Double Jeopardy Parts 5-7

Author says: this thread was inspired by one of Dominic Sandbrook's articles in New Statesman. To view guest historian's comments on this thread please visit the Today in Alternate History web site. Please note that the opinions expressed in this post do not necessarily reflect the views of the author(s).

the Quebec Rebellion ended in triumph for the rebels as the tattered remnants of the British occupation forces in that province fled across the border to Ontario, then still a British colony.

Britain abandons QuebecFor Great Britain the pullout from Quebec was the shameful climax to a long string of defeats its army had suffered in that region since the Battle of Sherbrooke; for the insurgents themselves it was the fulfillment of their longtime dream to liberate their homeland from British rule; for France it represented an opportunity to regain some measure of influence in the New World after being forced to concede thousands of square miles of North American and Caribbean territory in the Treaty of Stockholm; and for the Brotherhood of Liberty it constituted a sign Americans could fight and win their own guerrilla war against the British should circumstances render it necessary.

In fact, many of the first battles of the American Revolutionary War would see Quebec Rebellion veterans serve as advisors to George Washington's Continental Army; men who'd been too young to fight in the Quebec Rebellion came south to form volunteer militias supporting the American regulars, and at least two former Quebec insurgent commanders would serve on Washington's general staff in the course of the Revolution. A number of Quebecois fighters would be at Washington's side for the final British surrender to the Continental Army in 1779.

On August 16^th,

on this day the Brotherhood of Liberty carried out its most dramatic pre-Revolutionary War act of defianace against British rule: the Boston Tea Party.

Just after 7:00 PM that evening Brotherhood members stormed three British merchant ships docked in Boston Harbor and threw hundreds of tea chests overboard in protest of the increasingly heavy taxes American colonists were being forced to pay to the British crown.

Boston Tea PartyMost of the participants in the Tea Party would go on to fight in the Revolutionary War, with some of them playing a significant role in the liberation of Boston by the Continental Army in 1775.

Despite British colonial authorities' most diligent efforts to locate and arrest the Tea Party's organizers, no one was ever caught; in fact one Brotherhood partisan actually suceeded in infiltrating the very British Army regiment deployed to apprehend him. In the post-Revolution era the tavern where the Tea Party plan had first been conceived would become a shrine to the struggle for American independence; around 1900 the U.S. Department of the Interior would declare it a national historic landmark.

In the early 21st century the phrase "Tea Party" would come into vogue as a metaphor for the emergence of a political movement sparked by what some Americans considered excessive spending and taxation by their government.

on this the ongoing American protests against British colonial rule escalated into armed rebellion as citizens of the town of Concord, Massachusetts exchanged gunfire with a detachment of British soldiers sent to arrest the leader of the local Brotherhood of Liberty chapter; when the skirmish ended just twelve minutes later three Americans, six British, and a Quebecois emigrant farmer were dead.

The Battle of ConcordThe Battle of Concord, as the engagement would later be known, marked the beginning of the American Revolution -- a war that would end over four years later with the United States becoming independent from Britain.

The British defeat in the Revolution marked a major turning point in the Crown's relations with its former subjects on American soil; forced to deal with the newly sovereign nation as an equal rather than simply as one of its dependents, Britain strived in the post-Revolutionary War era to create more cordial ties with America.

Those efforts would turn out to be invaluable to the interests of both countries when another Anglo-French war erupted in the early 19th century.

Author says to view guest historian's comments on this thread please visit the Today in Alternate History web site.

Imagine what would be, if history had occurred a bit differently. Who says it didn't, somewhere? These fictional news items explore that possibility. Possibilities such as America becoming a Marxist superpower, aliens influencing human history in the 18th century and Teddy Roosevelt winning his 3rd term as president abound in this interesting fictional blog.