AHC: Former British Colony Gone Tinpot

[Jester]

Your challenge, if you choose to accept it, is to have a majority white (plurality if you include East Asians) and English speaking country, and a former British colony, go the way of much of the Third World.

With a POD after 1865, to avoid the standard Confederate option. While a balkanized South Africa could work, keep in mind that it must be English speaking, and there is no way OTL's South Africa could meet the standards of the challenge (White majority- ha.)

[SpazzReflex]

Originally Posted by AngleAngel

Your challenge, if you choose to accept it, is to have a majority white (plurality if you include East Asians) and English speaking country, and a former British colony, go the way of much of the Third World.

With a POD after 1865, to avoid the standard Confederate option. While a balkanized South Africa could work, keep in mind that it must be English speaking, and there is no way OTL's South Africa could meet the standards of the challenge (White majority- ha.)

Have Deseret survive (which is probably ASB), and they live in poor conditions with Subsistence Farming.

[Jester]

Is Deseret a former British colony?

Could Deseret be formed with a POD after 1865?

No is the answer to both of these questions.

[SpazzReflex]

Originally Posted by AngleAngel

Is Deseret a former British colony?

Could Deseret be formed with a POD after 1865?

No is the answer to both of these questions.

I'm putting my two cents in, bumping your thread. Do you have a problem with feedback?

[CaliBoy1990]

Originally Posted by AngleAngel

Your challenge, if you choose to accept it, is to have a majority white (plurality if you include East Asians) and English speaking country, and a former British colony, go the way of much of the Third World.

With a POD after 1865, to avoid the standard Confederate option. While a balkanized South Africa could work, keep in mind that it must be English speaking, and there is no way OTL's South Africa could meet the standards of the challenge (White majority- ha.)

Just look at the possibilities.........South Africa, Rhodesia, Australia, Nigeria, etc.
In fact, I'm still amazed that OTL S.A. and Rhodesia weren't quite run by tinpot dictators.

[Awilla the Hun]

Define "tinpot dictator" and "much of the third world". I don't mean to question this thread, but some clarification would be nice.

[Jester]

Majority white needed.

Alright, essentially, have a former British colony that meets the other specifications (majority white or, if including East Asians, the largest of a plurality and comprising a majority when combined with the East Asians)

That colony should then follow in one of the standard Third World cycles- military dictators, rampant poverty, a need for international aid, land seizures and rampant corruption, revolution after revolution, et cetera.....

[Polish Eagle]

Originally Posted by AngleAngel

Your challenge, if you choose to accept it, is to have a majority white (plurality if you include East Asians) and English speaking country, and a former British colony, go the way of much of the Third World.

With a POD after 1865, to avoid the standard Confederate option. While a balkanized South Africa could work, keep in mind that it must be English speaking, and there is no way OTL's South Africa could meet the standards of the challenge (White majority- ha.)

Ireland strikes me as the easiest option. There's much potential for perpetual civil war. A war between Britain and either America or Germany, or massive war in the colonies, could drain the British too much for them to keep fighting in Ireland. Once independent and ruled by the Marxists who led the revolution, Ireland experiences constant civil war between South Ireland and North Ireland.

[black angel]

um ok here I go, post 1865 the Radical GOP pushes through a radical reconstruction, the freeman-Scalawag-Carpetbagger coalition holds and is backed by a Radical GOP army under Grant and Sherman, the failure of the KKK and the Redeemers in the face of the Army and the growing number northern Carpetbaggers begins to push Southern males west, but they find most of the land is being given away in land grants to ex-slaves and Union vets, thus they push into Canada (OTL's Saskatchewan and Alberta) after a number of clashes with the fledgling Canadian government they manage to form a Republic, however blocked in by the USA to the south and Canada to the east and Victoria to the west they suffer and are a 3rd world joke by 1910 and stager a long till the 1930s......

[kasumigenx]

I think SE Asia and Africa are very battered in OTL and experience many dictators after decolonization..

CSA could go tinpot.

[TNF]

In 1865, the United States of America emerged from a terrible Civil War mostly intact. President Lincoln was perhaps the republic's most popular leader and had recently won a second term in office, and was promising big changes in the lives of every American.

