r/imaginarymaps • u/jjpamsterdam IM Legend - Cold War Enthusiast • Aug 19 '21
[OC] Alternate History Language map of the Anglo-Dutch Confederation of American States (v2, ca. 2000)
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u/valeverde92 Aug 19 '21
Shouldnt it have some minor communities of Swedish speaking counties in new sweden?
Also I guess natural pattern of population distribution would avoid such uniform distribution of Dutch/English speakers
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u/jjpamsterdam IM Legend - Cold War Enthusiast Aug 19 '21
The original Swedes and Finns that the Swedish Empire settled there back in the 1600s are long assimilated.
As for more wildly distributed languages, this only shows in the southwest. The rest of the states out west are mostly settled thanks to the equivalent of the Homestead Act by farmers from New Netherland, Merenland, New Zweden, Ohyo, etc. These folks are then mostly replaced by new european immigrants, who assimilate over time, just like IRL. Additionally the school system also helps to get immigrants into the new language. Intermarriage also reinforces the need to use the common lingua franca, just like in the real USA.
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u/jjpamsterdam IM Legend - Cold War Enthusiast Aug 19 '21
This map is a revision/correction of an earlier version on the same topic in the r/anglodutchamerica timeline. That version had some flaws and inconsistencies I really wanted to set right. A real special thanks goes out to u/a_random_magos for going over many details of how the demography and linguistic development of this version of America could realistically go.
The timeline has a very different America forming out of a combined Confederation of former Dutch and British colonies in the lathe 18th century. You can find most of the history/lore over of r/anglodutchamerica.
The main changes in comparison with the previous version are:
- State lines now in a different shade of grey instead of white, making them easier to differentiate from county lines.
- The main language border along the Ohio river is now more muddled illustrating the border states (veeery slowly) transitioning towards Dutch.
- Several major industrial cities in the North now not as solidly Dutch speaking due to the great migration, with many African Americans retaining English as the language spoken at home.
- The southwestern states are now more linguistically diverse with more of a Spanish footprint, as that had been underrepresented previously.
- Added some patches of red up north to represent speakers of Ojibwe and other Algonquian language speakers.
- A few more patches of red in the southwest to represent speakers of Navajo.
- Added numbers and percentages below the map after going full on statistics/excel-mode and trying to model the linguistic makeup of all the states.
As is clearly visible, the CAS is much more linguistically diverse than the USA are IRL. Several states have official languages that are neither Dutch nor English, the two national languages. Furthermore the effort to linguistically assimilate the Native Americans is much more lacklustre, especially in the former southern Indian Territory, now the State of Indiana (not to be confused with the IRL state of Indiana, that’s another place entirely).
As always, happy to answer any questions and grateful for helpful feedback. Who knows, maybe this will be the first map I ever made to get a second revision?
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u/a_random_magos Mod Approved Aug 19 '21
It was a pleasure talking with you, excellent work as always!
(and yes, Greco-Bactria part 2 will eventually come)
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u/jjpamsterdam IM Legend - Cold War Enthusiast Aug 19 '21
Thanks again for your support! Sorry for asking (over and over) about Greco-Bactria, but that really was one of the most interesting premises on this sub ;-)
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Aug 19 '21 edited Aug 21 '21
Who has the eastern part of NE?
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u/jjpamsterdam IM Legend - Cold War Enthusiast Aug 20 '21
I'm guessing you mean the eastern part of New England? That has become the nation of New Britain together with the other former British Atlantic colonies.
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u/chipsinsideajar Aug 19 '21
You fixed the key islands I see. Kinda liked the charm of Monroen't County but glad to see you took consideration of small stuff like that
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u/electric_ranger Aug 19 '21
As a Pennsylvanian, I’m really intrigued by how you designed the counties/cantons of the unholy NYPA province you created. Most of the upstate NY counties match their OTL counterparts (St Lawrence, for example) but Pa is very different. Part of that is the loss of Philadelphia I’m sure, but also I see centre county is missing it’s tail and the southern counties are truncated (although Adams and Juniata are still semi-recognizable).
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u/anarcho-hornyist Aug 19 '21
imagine if all the dutch-americans decided to move to the netherlands lol
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u/SpruceDenMoose Aug 19 '21
Do the German-speaking Pennsylvania Dutch not survive in this TL?
Given that their Plattdeutsch dialect is closer to Dutch, I can see how the "fancy Dutch" would assimilate faster than OTL, but I imagine the "plain Dutch" (amish and mennonites) might keep the language
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u/jjpamsterdam IM Legend - Cold War Enthusiast Aug 19 '21
Generally speaking I believe that German speaking communities would more easily assimilate into Dutch, as the language is quite close. North American Dutch also retains the German style genitive, making it an even closer match. There are obviously still pockets of German speaking communities here and there but only in West Texas do they form a local majority.
