Without its OTL policy of appeasing America, Britain would be a greater power today?

[Faeelin]

In the 20th century yes, Britain could have done with being less trusting of the US.

Trusting the US though, means that are consequences. Maybe no Lend-Lease, for instance.

 

[Sior]

Sure, right up until the USA carves up the British Empire with the Kaiserreich in revenge...

In your Ameriwank dreams!

 

[Johnrankins]

In your Ameriwank dreams!

Not really, according to Kennedy by 1914 the US had twice the population and three times the nation income of GB. This will be reduced somewhat by the loss of the southeast but unless the US totally falls apart not THAT much. Around 1890-1895 the US will start to be able to be well on the way to having the capacity of outbuilding the RN. By 1914 it should have a navy at least comparable to the RN if not exceeding it.



Germany had a slightly larger national income than GB and half again its population. Germany was far from being a negligible power in 1914. If you have the same sides as OTL WWI with only the US switching from Allied to Central Powers the Central Powers would have a 52 billion-24 billion disadvantage in income. Slash the US GNP by a third and it is still around 40-27 billion. With that big a difference in production the question is if not when the US/Germany has a larger navy than GB/FR. Once that happens GB has no way of getting to its colonies.

 

[usertron2020]

What appeasement are we talking about?

That's a very loaded word, and used absurdly in pre-1900, unless appeasement is defined as not going 100% all-out post-1763 in crushing the Colonies, or not declaring war on the USA on the day Fort Sumter was fired on.

For Britain to be more powerful it would need to stay out of wars in Europe and help the CSA remain independent, which would mean a divided America that would be easier for Britain to stand up to.
A small British empire would be useful too. (0) British Empire would become too large to control for a country the size of Britain. (1)

0) Not a chance of London letting that happen.

1) In the long run.

Sure, right up until the USA carves up the British Empire with the Kaiserreich in revenge...

The CSA would need to be gone by then. But that would require an OTL Britain that opposes Slavery, which would presuppose a Britain that would never intervene in the American Civil War in the first place. OTOH, I could see Palmerston getting away with an Intervention in 1861 that the Great Reform Act of 1867 would short-circiut in any prospective Round Two.

But you see the CSA will be more than a speed bump for reasons...

True.

Not sure why the Germans would want to attack Britain? Germany's main interests were in dominating central and Eastern Europe.

Only if the major powers of Europe let them. Otherwise: The Great War.

Germany went to war with Britain twice in OTL's twentieth century, right? Unless you're positing butterflies mean that Germany doesn't go to war with Britain, then presumably it will ATL. (2) Except instead of having America as an ally, the British face a US that is at best hostile and aiding Germany economically and at worst making the First Lord of the Admiralty put a pistol in his mouth by cutting off Britain's imports. (3)

2) VERY ATL. Britain's foreign policy post-William the Conqueror was always to back the second most powerful nation on the Continent, so that the most powerful could not threaten Britain herself. Every time Britain went to war on the Continent, it was against the Great Land Power of the time, with a major ally on the Continent to support Britain's own small army.

Indeed, the one time she didn't was the American Revolution itself, which resulted in a mass pile-on by her traditional enemies and hostile neutrality by her traditional allies. If it hadn't been for the Napoleonic Wars, the British Empire wouldn't have had the absolute pre-eminence enjoyed during the Pax Britannica.

3) That would be post-1900, however. Most Anti-American Sun Never Sets types like to butterfly the entire 20th century regarding events on the European Continent, and how they might effect the Empire. As if the Pax Britannica could last to 2014. Or at least that the Empire would exist as some kind of Super-Commonweath, with Britain as Master of All.

Also, the USN was not of a size to worry about until 1910, and not something that could take on the RN head on and by itself alone until 1920.

I'd love to see the Yankees pull a Tannenberg in the opening stages of the war, mind.

The USA's is in a somewhat better shape than pre-revolutionary imperial Russia.

I know but realistically the Confederacy will be dead within 20 years..

Stop using facts! The indestructibility of the CSA and the willingness of France and Britain to keep saving them is an AH trope/absolute at this point.

It was the other way around Britain declared war on German not German that declared war on Britain.

True, but that was based on the German invasion of Belgium. You'd have to butterfly Britain's treaty with Belgium, or nix the Schlieffen Plan.

Yes. British stay out of conflicts on the continent and put their resources in to their empire.
The French and Germans and Russians etc are left to fight to out among them selves.

Which would mean violating Britain's foreign policy and strategic principles over the previous 800 years. If the British stay out of it, the Germans knock France out of the war in 1914, and spend X number of months/years carving up a crumbling Russia. Then they re-write the map of Europe to their own liking. By the time air power becomes a major factor in the next generation, "appeasement" to America will be at the absolute bottom of a very long list of problems that Britain will face.

And if the British want to "stay out of it", that means leaving Germany's colonies alone, leaving the Germans to swallow up the various other defeated nation's colonies for themselves (Belgium's, France's). And how long will the neutrality of the Netherlands and so their colonies last ITTL?

