What if the French had won the battle of Cinco de Mayo?


If you're a history buff, you know that the French lost to Mexico on the 5th of May (Cinco de Mayo), 1862. If you don't know this, and you're saying, "What? The French? How dangerous could they be?", you can Google it, and yes, they were very dangerous. And their goal was to get to as much gold as possible, and to work their way up to where Phoenix is today. Yes, there was a lot of gold there! And the American troops who would have protected that American territory were off fighting the Civil War, so it was wide open. You can also Google that.

Anyway, today my little imagination is swirling around with a "What if?" I've always enjoyed this type of imaginative stuff, like "What if Germany had won World War II?" or "What if..." well, anything. I was a day-dreaming kid, and I never grew out of it. And that's probably why I didn't do all that good in school. Let's day-dream and imagine Phoenix if the French had won.

Well, first of all, Phoenix wouldn't have been there, only because it wasn't there until 1870. And if under French rule, the city had been established, the name Phoenix would have been just fine, it's not an English word, you know. Although I think it would have been funny if it had been named "Finis".

OK, I know nothing about the French culture, other than what I learned from Pepé le Pew cartoons, and Pink Panther movies when I was a kid, so bear with me here. The first thing I thought of today is that everything would be in French. Camelback Mountain would be Montagne de Chameau. Yes, I'm using Google Translate for this, so please correct me if you know the language.

Rue de Lamour, where a good friend of mine lived many years ago, in Peoria, of course could stay the same. As of course streets named after people, like Bell, and Greenway. And Olive, which is just south of me, I just discovered would still be Olive. Northern would be Nord. I suppose the main street downtown would have been Napoleon, not Washington.

Of course, instead of United States law, which was based on English Common Law, there would have been the Napoleonic Code. My understanding is that under that, there is no "innocent until proven guilty", just provisional innocence, which in practice is pretty much the same thing.

Since I grew up in Minneapolis, which is west of the Mississippi, in my imagination I would have been French, and across the river, at St. Paul, would have been the United States. We would probably look down on them with their silly English language, and probably less of a knowledge of wine.

I wonder what the state of Arizona would have been called under French rule? Louisiana? Nah, probably not. And I wonder if under French rule all of the Spanish names would have stayed in place? Like California? Or San Diego?

Anyway, the Mexicans won on that day, and sent the French back home, never to return. ¡Viva México! ¡Viva Estados Unidos! Sorry, France.
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