These notes are part of an essay on an alternate history in which the American War of Independence never happened. In particular, this section presents a possible timeline the alternate world might follow. Further alternate history material can be found on my web page.
| 1750s | Seven Years' War ("French and Indian War") begins. Prussia defends itself, brilliantly, against most of Europe. British forces with American assistance eject France from Quebec. | |
| 1760s | Seven Years' war ends with Russian withdrawal from the anti-Prussian coalition. Friction between Britain and American colonists due to taxes for repayment of Seven Years War. Financial problems in the East India company are resolved by able administrators. | |
| 1770s | "Boston compromise": Each North American colony, including Upper Canada and Quebec, will receive a single seat in the parliament at Westminster, and be known as a province (though several choose to style themselves as something else: commonwealths, dominions or colonies). Members of parliament are to be elected by the people of the province, but franchise is to be determined by the local constitution: in general this means property-owning classes, and in Quebec it is further restricted to the tiny Anglophone community. Local assemblies recognise the supremacy of Westminster and the right of Westminster to raise revenue. Westminster grants a moratorium on taxation and promises not to tax at a greater rate in America than in any part of Britain ("most favoured region" clause). Prussia, Russia and Austria begin to dismantle Poland. Britain and an alliance of France and Spain fight a war about something or other, which gradually sputters to a stop. | |
| 1780s | British financial problems gradually recede. The first industrial revolution is beginning in North England and lowland Scotland. A plan to colonise Eastern Australia is rejected. France bankrupts itself funding extravagant gardens, oversized armies, enormous cathedrals and/or Louis' supply of mistresses, and at the end of the decade collapses in revolution. | |
| 1790s | Various reactionary regimes attempt to suppress the French revolution, which turns on itself and kills most of its creators. France survives, driving its enemies beyond France's natural borders and spreading republicanism in Germany, Italy and the Netherlands. Poland is absorbed by its neighbours. Napoleon Bonaparte becomes head of the French state. British troops conquer large parts of India, and forces in the New World, including Americans, seize various French colonies in the West Indies. | |
| 1800s | A rampant France, now calling itself an empire, tramples the great powers of Europe underfoot, and tempts Spain into alliance against Britain. The combined Franco-Spanish fleet is defeated at Trafalgar, and Britain seizes everything Spanish it can in the Caribbean. | |
| 1810s | Napoleonic France is destroyed by a coalition of European powers led by Russia. A bankrupt Spain sells Louisiana to Britain. Against American opposition, Britain uses its fantastically powerful navy to unilaterally ban the slave trade, though the sudden rise in prices makes smuggling profitable. Imperial authorities struggle with mixed success to restrain American colonists from the more rapacious dispossessions of the Indians. In the process of opposing France, Britain has conquered much of the New World colonial empires of France, Spain and the Netherlands. Most of the French possessions and some of the Spanish ones are retained. | |
| 1820s | The last garrisons in French territory are withdrawn. Suspicion of French intentions in the Pacific prompts a British settlement in New South Wales. The Reform Bill extends the franchise slightly, and gives additional seats to some of the American provinces, of which there are now twenty-four. Hanover, conquered by the French throughout the Napoleonic period but liberated afterward, is given quasi-provincial status. John Quincey Adams, the first American to serve in the British cabinet, slowly builds a consensus against slavery. | |
| 1830s | Britain bans slavery within the British Isles. Half the European-descended population of the empire now resides in the New World, but economic and political power is still concentrated in England. Small-scale rebellions in Canada and the Deep South are suppressed. British (mainly American) colonists in Texas revolt and gain independence, Britain eventually accepts a protectorate over the area. Attitudes in Britain with respect to colonisation are changing: political theorists, humanitarians and missionaries support the extension of British rule wherever practical. The vagaries of the Hanoverian laws of succession separate the British and Hanoverian monarchies, leaving the legal responsibilities of the Hanoverian members of parliament unclear. | |
