Baja California
From Turtledove
Baja California is a Mexican state bordering upon the U.S. state of California. A long desert peninsula with few resources and baking sun, it is anchored at the northern end by the city of Tijuana and at the southern end by Cabo San Lucas.
[edit] Baja California in Southern Victory
Following the Confederate purchase of Sonora and Chihuahua in 1881, Baja California became the only Mexican territory bordering directly on the US. Due to the subsequent Mexican alliance with the Confederacy in the Great War, as well as its physical isolation from the rest of Mexico, Baja California found itself invaded by the US in 1915. This invasion, indifferently supplied and poorly executed, resulted in many US casualties to the dug-in Mexican Army and their Confederate advisers. The US withdrew to the pre-war border and no territory changed hands at the end of the war.
During the Mexican Civil War of the 1920s, many Mexicans fled to the US through Baja, seeking political asylum or simply work in the more prosperous USA.
After the Mexicans once again allied with the Confederates during the Second Great War, fighting was slow to begin in the West. The first major blow fell in March 1942, when a US navy task force steamed south from San Diego and bombarded Tijuana to discourage any Mexican or Confederate operations into California.
Baja California was the target of an amphibious invasion by the United States Marine Corps in 1943. The United States seized the peninsula through a combined arms operation involving a simultaneous overland push from California and began naval and air operations against the Confederate west coast in Sonora, restricting the port of Guaymas. While many in the U.S. wondered if the cost have the invasion had been worth it, the C.S. was painfully aware that one more avenue for prosecution of the war had been severed.
At the end of the war Baja California was the only Mexican territory under US occupation.
[edit] Baja California in The Disunited States of America
The country of Baja California shared a border with its mightier neighbor, California. The two countries shared a history of border conflicts, although Baja was hesitant to directly engage California.
[edit] Baja California in The Two Georges
Following the succesful British landing at and capture of the town of Nuestra Madonna de Los Angeles in the 1840s - the last major war fought on American soil - the Franco-Spanish Holy Alliance ceded the northern portion of Nueva España.
That included Baja California, where no fighting had taken place, and the peninsula became the southernmost province of the British Empire's North American Union.
It was a poor province ruled from New Liverpool, as the British renamed Los Angeles. Being separated by water from the remaining Franco-Spanish territory of Sinacoa, it was spared the occasional border clashes breaking out between the British and the Franco-Spanish, which considerably troubled other border North American and Nueva España provinces.
