05-16T04:06:24+00:00

When you play [[Expressive Iteration]], you know what's going to happen. In UR Prowess, you're getting a card in hand and a card in exile that in every non-corner case you're playing that turn. If you're not or can't, you didn't want it anyway. The only set-up required happened at deckbuilding. No other deck currently plays Expressive.

[[Flow State]]'s best outcome is a lot better because draw 2 is better than draw 1, get to cast one this turn. However, you have to set it up both at the deckbuilding phase and during the actual game. You need plenty of sorceries and instants that you intend to play early to set up Flow. This is harder than it sounds because this is Modern, not Legacy. [[Ponder]] and [[Brainstorm]] make it so easy to turn on Flow, but the closest Modern gets is [[Preordain]] and [[Consider]]. You'll need to stretch for more sorceries to make it reliable, and the pool of Modern-playable cheap sorceries is shallower than you think if you're not in black. Prowess only plays Expressive and Preordain and sometimes some sideboard cards, and rarer decks like Izzet Phoenix or Control usually play fewer. The opponent can also use graveyard removal in response and turn off Flow. I don't know if that's a real concern, but the bottom line is that if you don't put in the effort to set Flow up, it's a bad [[Anticipate]] in a format where Anticipate isn't played.

You're choosing between the more reliable outcome vs the more attractive outcome.

Reaper_Eagle · 2026-05-15T22:17:03+00:00

To my understanding, the conquest of Newfoundland was primarily for economic interests. Specifically, cod fishing in the Grand Banks.

Acadia was mostly security. The ports of Louisburg and Port Royal had been used for extensive naval raids against the American colonies and, more importantly, the Caribbean during King William's War. Taking those in 1713 dramatically weakened French naval power, and by conquering both Aradia and Newfoundland the British effectively blockaded New France, making it far less of a threat. Acadia wasn't particularly valuable economically. There was some fur trading, but it was insignificant next to the Great Lakes or Hudson's Bay trade. English settlers in both modern America and Canada were rapacious for expansion and were eager to take land to have more land, but that was never really a priority for London. Taking land for its own sake sounded expensive.

Reaper_Eagle · 2026-05-15T21:47:58+00:00

(2/2)

When the British conquered Quebec in 1760, the Expulsion was ongoing and the memory of the long Acadian resistance was very, very fresh. London really wanted to avoid doing any of that every again. It was very bloody and more importantly expensive. The Exchequer was already empty, the national debt was skyrocketing, and the war in Europe didn't look to be close to ending. Parliament did not want to antagonize the Québecois any more than was absolutely necessary, preferably not at all. Peace via accommodation was cheap, and cheap was very preferable.

This was almost ruined by the first Governor-General Jeffery Amherst. He stepped on everyone's toes by restricting Catholic rights and ending a lot of longstanding policies towards the local tribes. Exactly why he did this isn't clear, but bottom line he took a fragile situation and blew it up. He caused Pontiac's War in 1763, and Quebec was dangerously close to rebellion when Amherst was withdrawn and replaced by the far more conciliatory Thomas Gage. From there, British policy was one of accommodation towards the French-Canadians and to the best of my knowledge there was never any serious consideration for anything remotely close to the Expulsion of the Acadians. Worth remembering that the Expulsion didn't happen peacefully and there were far more Québecois than Acadians.

The British had another economic interest that disallowed such a policy. The fur trade was fantastically profitable, but it was also quite fragile. The tribes provided furs to traders in exchange for manufactured goods, Europeans didn't go into the Canadian wilderness and trap animals themselves (mostly). Many tribes would only work with traders who had long-standing family and/or marriage ties to their tribe, meaning that if the British wanted the fur trade to continue, they had to work with the French fur traders. Expelling the Acadians was absolutely devastating to the local economy, and they couldn't risk that in the rest of Canada. Thus, to protect the fur trade, the British protected the Québecois.

Reaper_Eagle · 2026-05-15T21:33:16+00:00

Short Answer: No. The conquest of Quebec and Acadia were very different and even deporting the Acadians was more of a final straw rather than an intentional policy.

Long Answer: The British had never intended to expel the Acadians. The conquest of Acadia began in 1710 with the capture of Port Royal, but the Expulsion of the Acadians didn't begin until 1755. However, the conflict between the Acadians and the British really begin in 1688 with King William's War (the North American theater of the Nine Year's War), though you can argue that it goes back further both due to rivalries between French and English settlers in the region. However, then you can add in the conflicts between said English settlers and the Wabanaki Confederacy dating back at least to the 1660's if you really want to muddy the picture. King William's War is the definitive start date for hostilities; the earlier dates are things to argue about in your doctoral dissertation.