| 1840s | Tension over slavery, the rights of Americans living in Mexican Texas and power-sharing between America and Britain threatens to split the empire. Discontent is no longer isolated to fringe elements, but has infected even the sober and satisfied moneyed classes. Westminster is scene to undignified slanging matches between American members and conservative Britons. Hanover, frustrated by perceived liberal and isolationist tendency in Britain and the dominance of English and the English language in parliament, leaves the empire without any great regret on either side. A special tax is passed to fund the astronomical cost of a transatlantic telegraph line, linking Newfoundland and Scotland. The avowed purpose is to make American participation in the Westminster parliament more responsive, but military and administrative reasons are every bit as pressing. Gold is discovered in California, and the empire, Mexico and Texas start to argue about who owns it. In the home islands anti-catholic legislation is repealed. | |
| 1850s | In alliance with Texas, Britain defeats Mexico and seizes California. Texas is admitted to the empire as the thirtieth province, and California as a territory. The trouble-plagued trans-Atlantic cable is finally completed, years late and at mind-boggling cost, the innovations needed to produce it will revolutionise long-distance communication. The "Potomac Bridge Negotiations" are called to settle the various outstanding political disputes between entrenched elites in the home islands and resentful Americans. Key members of the Westminster parliament are shipped over to America for the discussions, but the newly laid trans-Atlantic cable is essential to allow the meeting even to take place. British diplomacy succeeds in separating the abolitionist north from the secessionist south. In the "Potomac Compromise", slavery is banned everywhere throughout the empire, but in such a fashion that Southern gentry can retain most of their economic dominance. America receives representation equal to that of Britain, with the understanding that new provinces will receive seats as they are settled and recognised. Francophone Quebecois are enfranchised. France defeats Austria to establish a unified Italian state. A mutiny by Bengali troops in East India company pay is suppressed with great effort, and Britain assumes more direct control over India. Britain intervenes to prevent, and then to punish, a Russian attack on the Ottoman empire. The glorious doomed charge of the British cavalry under James E. Stuart is immortalised in poetry. More practically, Britain annexes all Russia's territories on the American continent. A canal is built through the Suez in Egypt. | |
| 1860s | Another abortive rebellion in the South. Prosperous and populated Virginia's failure to support the insurrection dooms it to irrelevance. Gold is discovered in Victoria, and Australia finally starts to develop demographically. Britain announces that the Potomac Compromise rules will be extended: in particular, Australian colonies are to be considered provinces as they reach a threshold population, and New South Wales immediately sends representatives to Westminster. Prussia defeats Austria and establishes dominance of most of Germany. Mexico defaults on international loans and an American force occupies key points, establishing a British protectorate in all but name. | |
| 1870s | Prussia defeats France and establishes a highly militarised unified state over all of Germany except Hanover, still under nominal British protection. A revolt in Cuba and a series of military coups in Spain provide a pretext for Britain to eject Spain from the new world: Cuba becomes a territory of the empire. The Second Reform Bill introduces universal male European suffrage throughout the British isles and all provinces of the empire. British adventurers develop possessions and make fresh annexations in the Pacific, most importantly Pearl Harbour in the Sandwich islands. They are trying to forge the last link in a "world-girdling chain": between California on the one hand and Australasia and the far east on the other. Extensive penetration of inland China also begins, via steam-powered river gunboats. A gold rush in New Zealand accelerates development there, eventually leading to the dispossession of most of the Maori. Thaddeus Stephens is the first American to be prime minister of the British empire. | |
| 1880s | Parliament agrees that sittings will be held alternately in Westminster and at Potomac Bridge. The Royal capital remains in London. Britain and North America now have approximately the same industrial output, and together they dwarf the rest of the world (though Germany is expanding fast). British and American industry, supplemented on occasion by Indian manpower, are an unbeatable combination anywhere except in Europe itself. California is admitted as two provinces (Alta California and Baja California). Henry Parkes is the first cabinet minister from outside North America and the home islands. Gold is discovered in the Dutch-speaking areas of South Africa, and Anglophone settlers flood in, and are denied political rights by the entrenched land-owners. The "scramble for Africa" begins, with British in the lead. Gold is discovered in the Klondike, and Beringia (once Russian America) is the latest British territory to experience gold-induced migration. | |
