If Deseret had survived to modern day as an independent nation, would it be more or less creepy and backward than Qatar?
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Beware Cat Shirt $21.68 |
If Deseret had survived to modern day as an independent nation, would it be more or less creepy and backward than Qatar?
Beware Cat Shirt $21.68 |
Beware Cat Shirt $21.68 |
Depends on why a nation in the middle of the continental united states with no neighbors and an english speaking white population didn't get eaten by it's sole neighbour
It'd be a gulfie state but for WASPs and focused on exporting mined minerals instead of oil.
Yes, and Evangelical missionaries would evangelize the native Mormon population throughout the 2000s and 2010s, just like what happened with Latin America.
Nah manI doubt it. For one deseret wouldn't be catholic (I hope we can agree the churchs current decrepit state is the main reason evangelicaloids are gainibg traction.)
Earlier than that.
Mormons would've tried to breed any Natives in their territories out of existence, likely similar to whitening policies Australians did with Abos.
Not really, and the thing is it couldn't exist. The Union had the Transcontinental Railroad, forever tying California, Nevada, Utah and Colorado into a single economic unit with the east coast via Chicago. And the cost of doing this was having the Mormons/Deseretians side with the Union against the slavers in the Civil War. It is difficult to imagine a scenario where Mormons would endorse slavery, and therefore admission to the Union was inevitable. It is also difficult to imagine an industrialized US without the Transcontinental Railroad.. or a TR that would have been built ten years later to the north in northern Idaho and Washington. The US's economy would be so different.. the California Gold Rush and second Mother Lode would have never happened, or would have resulted in a literal, armed, hard annexation of Deseret by Union forces. The California Water Project, and it's subsequent water war, would have gone the same way with the US Army and newly-formed FBI crushing the Deseretians as they did to... well, local ranchers IRL because their way of life was destroyed by Los Angeles.
But the thing is, rural Utah is already more creepy and backward than Qatar as the LFZ Ranch and similar FLDS compounds attest to. Utah is just... Utah. Northern Nevada and Eastern Colorado get creepy as well, especially along 50 (since replaced by Interstate 80) which is where all the alien sightings happen. It's also where The Shining takes place.
>pic very related, San Francisco-based Southern Pacific merged with Denver-based Rio Grande in 1988
>Transcontinental Railroad, forever tying California, Nevada, Utah and Colorado into a single economic unit with the east coast via Chicago
Never true statie. Look at any commodity map; shipping with China was 100% the plan.
The mining, ranching and water concerns that dominated Nevada and Utah speak otherwise.
So I agree something would have to diverge pre-Transcontinental Railroad
Perhaps for some reason, rather than fighting the Mexican-American War, the US supports an independence war for the Bear Flag Republic with the idea that they could Texas them later, but unlike Texas, independent California spurns the US to stay an independent state.
Then, to undermine the new California, the US supports an ultimately successful independence movement for Deseret.
Deseret is then able to keep its independence for the next 200 years by cleverly playing the US and California off of each other.
Alternatively, at a certain point, both the US and California realize that Deseret would add absolutely nothing to their countries and elect to leave those weirdos the frick alone.
This doesn't really work out because the exact moment the US military arrived in Alta California, the rich landlords that were the Alta Californian government immediately agreed to annexation without bloodshed. This is because Mexico, like Spain, were largely useless to them. There was a brief (a week? maybe) battle for Socal that was quickly crushed by the Alta Californian forces as they became American nationals. Perhaps starting with California would have caused a different way in which the Mexican-American war would have been fought, but the outcome would have been largely the same: a single, unified California and a huge swath of territory that could potentially be slave states. Slavery was the real question, and California's admission to the Union as a single state broke the Missouri Compromise that had permitted the previous five decades of peace between North and South. A single, whole California also means no Deseret, because there'd be a very large and very capable (thanks to American tax money, and then the Gold Rush) army capable of stopping the bandit problem, the indian problem, and then the Mormon problem. Which lead to the slavery problem.
I mean, look at the composition of the early California Republic. All Califorinos who had joined the newly formed Abolitionist Republican Party. It is very hard to avoid this, and thus create a situation where Deseret can exist, without extensively changing how the Mexican and Spanish empires worked. And once you start tinkering with Imperial Spain's collapse, world history becomes drastically different. If Spain was rich enough to actually keep California as Spanish, or even just as Mexican, it's unlikely Napoleon would have sold Louisiana. The US would be a much smaller country and the Mormons would have been exiled to Canada in the same way Texas did with the French Arcadians.
Also, imagine if Napoleon won in Mexico and Mexico became a French-speaking country.
You seem to be making an assumption here that I'm just not following
Why in your mind is the existence of Deseret so tied to the slavery issue?
both a lot more creepy and a lot less backwards. There'd be a mormon moonbase where they would prepare to hie to kolob
Another thing: the Transcontinetial Telegraph also went through Utah. If Deseret existed, it would probably not exist.. thus preventing Arpanet from existing a century later, thus preventing the Internet. To give an idea of how relevant Utah is to the Internet, it's where the big NSA supercomputer is. Nearby in central Colorado, just south of Denver is the Air Force's big supercomputer operating Norad command within Cheyenne Mountain. It's hard to imagine the US without this, or forced to do it far to the north within Cascadia which would have built out like California.. and then helped Northern California conquer Southern/Eastern California from Deseret. But even then, Deseret wouldn't want to fight them because the alternative was slavers and black slaves.
I suppose the Pony Express would have lasted longer.. only to be ruined by either radio or trucks in the next century.
It'd be creepier (at least from an Anglo-American perspective, can't speak for how Arabs would feel) because it's so closely linked to our own culture, but different in a lot of little uncanny valley ways. Which is true a fair bit of Utah even now, but making it an independent polygamist theocracy would make those differences feel so much stranger.
water heh
Is there even any natural resources in that region? It's just desert. The only major industry in Nevada is gambling. And they got the shitty part of California that is undergoing desertification.
They have the colorado river, which is the watershed for the entire southwest. Granted its reservoirs are in bad shape anymore because of California over-drawing from them.
No, the California section is zogged enough for half of it.
>Small population
>Lack of industry
>No access to international maritime trade
>In the way of major railroad that connects California
>No support from foreign powers due to their human trafficking
>Relying on Dixie success for their independence is also stupid
>Territory itself would probably have been divided between unionists and confederates
>Any large scale increase in slavery would have run afoul of its population. Not for moralistic reasoning but for economic and racial grievances. No way are a bunch of homesteaders and free white farmers going to be happy with the importation of black people just so Brigham Young and friends can undercut wages.
>Territory doesn't even have the necessary cash crops for the plantation economy anyway.
They'd get bodied by Federal troops, California militias, non-mormon dissident bands, and maybe an Indian rebellion. All while the brethren tear the church apart at the seems over Young's foolish decisions.
Mormons are creepy