Challenge: Keep Britain as a lasting global super power

With a PoD following the British defeat in the American Revolutionary war achieve the following situation by 2011:

The British Empire is a reasonably centralized Federal State ( about as much as the OTL USA ) consisting of atleast: Great Britain & Ireland, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa, Rhodesia, Hong Kong, Singapore, Malta, the British west Indies, and all of the UK's OTL overseas colonies. ( perhaps Zanzibar and Argentina if it's seized too )

Bonus for an extended Commonwealth with ex colonial dominion states closely allied with the British Empire. ( especially if you include a united India within this )

The thing that really annoyed me about these seemingly "great European Powers" is that they had cultures and history that made them very awesome. But they weren't what they would do is make a big huff and puff back home about what are countries are doing and then... they would do the exact same thing. To make things worse places like Britains eastern african provinces were very militant... The british administration intails that they put one groupt against eachother or they would cut up administrative divisions in the land not conserning themselvs if it is their land or not. This said how are you suppossed to be integrated into a society that the only thing they see you good for is as cheap labor. Rascist or not the British colonies had one purpose to suck the natural resources of the land and send it back to the mother country.

We need to have Britain grab more lands such as China, Argentina, Philippines. Britain should have grant its colonies especially India a dominion status in order to survive British rule in India.

I agree as my first post said no one is going to want to be in a country that doesn't want them.

Britain would have been better off if they had kept hold of the Dutch East Indies after the Napoleonic War.

Britain would have been better off if they hadn't won direct rule in Egypt. They gained zero profit out of that, and it touched off the Scramble for Africa.

The Scramble for the interior of Africa was totally stupid, those colonies barely ever turned a profit and served no greater purpose than coloring a map Pink.

To keep Great Britain as a superpower you need to re-write WWI (and therefor WWII).

Britain lost too many good people, who would normally have served in either the Foreign Office or Colonial Office, as well as spending huge amounts of money on the war.

In addition you will need to think about the USA's attitude to Empire, they disliked anyone apart from themselves having colonies.

I'd agree, with Last-you need something to happen to WW1 and WW2. Although in a strange sense you perhaps need WW1 so that there can be a better cohesion in colonies. Perhaps an Anglo German alliance where Germany was defeated by France in 1870 (now that really is ASB) so we get a mittel Germany and an Imperialistic France. lesser Germany forms an alliance with Britain and Italy, Imperial France has an alliance with Russia, Imperial France attacks Germany through Belguim, ergo Britain fights for plucky Belguim.
Britain and Germany defeat France by say 1915-short war. France has lots to pay back, perhaps losing big chunks of its empire-maybe we have Ottomans siding with them too so we get the break up of that Empire-hence Brit involvement in Middle East is increased....

Joseph Solis in Australia said:

We need to have Britain grab more lands such as China, Argentina, Philippines. Britain should have grant its colonies especially India a dominion status in order to survive British rule in India.

Click to expand...

how is having more colonies going to help?

On the long run unless Britain somehow keeps every else in the state of perpetual underdevelopment, there is no way it keeps up by the 21st century.

Federation is one of those things which sounds nice but in reality makes no sense to anyone but Britain.

To get a federal union like the Union the PoD must happen before the wave of proclaiming colonies as dominions of the Commonwealth( WW1 would be too late, sending soldiers helped the dominion grow awareness). Something must happen that after the American revolution war changing drastically their policy ( as in direct representation in the parliament). A good moment as any could be after the defeat of Napoleon and the Congress of Vienna.

Don't know, but you have to prevent the Commonwealth, because in time it can only grow weaker and weaker.

In order to keep Britain as a federated superpower in the 20th century it would need to embrace representation in the 19th.

In order for representation to be credible then you would need worldwide communications in place.