| 1890s | Britain annexes the Dutch-speaking colonies in South Africa, in accordance with the "Texas principle" that the unwilling subjection of Britons to a foreign power will not be tolerated. The action is regarded as intolerable by every colonial power in Europe, though not all of them feel secure enough to say so to a British face. In self-defence they ban or at least restrict the immigration of British citizens to their colonies, sometimes concealing the policy with a legal fiction. Colony-poor great powers such as Germany and Italy have been jealous of the world's "great swathes of pink" for some time. Major non-European powers resent either second-class citizenship within the empire (India) or oppression from the outside (China). British high-handedness has finally created a general opposing coalition of the rest of the civilised world: this despite Britain being by far the most moral and considerate superpower that has ever existed. Suffrage is extended to non-Europeans within provinces: American Negroes, for example, now have the vote in the home islands and all the provinces (as they have had for some time in some, principally northern, provinces) but Negroes living in British colonies in Africa do not. | |
| 1900s | Victoria, Queen of Great Britain, Empress of India, Sovereign of America and Defender of the Rights of the Britons, dies. She leaves descendants married into half the royal families of Europe, but in spite of these links Britain faces an increasingly hostile Europe. In response Britain expands its navy, which, neglected, had shrunk to bare superiority over everyone else in the world put together. In the process it makes most of it obsolete, since new technology is producing ships with capabilities far beyond those of older vessels. Most of the new navy is stationed to protect the home islands from the expanding fleets of France and Germany. The army is still rather small, not particularly respected, and trained for colonial operations. Britain's European enemies formalise their Anglophobia through a new international forum, the European Continental Congress. A canal is dug through Nicaragua, by now utterly in thrall to Britain, linking the Pacific and Atlantic coasts of North America. Suffrage is extended to women. | |
| 1910s | British diplomacy gradually weakens the Continental Congress, which is too much an alliance of convenience between enemies to hold together well. Russia is effectively detached, and France made a much less enthusiastic enemy: both are coming to fear Germany more than "Perfidious Avalon". America sees Britain as a rather quaint backwater, but this is a gross exaggeration. British industry is not growing very quickly, but it is still substantial and London remains the world's most important financial centre (followed by New York and Richmond). Germany, allied with Austria, defeats an alliance of France and Russia and seizes Poland. Britain stands by neutral, confining itself to the guarantee of Hanover, Belgium and the Netherlands (ironic, considering that the last two governments are generally hostile to Britain) and leaning on the combatants to end the war once it bogs down. The dominant American component of the empire can't see German expansion as any immediate threat. The main feeling in America is relief that Britain has avoided entanglement. |
This timeline violates most of Pteranodon's rules for writing plausible alternate histories. Some of those violations, such as including historical politicians, I see as jokes of little import.
If there's a problem here, it's that the timeline is kind of dull. It's around 1900 that the really dramatic non-butterfly effects start to happen, and it's also when things become highly unpredictable. Historically Britain was rather isolated at about this time, and hurriedly did something about it, aligning with France and Russia against Germany. When the first world war came, Britain found itself dragged in by German military dominance and naval expansion.
I assume the first world war happens, in accordance with the guiding principle of this timeline (that anything that happened historically will happen in the alternate timeline unless there's a good reason it shouldn't). The question is: will Britain drag America into the war, or will America keep Britain out? Britain has no particular reason to feel sorry at the humbling of colonial rival France and expansionist Russia, but they are her natural allies if following the "support the second-strongest army in Europe" theory of realpolitik.
The choice of the general term for a citizen component of the empire was difficult.
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I welcome feedback at David.Bofinger@dsto.defenceSpamProofing.gov.au.