<snip>Then we come into the twentieth century. It is quite true that American ambition expanded in this time, and efforts were made at British expense--but it is also true that Britain got into serious trouble without any Yankee schemes being to blame, troubles inherent in imperial overreach without the benefit of superhuman, ASB foresight and cleverness. (4)

4) Reason Numero Uno why I take such a jaundiced view of the Sun Never Sets' POV regarding the USA. If the leadership of the British Empire is seen as deliberately picking a fight with the largest democratic English-speaking power in the world other than itself, rather keep up good relations, and in immediate terms for little reason beyond circle-jerk arrogance and shits & giggles, the opposition parties will take advantage and send them packing in the next national election.

Britain was not under the rule of an absolute monarch with unchanging policies towards North America.

Suppose that instead of looking at 20th century Anglo-American relations through the rosy crystal of the "special relationship," we take a jaundiced view instead, of ruthless Yankee encroachments on the glorious Empire. Suppose indeed that that view had prevailed in London, the moment the Americans seemed ready to step forward?

Suppose London had decided to handwave the Continent of Europe?

How could Britain have fared had she not been willing to mortgage her holdings to Yankee creditors? Had she been too proud to ask for American help in winning the Great War? It seems certain to me that the Americans would have held aloof, watching the Germans prevail over France and leaving Britain, battered and bled, to make what she could of her overseas power in denying them colonies while the Germans remade the Continent to their own convenience.

A foreign policy like that would have destroyed the reigning government and ruling party in favor of the Loyal Opposition.

Drained, demoralized, but with a free hand in the colonies, having gobbled up German ones and probably French ones too (to the disgust of their Entente former ally) and owing Washington nothing, could Britain have kept her balance and recovered from colonial holdings alone, while frozen out of continental markets both in Europe and North America?

With a lost Great War, much would depend on how long Britain remained in the war, and whether the British Army could escape in time (probably would).

But the terms on which they are its subjects are demeaning. To tap their potential, the British must simultaneously exploit and conciliate them. It's the same problem our hypothetical victorious King George III faced with the vast prize of Western North America--a prize he dare not plunder lest it turn his native allies against him.

Well, in the Empire as we knew it OTL, the die of white supremacy had been cast. Could the Empire turn over a new leaf at this point, and start incorporating its subject peoples on more equal and dignified terms, to get them accept the identity of British subject with grace and enthusiasm, and thus make good the vast potential of their global empire? Doing so would have raised discontents among the white British, especially the very ones who went south to the colonies to hold and exploit the place for their own betterment (and the good of the Empire of course!)

If instead the empire took a hard line of white supremacy, I suppose that as the Apartheid Nationalist government of South Africa did OTL they could prevail on those terms for some time, but at the cost of raising up vast discontent against them.

Well said. For reasons of contemporary politics our more...um...proud Britons on AH like to pretend that all was sweetness and light in matters of race in the Empire while race relations in the USA were scarcely any different from Colonial days all the way to Martin Luther King. That's not said explicitly, but the implication is often made.

The osmotic pressure of growing colonial presence on the frontier was such that only the American Revolution saved George III from making the very same decisions that led to the invasions of Zululand and Afghanistan, the Opium Wars and the Boer War.

If at that juncture the USA were indeed the predatory thug the OP seems to imply by referring to British policy as "conciliation," (5) the Yankees, and other rival powers such as Germany, France or Russia, would have opportunities a-plenty to assist in disrupting British control. Doing so would make them all big hypocrites of course (6) but the subjugated peoples might well rationally prefer to see two or three rival hypocrites wooing them for favors over one smug one that feels invulnerable. (7)

5) Appeasement, which of course is a far more loaded word, speaking in explicit, not implicit terms.

6) No argument about that

7) Ditto

At the end of the day, I don't think it's reasonable to blame the British failure to keep control over the vast majority of the world on the schemes of her rivals. (8) The problem is inherently hard to solve and the only fair solution would have had the British Empire evolve into an Indio-African one, with the white English speaking lands being a mere minority faction in something vaster and distinctly non-European. That might be a fine thing but how likely is it? Far more likely would be a hostile USA that doesn't owe Britain anything joining in a general feeding frenzy. (9)

8) Not reasonable, but if you're willing to close your eyes to the facts and play "blame the other guy", its easy.

9) Incredibly likely, and incredibly ugly as a prospect.

OTL I know there are British perspectives that see the USA as having accomplished just that, on its own without sharing with anyone. It still seems an odd perspective to me, even acknowledging the degree to which Americans did indeed plot for supreme power, to a large degree at British expense. (10) And anyway, it seems clear enough now that the USA's day as a hyperpower able to get whatever it wants whereever it wants have already passed--we can surely throw tantrums and mess things up anywhere, but getting what we want is not so easy. (11)

10) Maybe it would be easier for them to take the time and study the outcome of the Seven Years War, where it was Britain who did precisely that. Were it not for the Czarina Elizabeth's death, Britain's ally Prussia would have been destroyed while Britain was cleaning up everywhere else and bugging out of the war at the same time. That's why Britain was at the beggar's table when it came time to look for allies in her next war, the American Revolution.