That is, until he met an assassin's bullet. His Vice President, Andrew Johnson, too was killed on the same night, as was Secretary of State William Seward. A grand conspiracy had put the leadership of the country into the dirt, and the resulting chaos put the Cabinet in control for the time being. The remainder of the Cabinet claimed authority in contrast to the President Pro Tempore of the Senate, and in light of the crisis, the latter backed down, though both agreed on an emergency election to be held in 1866. The conspirators were all found and hanged, but not without rioting in the streets calling for blood in the South. Likewise, the South erupted in near revolt once more with the hanging of important Southern leaders in the aftermath.

The Congress passed stringent military rule measures for the South, which the Cabinet happily accepted, though embers of the finished Civil War began to burn brightly once more. The Ku Klux Klan, founded by wanted fugitive Nathan Bedford Forrest, became a powerful insurgent group within the former Confederacy, preaching white supremacy and fundamentalist Christianity to the people of the south, embittered at the hanging of such Confederate luminaries as Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee. As late 1865 approaches, terrorism in the South reaches unprecedented levels and begins to trickle upwards with cities as far north as New York City beginning to be hit routinely with bomb attacks. Many members of the Cabinet are killed, and what little are left live in constant fear. This same fear has lead the Congress to grant the Cabinet largely extra-constitutional powers to rule by decree, something that becomes evident by the summer of 1866, when the Cabinet announces that the special Presidential Election will be postponed until 1868.

This is the final straw for Unionist nationalists, who organize the 'Grand Army of the Republic' and join General Ulysses S. Grant in overthrowing the Cabinet in October 1866. Grant declares that an election will indeed be held by November of that year, and that he will be standing as the National Union candidate for that post. The Democrats nominate Grant as well at their own convention, and he wins the election without so much as a contest in the midst of national crisis. Grant imposes conscription once more and unleashes a righteous fury upon the South, trying to crush the terrorist insurgency by force of arms. It will not be enough.

The brute force measures employed by Grant to 'pacify' the South only inflame southern sentiment, and by 1867, a rump Confederacy, based largely in South Carolina, where the Klan rules the state with an iron fist, is declared in the form of the 'Christian Republic of South Carolina'. The C.R.S.A. is immediately declared as illegitimate by the Grant administration and forces are ordered to put down the revolt there ASAP. Unfortunately for Grant, the C.R.S.A. has committed itself to total, ideological warfare with the United States, and has decided not to back down an inch. The resulting warfare exhausts both Union resolve and South Carolina's population, and does not come to a close in time for the 1868 general election, which gives Grant the Presidency once again over a weak Democratic contender in Horatio Seymour, but gives the Democrats control of the House of Representatives and the Senate.

The Democrats, unsure of how to react to the growing national crisis, begin to defund the President's measures on putting down the revolt in the South, and call for a new strategy for preserving the union, as represented by their 'Copperhead' leadership. Grant is furious at this and continues his military campaigns unabated, leading to the Congress drawing up a resolution for Grant's impeachment in late 1869. Grant responds in kind by ordering the military to 'arrest those who threaten the stability of the union', i.e. anti-Grant members of the Congress calling for impeachment. With the dismissal of charges against Grant and the dissolution of Congress (the new National Union majority has now granted Grant dictatorial power for the 'duration of the crisis'), Grant continues his campaign to eradicate the power of the Klan in the South.

As the war drags into 1870, France, not content with placing a puppet on the throne of Mexico while the United States looked away, moves to pay the ultimate insult to the United States by recognizing the Christian Republic of South Carolina in May of 1870. President Grant, increasingly unhinged by the duration of the conflict and the humiliation of having France recognize the fledgling Klan government, declares that the United States will invoke the Monroe Doctrine to remove the 'French aristocrat' sitting on the throne of Mexico, essentially opening a second front and declaring a war on France. France returns the favor by allying itself with the C.R.S.A. and other Klan dominated Southern states, the bulk of which have begun discussing a formal union in the coming months.

The Great American War, as it has come to be known by this point, has begun to take it's toll on the American public nine years after it began. Labor unrest especially has intensified in the North, leading to strikes and general upheaval as President Grant attempts to put down the strikers with military forces not fighting in the South or in Mexico or in a naval battle with France. Draft riots envelop and raze major cities in the North, and these, combined with strikes and mutinies, cause a popular upheaval in the North that will, by it's end in 1871, overthrow and lead to the execution of President Grant, recognize the independence of the 'Union of Christian Republics' that controls the deep south, and cede parts of the American west to the Empire of Mexico.