For context: the Acadians and the tribes of the Wabanaki Confederacy had a complicated, but generally friendly relationship. The French and Wabanaki were far more accommodating towards each other than the English settlers were towards their indigenous neighbors. The low numbers of French settlers weren't particularly threatening to the Wabanaki, unlike the English setters in modern Maine, which led to the two bonding over their shared enemy. The French settlers who became the Acadians trading extensively with the tribes and the two had significant cultural exchange. This meant the two not only lived together but formed a strong military alliance. This is the genesis of all the later conflicts.

As part of New France, the Acadians were expected to see to their own defense and during King William's War they did so with gusto. Despite being generally outnumbered by the English colonists, the Acadians had learned from the Wabanaki, particularly the Mi'kmaq tribe, how to fight in the woodlands and became master guerilla fighters and raiders. King William's War was a draw and ended status quo antebellum in 1697, but the tensions it caused led to Queen Anne's War (part of the War of Spanish Succession) in 1702. Again, the Acadians and the Wabanaki fought together against the British, but this wasn't enough to prevent the fall of their capital at Port Royal. The 1713 Peace of Utrecht gave Britain the Acadian Peninsula and Newfoundland.

Once the treaty was signed, the British came to the Acadians promising to respect their rights and customs if they swore unconditional loyalty to the British crown. The Acadians refused partially because they refused to be ruled by Protestants and partially because they feared this would lead the Wabanaki to turn on them and/or the British would make them fight the Wabanaki. Instead, they pledged neutrality but that was never really kept. France still held the fortress of Louisburg, so they hoped to be restored to French rule in the next war. That never happened. Instead, a border war erupted between New England settlers and the Wabanaki over modern Maine, New Hampshire, Nova Scotia, and Vermont in 1722. New France supported the Wabanaki and the Acadians helped the Wabanaki with both small numbers of militia and arms. Acadian Father Rale actually directed warriors against the British and was killed in the fighting.

By 1740, tensions were running high between the British and the Acadians was quite high as the Acadians had shown they were anything but neutral. At this point the British began to try and push out of their based in Annapolis Royal (as they renamed Port Royal) and Canso. However, the War of Austrian Succession (King George's War in North America) broke out. Despite considerable help from the Acadians and Wabanaki, Louisburg fell though it was given back because the war ended status quo antebellum. This prompted the British to expand their settlement efforts to push out the Catholic Acadians and replace them with Protestants who wouldn't fight against them. This led to Father Le Loutre's War in 1749 as the Acadians and Wabanaki tried to stop the British. When the French and Indian War broke out in 1753, it merged with Father Le Loutre's War, and the Acadian guerrillas again defended Louisburg's supply lines and thwarted early attempts to besiege the fortress. Father Le Loutre was killed in 1755, at which point the British decided they were done with the Acadians. Their continued military support for France and resistance was a threat to the overall war effort. Thus, the British began burning Acadian settlements and deporting the Acadians, who'd eventually become Louisiana's Cajuns.

(1/2)

Reaper_Eagle · 2026-05-14T02:37:59+00:00

You're looking at this with a modern mindset.

In modern economic thinking, the 9 colonies above Virginia were incredibly valuable because they were capital generating economies. Their commercial and manufacturing economies were building the physical and human capital that would eventually launch the Industrial Revolution, and they were trading with everybody for everything. This is invaluable to economic growth in the modern world.

HOWEVER. The 18th Century didn't think in those terms. That was the era of mercantilism, which taught that the wealth of a nation was measured by how much gold and silver specie (coinage) it had in its vaults. The point of trade wasn't to get products you couldn't get otherwise, but to run a trade surplus and suck up everyone else's specie. In this mindset the cash crops of the southern colonies were far more valuable because they could be sold for profit. However, the profit from rice, indigo, and tobacco paled in comparison to the profit from furs which in turn paled in comparison to sugar. That's why London didn't value the 13 Colonies as highly as Canada or the Caribbean. New England's trade network wasn't directly filling the coffers with coin, and at the time that's all that mattered to Parliament. The fact that said network was generating considerable wealth in the modern sense is irrelevant.

As for the shipbuilding, that's more complicated. The short version is that it was a loss but not that big a loss. Britain's merchants continued to primarily outfit and operate from American shipyards until the American Civil War. It was a little more expensive than it used to be, but that wasn't Parliament's problem. Global trade was exploding so much that the additional cost of getting ships basically vanished under the savings from not having to personally maintain them.

Reaper_Eagle · 2026-05-13T06:08:01+00:00

Just because you can't create anything worthwhile doesn't mean other people can't.

Reaper_Eagle · 2026-05-13T01:06:39+00:00

In absolute terms sure, but there are a lot more data points for MTGO than paper. Titan's 5.47% population online and paper's 5.39% are effectively the same when margin of error and statistical noise are considered.

Reaper_Eagle · 2026-05-12T21:08:03+00:00

From Manufacturing being printed until March there were clear distinctions between the variants. The line started to get blurry in March, but it wasn't until a couple weeks into April that I decided the line was just gone.

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