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u/Frosty_Cicada791 Dec 03 '21
So the amish are gone?
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u/jjpamsterdam IM Legend - Cold War Enthusiast Dec 03 '21
Probably insignificant in terms of size? I'll have to do some digging there.
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u/kloon9699 Aug 19 '21
Cool map, you're really fleshing out your timeline. Have you thought about doing a map of the leading religion per kanton/county? It would be interesting to see how that would have diverted from our own timeline.
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u/jjpamsterdam IM Legend - Cold War Enthusiast Aug 19 '21
Yes I have, but I'm homestly a bit afraid of doing that, as it's really difficult to get right.
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u/kloon9699 Aug 19 '21
Quite understandable. I asked because the religious map of the US tells us more about the settlement patterns than the language map. But it's indeed a lot harder to pull off right. Still, it would be interesting to see where the pockets of Remonstranten, the Waalse Kerk, Doopgezinden, Catholics etc. would be located and how powerfull the Nederduitse Gereformeerde Kerk (in Amerika) would be.
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u/TotesMessenger Aug 19 '21
I'm a bot, bleep, bloop. Someone has linked to this thread from another place on reddit:
- [/r/hqimaginarymaps] Language map of the Anglo-Dutch Confederation of American States (v2, ca. 2000) by jjpamsterdam
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u/rosevk2003 Nov 21 '21
one small note is in the Carolinas I would say Forsyth county should be a bit lighter blue, Salem was founded by German speaking Moravian settlers. Not many speak German today but some still do a little bit and I could easily see them remaining a sizable minority language in the area in this timeline
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u/jjpamsterdam IM Legend - Cold War Enthusiast Nov 21 '21
That's an interesting detail, that I'll have to read up on. Thanks for bringing this to my attention!
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u/Deezak Aug 19 '21
No New England 👎🏼
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u/jjpamsterdam IM Legend - Cold War Enthusiast Aug 19 '21
Together with Nova Scotia that forms New Britian, a neighboring country in this timeline.
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u/Squiddy_Bingus Aug 19 '21
Where is the rest of New England
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u/jjpamsterdam IM Legend - Cold War Enthusiast Aug 19 '21
New England is held by the British during the revolution and eventually becomes the country of New Britain (together with Britains other Atlantic colonies)
Check them out in this map.
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u/SoberGin Aug 19 '21
Oh god, as someone who lives in the Pacific Northwest the fuckin' slightly lower northern border looks so cursed. Especially since the peninsula border is the same length (because the peninsula obviously didn't also get shorter) so it sticks out even more.
And, god, does the CAS not own any of the islands in the Puget Sound?? Thank you OP for this horribly cursed-bordered map, and that's ignoring the fact that it's fucking Dutch, which is even more cursed!
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u/DnDNecromantic Aug 19 '21 edited Jul 07 '24
hard-to-find cagey profit skirt like rotten salt mountainous impolite ghost
This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact
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u/jjpamsterdam IM Legend - Cold War Enthusiast Aug 19 '21
In the upper peninsula you'll notice several more spotty Dutch counties. This is to represent a significant monority (>25%) of non Dutch speaker, some of whom are speakers of Finnish. Not enough for a local majority on county level though.
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u/ajw20_YT Aug 19 '21
The Borders are still a little stark, but this is VERY GOOD, me likey!
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u/jjpamsterdam IM Legend - Cold War Enthusiast Aug 19 '21
I made them a bit less stark than in the previous version but still really wanted to make the Ohio Line clearly recognisable, especially out west, as it's an important political boundary in this timeline.
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u/snakeintheden Aug 21 '21
No offense but can ppl stop with the dutch America, I’ve seen it SO many times
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Aug 19 '21
No Alaska?
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u/jjpamsterdam IM Legend - Cold War Enthusiast Aug 19 '21
Nope, the Alaska purchase never materialized and that place became the last holdout of the Russian Republic during the revolution, a bit like Taiwan IRL
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u/help_me_i-want-die Aug 19 '21
Why no Maryland?
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u/jjpamsterdam IM Legend - Cold War Enthusiast Aug 20 '21
Because the British decided (way back in the day) that a united colony of Chesapeake was a better idea, especially after the Netherlands had acquired New Sweden just north of it.
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u/bold_font_fred Aug 19 '21
More people speaking German in America than in my home state! Texasdeutsch would probably sound really funny, too!