Elections are held in 1871 as a result, and the Democrats take control of the newly battered and less than whole union. President Horatio Seymour is not a veteran of the Great American War, but he was a vocal critic of it the entire time and has made many friends on the international stage because of it, but it won't help him establish much credibility on the domestic stage, which is still wracked with strikes and a financial panic. As he attempts to 'clean up' this mess of a domestic situation, he begins to see what ruined the Presidencies of men before him, and hopes to avoid it. Labor negotiations go smoothly and workers get back to work, though major concessions and a proto-welfare state come along with them. Industry starts to look up and things begin to look better for the United States, in spite of the horrors of the past decade.

Seymour is re-elected in 1872 in a landslide and the Democrats make gains in both chambers of Congress in 1874 (which is easy if you consider that the Republican Party has largely imploded as a result of it's association with the Great American War), and Seymour looks to hand the 1876 Presidential election off to another Governor of New York, Sam Tilden. Tilden did win big on election day, and would take office in 1877 with a relatively calm domestic sphere.

That was until the beginning of a relatively small railroad strike on July 14, 1877. Tilden sought to alleviate the strike with the addition of federal troops early on (the age of compromising with labor had apparently ended with the new economy), but this only exacerbated the problem at hand. The strike grew and grew and grew until an open labor revolt occurred, bringing with it syndicalist and anarchist takeovers of entire cities. The 'American Revolution of 1877', like the 'American Revolution of 1871' that had ended the Great American War, put an end to the chances of Tilden winning another term in the White House, as by the time the revolt had been crushed, the Democrats had lost favor in the eyes of the public. A new, hardline party, based around the ideas of anti-Catholicism, anti-semitism, anti-labor sentiment, and anti-southern sentiment arose in earnest under the banner of the 'New American Party', adding to the old Know-Nothing movement of years hence. The New American Party won a number of seats in the 1878 midterms and moved to take the White House in 1880.

With the White House under their control, the New American Party quickly moved to institute a socially conservative agenda. Labor unions were banned. Martial law was declared in areas where striking had become the norm. The welfare state in it's embryonic form was abolished. Conscription came back in peace time, and protectionism returned. Revanchist sentiment became a new national ideology. Catholics and Jews were barred from holding public office thanks to a new Constitutional amendment. Democracy had again become a show, and just in time for the new President to fall to a disgruntled union member's bullet in 1881. The assassin was executed without trial and the Vice President, a man more radical than his precursor, would become President only hours later. The new President blamed the death of the President on Southern elements and the 'Jew-controlled' Mexican government and summarily began preparations for a second American war only a decade after the last had ended. But this one would end differently. Very differently.

In the decade that they had been independent, the Union of Christian Republics had devolved into a fundamentalist, white supremacist claptrap regime run by the landed aristocracy. As such, it's military, largely composed of former Klan members and Confederate veterans, had deteriorated and been defunded in order to help pay for a boondoggle venture of building a canal in Panama with the help of the French. It was in no measure to fight off the brutal U.S. blitzkrieg that followed in the spring of 1881, which quickly secured the new border states and decapitated the UCR government in Charleston without repose. The 'War of 1881' moved into it's second phase with an American invasion of Mexico in order to regain lost territory. This phase would be substantially harder to execute, but with French political upheaval, it would be possible. The Mexican government fell in November of 1881, and the peace treaty that followed the war gave the U.S. it's lost territory, plus new territories in the northern region of Mexico.

With his key goals now a reality, the President allowed for his own political capital to atrophy as the regime became increasingly focused on integrating the new territories into the fuller regime. An attempt on his life in 1883 made him more paranoid and allowed for further consolidation of power into his hands, with the President beginning to mumble about the need to 'eradicate' the influence of the Catholic Church in every facet of American society by 1885. The late 1880s would be characterized by the regime's latest intricate plan to rid the nation of the Catholic Church in the form of the 'Roman Retribution' by which Catholic children would be forced into protestant schooling and those who refused would find themselves doing hard labor in the factories and the labor camps.

