Anglo-Hanoverian TL

Here it is...

POD: Queen Victoria born a boy - King Alexander (as her name was Alexandra, changed because it was felt that it was not an appropriate name for an English Queen - thanks for that information, Thande) rules with all of her ability, but has one great advantage - because he was a boy, Hanover passed to him instead of being lost to England. This would, of course, interfere greatly with Bismark's plans for a united Germany...

Map (Circa 1915, the begining of The Great War)



As you can see, England ended up owning a big chunk of continental realestate.

Map Key:

Orange: Anglo-Hanoverian Empire
Teal: Prussian Empire
Dark Purple: Bavaria
Dark Pink: Austro-Hungarian Empire
Light Pink: The French Empire
Dark Yellow: The Kingdom of Italy
Light Yellow: The Chinese Empire
Gold: The Japanese Empire
Dark Blue: The United States of America
Dark Green: The Empire of Spain
Light Green: The Empire of Portugal

A rough TL starting at the POD would be (historical events in bold:

1819 - King Alexander is born
1826 - First photograph taken by Joseph Nicophore Niepce
1829 - Catholic Emancipation ends most restrictions on English Catholics
1832 - Reform Act passed
1834 - Slavery banned in English Colonies
1837 - King Alexander succeeds King William the Fourth at age 18 Hanover remains English.
1844 - Irish potato famine begins.
1845 - S.S. Great Britain, the first propeller steam ship, built.
1846 - Corn Laws repealled
1848 - First telegraph laid across the English Channel (historically, this happened in 1951. However, increased English ties to the continent led to this development occuring earlier than historically.)
1851 - Reports show that half of the English population lives in urban areas.
1853 - Crimean War begins. Due to the presence of additional troops from Hanover, England does slightly better than historically.
1855 - The Crimean War ends a year early, with terms slightly less favorable to Russia.
1856 - Invention of blast furnace.
1857 - First trans-atlantic telegraph cable
1866 - Austro-Prussian War - results were much the same as they were historically. Prussia claimed Schleswig-Holstein. However, Prussian expansion is sharply curtailed by the fact that England holds Hanover. The Prussian government begins nationalistic sabre-rattling - the Anglo-Hanoverian government sees the writting on the wall and builds up a continental army to hold onto Hanover.
1870 - Anglo-Prussian War. In spite of the advantages the Prussian needle-gun offered, the English win, largely due to an advantage in artillery. Soldiers from England reinforced the Hanoverian units, leading to feelings of unity as they turn back the Prussians. The Anglo-Prussian War lasts for three months, and results in a larger Hanover and a bitter Prussia on Hanover's eastern border, one that longs for revenge...
1872 - Nervous about Anglo-Hanoverian victories, Emperor Napoleon III of France begins to worry about possible Anglo-Hanoverian territorial interest in Belgium, Luxemburg or Alsace-Loraine. As such, he begins to attempt to establish friendly diplomatic ties with Prussia. This is largely unsuccesful - Prussia is too wraped up in domestic trouble and problems with Russia to agree to any alliance in the immediate future. However, this does provoke concern amoung the officers of the English army, who worry about encirclement in Europe...
1873 - Largely over a pretext, the Anglo-French war begins. The French Army crosses the Rhine, and is slaughtered by a combination of superior Anglo-Hanoverian artillery and superior Anglo-Hanoverian guns, which were based off of captured samples of the Prussian needle-gun. Emperor Napoleon himself is captured, and the Anglo-Hanoverian army invades France itself, landing a small force near Cherborg under the guns of the Royal Navy. Panic ensues, Paris revolts... France is, in the end, forced to sign a treaty under the terms of which the Anglo-Hanoverian Empire adds Alsace, but not Loraine, to its territorial claims in Europe. Hanover is officially made part of the Empire, over the complaints of some conservative elements in Parliment.
1878 - Two years later than historically, due to European concerns, King Alexander is named Emperor of India.
1885 - First automobile invented by Karl Benz
1904 - Death of King Alexander to a heart condition.

More to follow...

Intriguing... Does Hanover share Britain's Parliament, or is it more like Austria-Hungary?

Nek said:

Intriguing... Does Hanover share Britain's Parliament, or is it more like Austria-Hungary?

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It shares, actually. I should have put that in. When Hanover became part of the Empire, it got representatives in the House of Commons, and its nobility, senior nobility at least, got seats in the House of Lords.

I would think that Bismarck would consider unifying Germany WITHOUT Hanover.

What happend to the European wide revolts in 1848?

Besides, who uses orange when mapping the British Empire?

Bismark and orange...

Well, as for Bismark, I saw the situation leading up to the Anglo-Prussian War as being one where Bismark tried to just pick up the states near Hanover, the Anglo-Hanoverians got nervous, the Prussians got nervous in return, and war broke out.
As for orange... well, what color would you have used?

RCTFI said:

Well, as for Bismark, I saw the situation leading up to the Anglo-Prussian War as being one where Bismark tried to just pick up the states near Hanover, the Anglo-Hanoverians got nervous, the Prussians got nervous in return, and war broke out.
As for orange... well, what color would you have used?

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Pink? That's what we used back in the Imperial days.