For me a pre-requisite to this would be an early development and installation of trans-continental marine telegraph cables

Probably sometime in the late 1840's / 1850's as opposed to their actual timeline 20-30 years later

That is getting a bit late though. I'd think a good PoD might be the British wanting to prevent an ARW happening in Canada. Do you think it would be at all possible ( at least for Canada and the West Indies ) to have it happen when communication is done by ships? A month gap either way is bad I know, but in the early US there was also more than a little delay between Washington DC and the western states.

Tobit said:

Britain would have been better off if they had kept hold of the Dutch East Indies after the Napoleonic War.

Britain would have been better off if they hadn't won direct rule in Egypt. They gained zero profit out of that, and it touched off the Scramble for Africa.

The Scramble for the interior of Africa was totally stupid, those colonies barely ever turned a profit and served no greater purpose than coloring a map Pink.

Click to expand...

Britain never 'won' direct rule in Egypt. The Ottoman government lost Egypt to Muhammad Ali, who tried to set up an independent dynasty and give Egypt control of the Levant, Damascus, Cyprus and Crete...he even planned to exterminate the Greeks during their War of Independence and recolonize with Egyptians. The end result of this endeavor was that Egypt became bankrupt. Initially Britain and France both had economic control of Egypt while recognizing the Sultan of Turkey as political ruler. The Egyptians resented this and made attempts to free themselves from the foreign control....the end result was that Britain sent troops with an eye to restoring order while observing the political authority of Istanbul over Cairo...the Sultan was double-crossed but chose to do nothing, and Britain ended up keeping their troops in Egypt...especially as the Suez Canal was now seen as vital to communication with India.

OK

1: UK wins control over, and then keeps Northwest Territory and all the land west of the Ohio river and all of Maine north and east of the Penoscobet river.
and all the land north of the Mowhawk.

2: The Dutch Get also envolve them selves in the ARW. and The UK takes there colonys in India and africa.
and all of the loyalist, if you believe what you read then fully one third of the US population move north in to Canada.


3:The UK Do Even better in India in the 1780's winig all the wars etc.

4:The UK Conquer Eygipt and the Sinai
In The Anglo-Turkish War of 1807–1809.

5: During the 1780's The UK Enacts A general reform Act.
creating properly representative burroughs, Five year terms. Etc
also in exchange for Irish Union with GB, grant, Catholic Emancipation

6: Emancipation of the Jews in England, and the The Slavery Abolition Act 1833, in The 1780's

7: Laissez-faire and the Abolition of the The Navigation Acts in 1815.

8enal transportation of convicts To south Africa in the 1780's until Australia becomes open to such transportation in 1787.

9:Cardwell Reforms, Childers Reforms and Haldane Reforms in the 1780's
To the Army ok a bit of a push but there you go.

10: Inclosure Acts and a growth of the turnpike system.

11: conquest of Zanzibar and the coast in the early 1800's

will think of some more later.

Yes, clearly the solution is having the British Empire grab twice as much completely culturally independant land as possible.

12: Hand wave Cooks death in Hawaii,
Cook goes on a Forth Voyage to the Pacific Northwest coast of North America
prompting an early setelment of the Oregon Country by the Uk.
in the 1790's-1800's.

13: The Railways are built ten of twenty years earler. the Army insist that special mail lines are built for the defence of the Uk. and further insist that the 7'ft gage is the norm, so as to mount cannon and ease troop transport.

14: The UK Takes the Dutch East Indies during the Napoleonic Wars

15: Representation of the People Act passed during the 1820's

16: as a result of Early Land clearances in Ireland and Scotland, Both South africa and Canada have a Larger Base population.

17: Th Uk do Better During the War of 1812, and Annex all the land north of the platte and Missouri Rivers.

18: The Uk Take's Corsica in the Napoleonic Wars, and seed's it to Savoy.

19:The The Spanish Constitution of 1812 is Passed and keep't in place by Ferdinand VII of Spain, sound stupid..well. spain and portugal keep there american empires, slowly moving to ward federation, people in London take note!