dalem

I can't remember if we've ever had this "what if?" before, and it seems appropriate given the date today (July 4th).

What if the relatively few hotheads in the Colonies had been overridden by the majority of their fellows who wanted to remain part of the British Empire, and the American War of Independence had never happened?

I'm not heading in any particular direction, I'm just kind of interested in the discussion. How would things have looked through the last 230 years? No American Civil War? A different Civil War? Millions of American dead in WWI maybe? No difference at all?

-dale

lazybastard

We all still be drinking tea.

A different Civil War scenario looks very interesting. The outlawing of slavery in the British Empire circa 1830s brings about the dixie states declaring independence. Would the North still have been more industrialized, if the US had followed the British colonial pattern of providing raw materials to Britain in exchange for manufactured goods? If that was the case, would the North itself still have retained slavery because it is still agrarian? If so, would there had been an American Revolution in the 1830s, over the issue of slavery, of all things?

Ouch, I'm gonna stop now before I give myself a headache.

Edit: Guess I can't help myself. Before we even get that far, what about the Napoleonic Wars and the Council of Vienna? Would there been a French Revolution if there wasn't a American Revolution? What if France had hanged on to the land that would become the Louisiana purchase? How the hell would we predict what would happen in 1914 if we can't be sure what would happen in 1800?

Alright, now I have a headache. It's all your fault dalem.

Officer of Engineers

The US would have become a Dominion and dictated who sat on the throne.

__________________
Chimo

dalem

Colonel-

I am woefully ignorant of the period. What status does/did a Dominion have vs. a colony? How could that have affected succession?

-dale

gunnut

Would we have expanded westward as aggressively as we did had we remained with the British Empire? Would we have bought Lousiana from the French? Would we have bought Alaska from the Russians?

Suffice to say, the world would be a very different place had we remained with the empire. For better or for worse, I cannot begin to imagine.

__________________
"Only Nixon can go to China." -- Old Vulcan proverb.

Kansas Bear

Most likely if we remained part of the British Empire, we would have invaded the Louisiana territory instead of purchasing it from Napoleon.

glyn

__________________
Semper in excretum. Solum profunda variat.

Officer of Engineers

Using Canada as the example, basically an independent country with the Crown still the head of state and the Foreign Office having the final but not the most important say in Foreign matters.

Our armies are our own and we could and did told Kitchener to take a hike when he wanted to absorb Canadian regiments into the British Army.

As a Dominion, the Governor General is decided within the country and not in London. The succession to the Crown is also dependent on acceptance by the Dominion. Canada was not going to accept Edward as King and would've refused to accept him as King of Canada.

dave angel

if you'd stayed within the Empire/commonwealth then you wouldn't owe us anything like the amount in back-Taxes that you do.

and you'd put the letter 'U' in words too..

happy birthday septics.

__________________
before criticizing someone, walk a mile in their shoes.................... then when you do criticize them, you're a mile away and you have their shoes.

glyn

dave lukins

Septics!!...naughty boy Dave

astralis

i didn't know you were a cockney, dave! now look what you've done, all the brits 'ere are gonna rabbit all night, garn!

__________________
Never let the future disturb you. You will meet it, if you have to, with the same weapons of reason which today arm you against the present.

-Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

dave angel

'eeez a mahnkey! makes yur raight prahd it duz, jabber jabber, some old shite made-up for the benefit of tourists on the basis that a fool and his money are soon parted, dog 'n bone, apple and pears, trouble 'n strife...

Dave Angel, a man respected about the town (well, in some of the less expensive whorehouses anyway...), would like to make clear that his is not some dreadful Dick van ****-esque charactor with pearly buttons on his suit and a penchant for talking utter boll0cks that only some deranged Dickensian would have a hope of understanding....

anyway, happy birthday septics (its not really the abusive version it may perhaps once have been, 'yanks' is no longer fashionable, 'spams' has some currency, but hasn't really caught the imagination, but 'septics' has leapt into the living language like a big leaping thing).

E2A: Mods and Admins, you really need to sort out the word sensor, you can say 'Bush' but not 'D yke', whas goin' on?

JAD_333

When I think of the revolutionary period I find it hard to imagine the loyalists turning back the tide of independence. But there was a period where the hotheads were held in check by practical men like Franklin and Adams, who believed some connection with England was still possible.

The first Continental Congress was formed with exactly that in mind. It drafted a petition to the King for redress of grievances and waited and waited. When colonial patience ran out, a second Continental Congress was formed to pave the way for independence. It also served as the central government of the colonies. One of its first acts was to create the Continental Army.

Had the king wanted to ease tensions up to that point he might have succeeded, and the course of US history would have been different. But after hearing that Congress was debating independence, he reacted belligerently. First he declared the colonies to be in open revolt and then passed an act confiscating all American-owned shipping. I think he was sick too--pissing blue was it?

The king also signed a deal with the German states to hire mercenaries to help subdue the colonialists. The mood in Congress changed rapidly. At that point only 2-3 diehard loyalists were left in Congress. The declaration was drafted in June 1776 and passed a few weeks later.

So, if you were to frame the question in light of the times, the question might be, 'what if the king had consented to have a delegation come to London to discuss the grievances of the colonies'? Had he met the colonists halfway and bestowed on them a dominion-like status, the world would be very different today.

Maybe Canada might stretch from the artic to the tip of Florida and include what is today most of the eastern and midwestern US. Maybe other nations would share the North American continent, such as a vastly larger Mexico stretching all the way to the Pacific and comprising much of the southwest. Also there might be a larger Russia comprising Alaska down as far as the territory that is now the upper tier states of Washington and Montana.

Damn, dale, you picked a lulu.

__________________
To be Truly ignorant, Man requires an Education. (Plato)

JAD_333

****o, I mean b o f f o.: