Well the US navy would be defending close to its Bases, the British Navy would need to go all the way to Canada to resupply.
As was pointed out, the British fleet pwned the world at this point. And Canada isn't too far to go when needing to resupply.
Landing a force strong enough to capture NY and hold it while at the same time fighting the US fleet would be very dangerous especially since it would leave Britain vunrable in Europe.
Again, the British navy could (and did during WWI) successfully mobilize its fleet all over the world while guarding its shores against a much stronger naval power (Germany in 1914 was considerably more powerful than Germany in 1900 at sea).
I would guess the only practical solution would be for the Brits to take a big US city and sue for peace. I can't imagine what other tactic they could hope to see through. Further, the US couldn't do shit to the English mainland, so a front there is not an option.
I could be way off but if the Americans mobilized their industrial might like they did in 1941 I think they could have fielded a bigger fleet then great britain.
I agree - you're way off. The American navy in WWI wasn't terribly impressive in comparison to the British navy. Since the theater of war would almost have to be almost entirely on North American soil, it is doubtful that the US could mobilize in the same way it did in the forties. Furthermore, the British had largely been on a downward spiral between the two world wars while the US had been rising. It would take way too long to even get to an even rate in 1900 before exceeding that of Great Britain. Especially as in the US the infrastructure just wasn't there yet. In some of the East, sure - but the west was still largely disconnected from everything.
Traveling around in Pacific Northwest, I think it was William O'Brien, but I'm too lazy to look it up, came across an old Fenian who was living there. When they started talking about world politics some of the people there were surprised to hear that the British were still a power - they had assumed that most of Europe had just kind of collapsed. That's an example of how isolated a lot of the Americas - even states, not even territories - were from each other and the rest of the world at the time.
If the USA could get their people behind the war they could swamp Canada, and the British would have to take and hold Quebec and the Maritimes for a foot hold to which strike south, and they'd have to ship alot of troops. Canada's population was spread out, getting local troops would be possible, but they would be distributed and would have to travel a long distance before they could concentrate in numbers large enough to challange American forces.
The US would certainly have a numeric advantage and could probably take cities in Canada. The thing is, there wouldn't be much point. The British could stage an attack from the forest if they absolutly had to, and while the Americans were drinking wine in Qubec, upstate New York could collapse to the British or something. Canada's advantage at the time would be that there wasn't much up there to do - I think. That's why I think the war would fall, in large part, on the idea of the British really trying to take North American cities.
That said, all the states bordering Canada would probably send troops up to grab a bunch of land and try to hold it for when peace negotiations went in to effect. That may complicate Britain's situation, but Canada was so under populated it would almost be an abstraction - like me just going in to the woods and declaring that I own it.
Besides, what would the end results of the war be?
Would the USA want parts of Canada? would the British be willing to give up parts of it?
If the British were winning, what would they take?
That's the main problem. I just don't see such a war happening because there's no practical reason to do so, aside from the fact they didn't like each other too much at the time. I would guess the US would want big chunks of Canada. The English would probably want to be done with the war so as to deal with the rest of their Empire, South Africa, Ireland, and a few other places would have been major issues for them at the time and such a war would have been pointless for them to bother with.
In the end, it's possible the British would just shell the hell out of the US cities from the sea until there was a cease fire or negotiation.
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