American Revolution Spreads to Britain

MerryPrankster

In the discussion on current events in Bolivia, the American Revolution came up. BlackMage said that from the British POV, the Colonies were low on the priority list for representation, since Liverpool and Manchester did not have any MPs and only 5% of the population could vote.

I said that Liverpool and Manchester should have joined in, and that got me thinking.

What if the American Revolution spread to Britain itself? "No taxation without represenation" could apply to much of Britain in addition to the 13 Colonies.
 

NapoleonXIV

Banned
It sort of did. Wasn't the Chartist Revolution of 1842 largely inspired by America's experience, (in that Society didn't fall apart once you gave the vote to more people)?

Yeh. That's a few years on, but these things take time y'know:p

Levels of taxation in England at this time were 25x America's but equivalent to the rest of Europe.

Had the Revolution somehow spread to England I don't think France would have hesitated to attack, do you think Manchester and Liverpool would see Louis XVI as better than George III?
 

MerryPrankster

NapoleonXIV said:
Had the Revolution somehow spread to England I don't think France would have hesitated to attack, do you think Manchester and Liverpool would see Louis XVI as better than George III?
Click to expand...

Louis XVI couldn't even hold his own country. He'd get overextended very fast occupying Britain.

Something like that might lead to rapprochment between Whitehall and the Colonies. Imagine George Washington commanding the defenses of London.
 

Fatstalin

Darkling said:
I would rather not, for London's sake.
Click to expand...

Indeed, especially when it seems Washington fared worse when on the defensive than when on the offensive.

Nonetheless, I think there's alot of potential in this POD.

Perhaps we might see a Republican Britain ally with a Napoleonic France to take on the rest of the world?
 

fortyseven

Fatstalin said:
Indeed, especially when it seems Washington fared worse when on the defensive than when on the offensive.

Nonetheless, I think there's alot of potential in this POD.

Perhaps we might see a Republican Britain ally with a Napoleonic France to take on the rest of the world?
Click to expand...

I agree-great potential. 19th century Entente hee hee
 

danielb1

Fatstalin said:
Indeed, especially when it seems Washington fared worse when on the defensive than when on the offensive.

Nonetheless, I think there's alot of potential in this POD.

Perhaps we might see a Republican Britain ally with a Napoleonic France to take on the rest of the world?
Click to expand...

Hmm... Napoleon could hold off on becoming Emperor and be formerly First Consul in a grand Republican alliance with Britian. Britain, France, and possibly the Netherlands, Switzerland, and/or Venice? I don't see the Russians allying with them, though, except out of sheer convenience. Prussia and Austria will almost certainly be enemies of this Anglo-French Entente; perhaps an end result is a Republican western and monarchial eastern Europe waged in a 19th century cold war. Of course, the western powers have a big edge in colonization... This could result in a situation much like Carrier Wars sans 2 monarchs, with large British and French not-Empires and eastern Europe becoming subordinate to Russia.

In these circumstances, would the OTL US be independent, a more equal part of Britain, or perhaps a semi-independent commonwealth? They all seem possible.
 

Johnnyreb

Er.....

Napoleon made his name re-taking Toulon from the British. If Britain was allied to the Directory, they would never have taken Toulon in the first place. So Napoleon would never have made his name and would probably have ended up an obscure colonel of artillery.
 
Thande

Thande

Donor
There were British radicals who supported the idea of revolution both in the colonies and at home, e.g. Joseph Priestley. However, their views were mainly that of a part of the intellectual middle class and were not supported by the population as a whole.

The fact that the American revolution was republican in nature did not help. The British people still associated that with the tyranny of Cromwell, and the Constitution of 1688 (which was in contemporary political circles about as worshipped as the US constitution is in modern America), was specifically a blueprint for a well-balanced Protestant monarchy.

Calls for parliamentary reform in the eighteenth century were not phrased as 'the constitution is broke, let's fix it' but rather as 'the country no longer fits the constitution, so let's change the country to fit it again'.

Pitt attempted parliamentary reform in the 1780s and it was shot down by established interests; at the time there was insufficient popular support. Remember that the Chartist insurrections for greater democracy were not until the 1820s, thirty or forty years later.
 

Burton K Wheeler

Moderator
To be honest, I don't see the potential for a Republican Britain at all. We might possibly see some of the reforms instituted by Liberal governments a few decades early, that's it.
 
Thande

Thande

Donor
The Bald Imposter said:
To be honest, I don't see the potential for a Republican Britain at all. We might possibly see some of the reforms instituted by Liberal governments a few decades early, that's it.
Click to expand...
"We don't do republics" ;)

Notably there were never any attacks to my knowledge on George III, just his prime ministers (particularly the Earl of Bute who was George's favourite when he became king, and both the English people and the Americans loathed). They burned boots in the street, early example of using bad puns to bring down the government ;)
 

stevep

Mike Stearns said:
Britain and France would be unstoppable. They would literally be able to anything they wanted.
Click to expand...

I don't know. Between the differing national interests and historical distrust they would probably have a lot of mistrust. Power can be deeply corrupting. Also if Britain kept to a genuine republican system, which I agree with others is unlikely to occur, if/when Napoleon became an emperor the hostility would increase further.

Steve
 

stevep

danielb1 said:
In these circumstances, would the OTL US be independent, a more equal part of Britain, or perhaps a semi-independent commonwealth? They all seem possible.
Click to expand...

danielb1

Could go a lot of different ways BUT could very likely get very, very nasty in N America. Provided Britain isn't busy fighting off a French invasion the attitude of a republic would probably be that it has inherited ALL the resources of the former kingdom. It would be unlikely to accept any breakaway movement, even if another republican one. Since while the navy might well be weakened, as the French one was by its revolution, the army might well be strengthened, in both numbers and quality. It would almost certainly been a lot more ruthless and might even teach the rebels a lesson or two in that line. The American rebels would oppose such a British republic taking them over as they don't want to pay taxes and might end up in a rough alliance with monarchist loyalists in the colonies. Not sure who would win in this scenario as the brutality of the republican forces might alienate moderate or cower them into opposing the resistance.

Steve
 

Darkest

Banned
I wonder if we could see the United States evolve as an international entity, uniting Britain, France, continental Europe, and then the entirety of Mexico and Southern America after the Bolivarian revolution.
 
Thande

Thande

Donor
Darkest said:
I wonder if we could see the United States evolve as an international entity, uniting Britain, France, continental Europe, and then the entirety of Mexico and Southern America after the Bolivarian revolution.
Click to expand...
You really, really underestimate the contempt with which the US was held in Europe, particularly continental Europe (less so Britain, as plenty of people agreed that the colonists had legitimate grievances and even refused to fight in the American war).

The situation is not incomparable to that in OTL with revolutionary France and Haiti. Obviously republican France, with liberté, egalité, fraternité, is going to allow Haiti to be an independent republic, brothers towards the cause of eternal liberty!...er no, they're going to do their very best to smash them back down to a forgotten colony and grind any ideas of independence into the dust.

IMO the same would happen with a republican Britain vs. the colonial rebels.
 

MerryPrankster

Thande said:
You really, really underestimate the contempt with which the US was held in Europe, particularly continental Europe (less so Britain, as plenty of people agreed that the colonists had legitimate grievances and even refused to fight in the American war).
Click to expand...

I thought Ben Franklin was well-liked in France.

At least the ladies sure loved him...
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top
Top