Talk:Rhode Island

I often find myself wondering how viable an independent RI would have been, had they continued to reject the Constitutional government. I don't see them changing US history much. They've produced no Presidents, no great statesmen really come to mind (the only RI politician I can think of offhand is Lincoln Chaffee), they contributed to all our wars but no real great heroes, and not exactly massive amounts of men or materiel, and their location makes it easy for US trade routes to bypass them. A naval installation would be lost, but there's no shortage of alternate sites.

The likeliest element of US history to be affected would be imperialism. With the southern states on an expansionist kick in the antebellum, would northerners be able to resist the appeal of two more northern Senate seats? And later on, how would all the great expansionists of the turn of the twentieth century react to such a nearby state that would be such a natural fit for inclusion in the US? If left alone, wouldn't Cubans and Filipinos and all the rest be able to declare racism, in that the US left white countries alone when it could absorb them while going out of its way to absorb nonwhite countries? Would anyone give a shit if they did? Would whiteness necessarily protect Rhode Island? (Four of the five great European powers had European colonies, after all.)

If they survived into the twentieth century, I wonder how they'd behave in the systemic conflicts of that century. Certainly Washington would have absolutely no tolerance for Providence's alignment with the Central Powers, the Axis, or the Soviet Bloc; but if Providence were to flirt with risking Washington's ire, that could produce an interesting historical divergence. Otherwise they might be allowed to remain neutral in the conflicts; there's lots of precedent for large countries being content to leave small, strategically not-too-important neighbors alone. Turtle Fan 09:00, January 26, 2010 (UTC)