TL in the Americas

Bold still means historical event.

1820 - American Colonization Society founds Liberia as a place to send freed slaves.
1823 - Monroe Doctrine Passed
1825 - Erie Canal built, linking the Great Lakes to the Atlantic Ocean
1861-1865 - American Civil War. The only difference here is that the Anglo-Hanoverian Empire comes closer to providing aid to the Confederacy than OTL England did. Only a little, though. Still, it is enough to mildly sour American relations with England.
1867 - America purchases Alaska from Russia.
1869 - First transcontinental railroad.
1898 - Spanish-American War. The war went fairly similarly to how it went OTLy... except, Theodore Rosevelt took a Spanish bullet at San Juan Hill, and the American government was more interested in Cuba than in the Philipines. Spain was allowed to keep the Philipines - America kept Cuba. The reasons behind this were simple - America was worried about the increasing Anglo-Hanoverian presence in the Caribean, and wanted a base from which to counter them.

Pink?!?

Nek said:

Pink? That's what we used back in the Imperial days.

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Pink... but... pink is... well... you know...
Well, I honestly don't know why I chose Orange... I just did...

RCTFI said:

Pink... but... pink is... well... you know...

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It's the British who chose it, not the gays. We'd have something much more stylish.

Anglo-Hanoverian Activity in the Caribean

Something to note:

Throughout the later parts of the 19th century, Anglo-Hanoverian interests in the Caribean and Latin America were on the increase. In 1897, the Empire bought Puerto Rico from Spain, annoying the Americans to no end. This was one of the main causes of the Spanish American War. (Although the Maine disaster also occured.)
Sorry for not noting this.

As for why this purchase occured, in this TL the Boer Wars and a variety of other setbacks in Africa (Note that I'm not saying that England lost the Boer Wars, merely that the Wars cost them) led to a shift in focus towards the acquisition of islands for use as fueling stations by the Royal Navy and the Merchant Marine. These acquisitions were largely pointless, but they spread the English colors on the map and did prove mildly usefull for their intended purpose. The fact that the acquisition of Puerto Rico pissed off the Americans was largely unintentional... and anyways, the Americans wouldn't dare to go up against the Royal Navy...
The long-term effects of this souring of America's relations with England would remain to be seen...

No doubt...

Nek said:

It's the British who chose it, not the gays. We'd have something much more stylish.

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No doubt. As I said before, I honestly don't know why I chose orange.

Whom did king Alex marry?

Strictly speaking, it's "faded red" not pink.

Good work RCTFI, I'd like people to give their opinions on what would happen in a TL such as this, because it has relevance to my latest work...

Hmmm...

Max Sinister said:

Whom did king Alex marry?

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Hmmm... I don't know... some random noblewoman or other... any ideas? It would be good to have a name...

Oh?

Thande said:

Strictly speaking, it's "faded red" not pink.

Good work RCTFI, I'd like people to give their opinions on what would happen in a TL such as this, because it has relevance to my latest work...

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Oh? It does? Hmmm... now that's interesting... since your latest work is that excelent time travel story... hmmm... I wonder how that could end up being related to the Anglo-Hanoverian TL idea...

Well?

Well? The 1800s are taken care of except for the inclusion of the fact that King Alexander married some English noblewoman (hmmm... any ideas on likely candidates?) and had two sons who lived, plus a son and two daughters who died young.
(And his lack of daughters means no intermariage of European royal families, and altogether worse international relations...)
Oh, and Emperor Napoleon doesn't spend his last days in England after he loses power in the Anglo-French War, as he did OTLy after the Franco-Prussian War. Instead, he ends up living in Vienna in Austria-Hungary.

Well? Any comments? I'm going to bring the TL up to the start of The Great War tommorrow... anyone who hasn't read the development thread want to guess at what the sides will be?

David S Poepoe said:

I would think that Bismarck would consider unifying Germany WITHOUT Hanover.

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Well, if the Hanover branch of the Anglo-Hanoverian Empire still sided with Austria as in OTL, it increases the risk of Prussia being pulverized in the Austro-Prussian War, and the unification of Germany might not even happen at all if the southern regions were allied to the Habsburgs rather than the Hohenzollerns (sp).

WhatIsAUserName said:

Well, if the Hanover branch of the Anglo-Hanoverian Empire still sided with Austria as in OTL, it increases the risk of Prussia being pulverized in the Austro-Prussian War, and the unification of Germany might not even happen at all if the southern regions were allied to the Habsburgs rather than the Hohenzollerns (sp).

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Well, it couldn't since I think foreign affairs was handled by London. Hanover couldn't do anything without consulting with Britain. This is one reason that IOTL Britain was happy to Hanover go its seperate way.

Nek said:

Pink? That's what we used back in the Imperial days.

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But pink looks stupid. All frilly and soft and shit. Not suitable for a military juggernaut, if I say so myself.

IIRC It was Prince Albert's Rewritting of Queen Victoria's Initial reponse to the "Trent Affair" that allowed President Lincoln, to Diplomatically 'Swept it under the Rug' so to speak.
Now if King Victor shares his Atl Twins Temper, without any Rewriting before being Sent......