AHC: split decision 7 years war

Have France win in India, Britain win in North America and Prussia hold out in Europe. Could this work? Why or why not?

It might work short term, but I do not think Britain would allow France to keep India. I think when war breaks out again they will move heavily to recapture their holdings.

No, the French could not win overseas I don't think. Maybe Prussia is wiped out in Europe which forces a better settlement. I think that was the usual French strategy anyway.

The French have too few good harbours to do well overseas. And too many of those harbours are blockaded by England itself. On the Atlantic, all they really have are Brest, Lorient, Nantes, La Rochelle and Bordeaux. And all of those harbours are blocked by the contrary westerlies, making them easy for English ships to stand off and blockade.
Navally, the only direction France CAN go where the British have some trouble following is in the Mediteranean. And it takes the French until the time of Napoleon to really realize this.
What the French need to do is to give up on the West Indies---they hold them on sufferance from the British anyway. Expand in the Mediteranean. Take Algiers. Take Tunis. Take Tripoli from the Ottomans. If possible, take Egypt, Palestine and the Levant, Cyprus, Crete. Sugar can be grown all of these places. As it can on Sardinia and Sicily as well. If there is a war with Spain, take Oran, Melilla and Ceuta from Spain. Ceuta is the key to neutralizing Gibraltar. Take Morocco as soon as possible. Take Algiers before bothering to take Egypt and for Heaven's sakes, get hold of Ceuta to keep British fleets out of the Med!.

2 votes for no plausible French victory on the oceans then

Katchen's arguments posit an interesting strategic alternative, and are reminiscent of the geographic arguments Mahan made.

There is always trying to win on the continent to gain hostages to trade back for colonies, Vanity6's approach.

However, given Britain's cavalier approach to Prussia's interests, and given British parliamentary opinion, I don't see the British being ready to trade any big overseas blocks back to France, even if it means Hanover's lost. So, the French can bargain for small islands or Pondicherry, but not the whole Coromandel coast.

Zert on the other hand, accepts victory in India as a short term possibility, but points out the probability of a British war of revenge later.

On the other hand, the next good opportunity might not come for a good while. Britain has little capacity to spare for recovering India in a later round of war starting during an American rebellion for example.

In a Napoleonic or Revolutionary era, Britain may get another crack at a recovery campaign, but then again India trade could change the whole fiscal setup leading to French revolution.

I like the French policy shift to the Med. That has real potential. They have good allies there in Spain and the Ottoman Empire.

zert said:

It might work short term, but I do not think Britain would allow France to keep India. I think when war breaks out again they will move heavily to recapture their holdings.

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Well, if France wins India, that is expels Britain from India, Britain is never gonna be able to allowing anything to France. Controling India was more or less the same as controling the oil and gas fields of Saudi Arabia, Iran, Irak and the Emirates today. That was the key to Britain's domination for à century and a half.

It would have been the same for France who would have finances the pourchasse or the conquest of the austrian Netherlands thanks to Indian ressources.

Matteo said:

Well, if France wins India, that is expels Britain from India, Britain is never gonna be able to allowing anything to France. Controling India was more or less the same as controling the oil and gas fields of Saudi Arabia, Iran, Irak and the Emirates today. That was the key to Britain's domination for à century and a half.

It would have been the same for France who would have finances the pourchasse or the conquest of the austrian Netherlands thanks to Indian ressources.

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This isn't true at all. Maintaining India depends on achieving naval supremacy, and it is very far from clear France can do that - particularly if Prussia becomes another military power in mainland Europe. If Britain wins in North America, that assumes the Royal Navy is still viable, if not supreme. Given Britain's natural advantage to invest more at sea, that will mean France's Indian possessions will be under constant threat, and likely will fall before too long.

Besides, the idea that India was this hugely profitable make-or-break for a country is fairly off. Most of the money that was made went into the corrupt pockets of EIC officials and not to the national government, and I've also seen numbers that suggest the vast amount of capital for the industrial revolution came from agricultural output at home.

Socrates said:

Besides, the idea that India was this hugely profitable make-or-break for a country is fairly off. Most of the money that was made went into the corrupt pockets of EIC officials and not to the national government, and I've also seen numbers that suggest the vast amount of capital for the industrial revolution came from agricultural output at home.

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While money may, or may not, have been important, control of India gave Britain saltpetre supplies like no other power in the world. That meant British armies could and did practice with live fire on a regular basis, which few to no other nations could afford to do.

This gave the army an immense advantage. Similarly for the Navy.

I'm not sure that French control of India per se is impossible. It would require some staggeringly good luck, but England surviving the Spanish Armada and Japan surviving the Mongol attempt at conquest the required some staggeringly good luck and both of those happened. Give it a few storms that do damage to the Royal Navy (which is pretty much what happened in the scenarios above) and it is possible, albeit unlikely.

What I do think is implausible is a convincing French victory in India and British victory in North America. If France has the naval supremacy necessary to cut Great Britain off from India, it surely has the ability to do the same in North America. And I don't see how the British colonies in North America would stand a chance against France if France managed to cut them off from Great Britain by naval supremacy.

Vanity 6 said:

I like the French policy shift to the Med. That has real potential. They have good allies there in Spain and the Ottoman Empire.

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I am not sure the Ottomans would remain allied to a France whose primary policy goal is the conquest of a substantial part of the Ottoman Empire.

What about Perfidious's argument that

a split decision in the overseas theaters is impossible because its all one big interconnected ocean? I suspected that objection might be raised when I proposed he challenge.

Meanwhile, Katchen's idea intrigued me, and inspired me to "play it out" while asking questions along the way. I'll be PM'ing him a few more specific ideas.

Two major questions France needs to answer before determining on a Mediterranean strategy--

A) Is it worth it, and strategically safe, to drop the alliance with the Ottomans in order to poach their territories or vassals? Especially the earlier in history you go during the Age of Exploration, the more important the Ottomans were for France and its allies in balancing against Habsburg domination.

B) What is the real potential of Mediterranean sugar colonies? Conditions are not as warm as in the Caribbean (but transport costs are lower). I know that the Venetians and Mamelukes had some sugar growing industry in the Levant, but that was before competition from the Caribbean was available. Also, the natives cannot be worked to death for sugar profits in North Africa and the Mediterranean islands without the expectation of constant revolts. Even if the French choose to capture or buy slaves from Sub-Saharan Africa to work plantations instead of natives, local people will resist being displaced from their land.

In terms of size and manageability, and the French feeling able to disregard native rights and interests, perhaps sugar plantations throughout the former Venetian Empire, the Dodecanese, Ionians, Crete and Cyprus are the best bet. Expel or buy out native populations and turn them into new Saint Domingue, Martinique or Guadalupe? Even then, I don't know if those territories could compete with the Caribbean in productivity.