In An Alternate History I Made It To See "Green Street Hooligans"

I'm beginning to think that perhaps the alternate history in my Nano novel may be a little too difficult to realize.

I never knew how uppity people were about the War of 1812.

Yesterday night after I wrote an entry on here I went over to the NANOWRIMO forums and saw there was a new post under the topic I started called "Alternate History Fiction" on the Historical Fiction board.

Someone responded to my plot summary with the following:

"But the United States did lose the War of 1812. Washington's war aims were stopping Royal Navy impressment of sailors and impounding of cargoes and conquering Canada so as to end the British presence in North America. London's war aims were defending Canada and forcing the Americans to stop their bothersome little war. During the war, Britain won most of the battles. The war ended with Canada still in British hands, and Britain made no concessions on naval impressment and embargoes (or anything else). The United States achieved none of what it fought to achieve; Britain achieved all of what it set out to achieve. That's how you tell who won a war. In addition, the war very nearly drove the New England states to secede (the threat of secession is largely what drove Washington to enter peace negotiations; that and losing all of the important battles).

I'm just not sure that 'the United States ... losing the War of 1812' counts as alternate history, since there's nothing alternate about it. Still, details of plausibility aside, I totally dig your story idea."

So, now I have to figure out a way that the United States annoyed the English so much trying to invade Canada that they decided to occupy the United States indefinitely to avoid that sort of thing happening again rather than agreeing to negotiate a peace.

The entire reason I chose 1814 as the breaking point in the timelines was because losing the Revolutionary War has been done before and I like the idea of having a few years as a free country before being a colony again - it gives a plethora of rallying cries for the new revolutionaries.

But maybe I'll just have an economic collapse in the newly founded United States (or some other huge crisis) have the English smelling blood to take over again.