By 1891, with the President's health failing and his latest round of anti-Catholic sentiment reaching a crescendo with the official banning of the Roman Catholic Church in the United States with the passage of a Constitutional amendment, the economy collapsed. The Long Depression had mostly been interrupted in the United States by the War of 1881 and the anti-Catholic campaigns of the 1880s, but now it had finally caught up with the country and wrecked havoc on the public. Labor unions, banned in 1881, had grown ever the stronger in the underground and came out in full force in 1891, leading a general strike that lasted for three months and forced the regime to destroy most of Philadelphia to capture it back from the strikers. The part of the country most affected, however, was the West, where industrial workers and agricultural workers joined hands to shut down the government and took control of the various state governments in the region.

The President predictably ordered an attack on the Western states to put down the farmer-labor alliance there, but it didn't come to pass with a second general strike in 1892 that would paralyze the nation and force the President's resignation. New elections were called for 1892, and the newly formed 'Farmer-Labor Party' won them in a landslide over the New American Party.

The Farmer-Labor Party did little to undo much of the social legislation enacted by the New American Party at first, instead focusing on removing the barriers to labor and agriculture set up to promote industry in the run-up to the War of 1881. Labor unions were legalized in full in 1893, and natural monopolies were nationalized by the Farmer-Labor government. By 1894, the Farmer-Labor Party was facing some internal splits over whether or not to repeal the social legislation put into place by the New American Party, leading to the separation of the party into the National Farmer's League (which was socially conservative and economically populist), and the American Labor Party (which was socially and economically left-of-center, with radical elements as well). The split lead to a resurgence of the New American Party, which would win control of the House and Senate in that year's midterms.

By 1895, President Weaver (now a member of the National Farmer's League) had called for a trust busting campaign against J.P. Morgan and John D. Rockefeller. In it's infancy, it would be crushed--not by Congressional conservatives, but instead by force of arms. A military coup, complaining largely over pay cuts and budget cuts and supported by the nation's largest financial interests, took control of the government in October 1895.

From 1895 until 1914, the military government moved to repair America's image in the world and reestablish old ties with France and other European powers. Reforms to the economy were implemented, unions recognized once more, and a welfare state set up. Elections were to be held for the first time in 1914, but were put on hold as the United States entered the First World War on the side of the Entente. With it's economy at full strength and nationalism overflowing within the public, everything seemed to be going well.

That is until the front came to a stalemate in 1916.

With this development, things stopped working out so well for the ruling junta, and labor unrest intensified with the demand for electoral democracy. Radical elements of the banned American Labor Party met in Chicago in 1916 to form the 'Party of '77' naming themselves after the American Revolution of 1877 and began to agitate among the working class, leading to the outbreak of a general strike once again in 1917. Forty years after the initial labor revolt, a second would break out with the American Revolution of 1917, which overthrew the military junta, ended American involvement in the Great War, and established a syndicalist-socialist government under the leadership of Eugene Debs.

President Debs' rule is today considered one of the most stable periods of the United States, and it ended in 1924 with his death. The democratic governance of the syndicalist state was genuine, with the Party of '77 usually doing the best, doing well enough to succeed Debs with it's candidate for President in 1924, Al Capone. Capone, however, was different from Debs, but not different from your run of the mill American President following the Great American War, and became intent on making the United States into his personal playground.

In his reign of terror, which lasted from the twenties until his death in the late forties, the country became his playground. Capone enriched himself at the expense of the country, created a totalitarian communist state that put all of the public's money into his pocket, and launched a war against Cuba over a stain on a three piece suit he got while dining with that nation's leader.

Capone's death lead to another military coup over his preferred successor taking up the reigns, and the military again attempted to smooth things over while keeping in place the communist state established by Capone. The late 1960s lead to another revolution, the American Revolution of 1968, in which students, dissatisfied with the government, overthrew it with the help of organized labor and established what can only be described as a 'hippie fascist state', with suave secret police and mandatory acid trips for all to enjoy.

The past few decades have seen the nation mellow out a bit, but not without upheavals. President Jerry Brown, who served from 1985 until 1989, abolished the secret police functions of the government and did a lot of democratic reform, but even this did not stop the American Revolution of 1989, which deposed Brown and other leading reformers in favor of hardline, conservative elements within the military that sought to restore American greatness.

As of 2010, the United States is still under the leadership of the latest in a line of military juntas.

