Considering both Richmond, VA, and Raleigh, NC, were built along the Fall Line between the Appalachian Piedmont and the Atlantic Coastal Plain, if Virginia extended from the Potomac to Cape Fear, would it have been plausible for Halifax, NC, to be chosen as the state capital?
The second point I was trying to make is still valid, though. With the NPR ending in Seattle, Vancouver becoming the main city in the Pacific North-West isn't going to happen, regardless of how good a natural harbor it has.
What I meant is that, by virtue of better farmland attracting more settlers, you'd have more people up in the Canadian Prairies than south of the 49th lobbying for the NPR to pass through their town.
Quoting my previous comment:
Which means railroading the railway into following the OTL route wouldn't make much sense. Is there room for improving the route I've proposed? Certainly, but it'd still be a more northerly one than in OTL.
Related to my previous comment: Vancouver may have become the western terminus for the Canadian Pacific Railway because it was the best option north of the 49° parallel, but the railroad had a much harder time crossing the mountains to reach it than the Northern Pacific Railway had doing the...
If the American Revolution either didn't happen or failed before France could get involved, would the one in Haiti happening earlier than IOTL do enough damage to the country's finances to bring about the French Revolution roughly on schedule despite the butteflies?
I'd like to point out that in OTL, the Canadian Prairies have the aptly named Empty North beat in terms of population because their soil is much better for farming. Without an international border between the two regions, it's very likely Montana, Wyoming, and the Dakotas would be even emptier...
Shreve's Divorce: What if Henry Miller Shreve completely separated the Red River from the Mississipi by filling up the former Turnbull's Bend with material removed from the Great Raft?
Would it have been plausible for Maryland and Pennsylvania to end up with a Juniata-Susquehanna-Chesapeake border rather than the line drawn by Mason and Dixon?
While the creation of this Indian state isn't out of the question, it's likely not going to be so large. More realistically, Bhil Pradesh would be made up of territorially contiguous districts, each formerly part of Rajasthan, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra, with a majority tribal...
If the Seljuks hadn't managed, for whatever reason, to take over Anatolia proper ( the formerly Greek-speaking part ), how likely would it have been for the Kurds of this timeline to end up turkified to the same extent as OTL Azeris, since the Oghuz migration would've been stopped from reaching...
Novgorod used the river routes, so this timeline's replacement for Saint Petersburg is likely going to be founded in order to build and service Russia's Baltic fleet, becoming and essentially remaining a navy town until trade ships became too massive for the Novgorod-Volchov-Ladoga-Neva-Baltic...
Given that Saint Petersburg was founded due to Peter the Great's desire to reconnect Russia to the West, if the Mongols never invaded the Kievan Rus', how likely would it be for a city of the same importance to ever be built in the same place?