Presidents of the United States, 1861-2010
16. Abraham Lincoln (Republican/National Union): 1861-1865 (1)
Vacant (1865-1866) (2)
17. Ulysses S. Grant (National Union): 1866-1871 (3)
18. Horatio Seymour (Democratic): 1871-1877
19. Samuel J. Tilden (Democratic): 1877-1881
20. John W. Phelps (New American): 1881 (4)
21. Samuel C. Pomeroy (New American): 1881-1892 (5)
22. J. Baird Weaver (Farmer-Labor/National Farmer's League): 1892-1895 (6)
23. George Dewey (Independent): 1895-1905*
24. Simon Bolivar Buckner (Independent): 1905-1913*
25. Theodore Roosevelt (Independent): 1913-1917* (7)
26. Eugene V. Debs (Party of '77): 1917-1924 (8)
27. Alphonse G. "Al" Capone (Party of '77): 1924-1947 (9)
28. Douglas MacArthur (Independent): 1947-1964*
29. Curtis LeMay (Independent): 1964-1968* (10)
30. Eugene McCarthy (Peace and Freedom): 1968-1976
31. Thomas Hayden (Peace and Freedom): 1976-1984
32. Jerry Brown (Peace and Freedom): 1984-1989 (11)
33. Colin Powell (Independent): 1989-1997* (12)
34. Richard Cheney (Independent): 1997-2005*
35. John McCain (Independent): 2005-Present*

Note: an asterisk (*) denotes military dictators.

(1) Assassinated.
(2) Cabinet rule from 1865-1866.
(3) Overthrown in the American Revolution of 1871.
(4) Assassinated.
(5) Overthrown in the American Revolution of 1892.
(6) Overthrown in the American Revolution of 1895.
(7) Overthrown in the American Revolution of 1877.
(8) Died in office.
(9) Died in office.
(10) Overthrown in the American Revolution of 1968.
(11) Overthrown in the American Revolution of 1989.
(12) First African-American President.

American Revolutions and Wars, 1861-2010

Great American War: 1861-1871
American Revolution of 1871: 1871
American Revolution of 1877: 1877
War of 1881: 1881
American Revolution of 1892: 1892
American Revolution of 1895: 1895
World War I: 1914-1917
American Revolution of 1917: 1917
World War II: 1941-1945
American Revolution of 1947: 1947
Korean War: 1950-1953
Viet Nam War: 1955-1968
American Revolution of 1968: 1968
American Revolution of 1989: 1989
Persian Gulf War: 1990-1991
War in Afghanistan: 2001-Present
War in Iraq: 2003-Present

[DuQuense]

?Isn't Burma a dictatorship?

I think your best bet would be one of the South Pacific Islands, going to pieces post De-Colonization.

[Jester]

Originally Posted by DuQuense

?Isn't Burma a dictatorship?

I think your best bet would be one of the South Pacific Islands, going to pieces post De-Colonization.

Originally Posted by kasumigenx

I think SE Asia and Africa are very battered in OTL and experience many dictators after decolonization..

Does anyone read the OP? The challenge included a bit more than I could fit in the title line.

The challenge is to have an English-speaking, majority white* former British colony go the way of your average post-colonization country.

*Majority as in more than 50% or, if SE Asians and whites would together be more than 50%, a plurality where whites are the largest group. So, 36% European, 17% SE Asian, 47% African wouldn't work.

[Thande]

Western Australia if they didn't confederate perhaps? Or Newfoundland if we didn't have them back when they went bankrupt?

[hexicus]

Pitcairn Island gains independence.

Perhaps to increase its population we add some pirates, smugglers or whale hunting fleet.

[Finn]

Australia has potential.

[birdboy2000]

Greater white immigration to Guyana? Perhaps the British deport Irish laborers there or something, and butterflies have it caught up in cold war politics.

[Evan]

Quebec gains independence, and its economy turns out just as bad as the worst predictions. The FLQ, sensing that popular sentiment favors reunification, indefinitely postpones elections.

[archaeogeek]

Originally Posted by Evan

Quebec gains independence, and its economy turns out just as bad as the worst predictions. The FLQ, sensing that popular sentiment favors reunification, indefinitely postpones elections.

All 15 of them - a FLQ-ist republic of Quebec is more ASB than the Draka

Also if you want tinpot look at conservative provincial premiers in Ontario and Quebec before ww2. (and after for Quebec). Then you have the Ontario family compact.

[A Knox]

The Seychelles are majority mixed-race and creole speaking, but have been under one-party socialist rule. There were no inhabitants before colonization, so I think it's notable for this discussion.