11) Agreed. You can take W's foreign policy of go-it-aloneness for that.

I therefore chose the option of "Britain would be worse off," figuring that while the British did not have perfect foresight, they generally made pretty good decisions considering the situation they actually faced, and those decisions gave the collapsing Empire a soft ride down and left Britain herself, and the Commonwealth nations, quite well off and distinctly favored on the whole by American power when it was dominant, and in a position to align with American policy where it suits them and abstain from it where we are misguided today.

The second-best is that "both US and Britain would be worse off," but I'm enough of an American patriot to think that had Britain been pig-headed enough to throw down a challenging gauntlet in the mid-19th or early 20th century, despite the liabilities of taking down a big and tough adversary, we might have come out at least as well off as OTL. I prefer a world of Anglo-American friendship myself, and trust that it is probably the best outcome between us.

Perfect.

<snip>
Given that reality, the Anglosphere has worked out about as well as can be expected for both nations, truth be told, and with due diligence to individuals and circumstance over four centuries of (more or less) shared history.

Best,

Couldn't in any world really be better. Any ATL is bound to be worse for both America and Britain in the long run. I voted worse for Britain only because they don't have the protections of two oceans that the USA does.

In the 20th century yes, Britain could have done with being less trusting of the US. (12) This is in before 1900 though so I've no idea what you're talking (13) about with "appeasing america". Do you mean such things as not caring to fight over Washington and the like? The impact of such minor things would have impacted Britain very little. They could change a lot for Canada but not for the UK. (14)

12) Post-WWII, yes. But that means with hostility no NATO, and the possibility of a WWIII limited to Europe with no America. Uh...nevermind.

13) Me neither. Does "appeasement" mean suffering us to live?

14) Geography pre-1900 and the RN probably forces something like an OTL Canada anyway.

Also don't forget that the real world isn't a strategy game. (15) Nations aren't ran by some immortal controller with a mission to paint as much of the world his colour as possible. Far more important in the real world is money- and considering how much of America's 19th century development was down to British investments...having a Britain-hostile US would probably not have been profitable for the UK. (16)

15) Stop making sense!

16) Or healthy for any British political party supporting such a policy.

Trusting the US though, means that are consequences. Maybe no Lend-Lease, for instance.

I think you mean NOT trusting the USA. Which means bankruptcy for Britain in WWI, and assuming a WWII, bankruptcy again by the Fall of 1940, so no "going it alone" until Barbarossa.

 

[TFSmith121]

Yep, more or less...I could see a few places where

Couldn't in any world really be better. Any ATL is bound to be worse for both America and Britain in the long run. I voted worse for Britain only because they don't have the protections of two oceans that the USA does.

Yep, more or less...I could see a few places where the situation "today" could be better, and there are incidents in the past that would make a difference, but generally agree.

Geography underlies American exceptionalism. Unlike Mexico (so far from God, so close to the United States), the US has always been "so far from Europe and Asia, so close to the Atlantic and Pacific..."

Best,

 

[Dathi THorfinnsson]

A high degree of British appeasement of American interests and power becomes apparent at least from the late 19th century, even if this only reached full flower in the middle 20th century.

What if Britain tried to hold on much more strongly to its relative military, naval, diplomatic, and economic power compared with the United States over this time. Would Britain be a greater power today in all those spheres, or not?

What appeasement are we talking about?

Ya. 'Appeasement' is a very, very loaded word. I almost reported it as offensive.

 

[Flocculencio]

What appeasement are we talking about?

Why, not insisting on the right of dominance that the Freeborn, Brave-Browed Anglo-Saxon (TM) is entitled to, of course. Because British dominance was inherent if they chose to take their birthright and certainly not dependent on such mutable factors as managing to gain global naval supremacy at the end of the 18th C and thereby boost their fortunes with the acquisition of a massive imperial resource extraction zone and captive market.

 

[Tripwire]

Well, it'd be like the US not "appeasing" China, a country quickly growing stronger due to its own internal resources. Both countries would likely be poorer due to less trade with each other, and the necessary military buildup to be on guard against each other as well as any other powers. Since Britain is strong enough to be its own pole in international relations, this could cause a sort of minor Cold War between the two.

This in addition to whatever unpredictable international situation there would have been during the entire 20th century as a result of no Anglo-American alliance, and also therefore no NATO.

In my opinion, a better WI (and with less dumb of a title) would be if Britain choses to align itself with countries other than it did OTL sometime prior to WWI and ends up in a rival block of alliances from the US, perhaps intentionally to try and protect its interests against a rising US. By allying with Germany instead, maybe? That would put Britain together with Germany as a rival block to France and Russia, with possibly the US joining those two later if the UK acts hostilely to its interests.

 

[Shevek23]

I had some kind of brain block when I wrote my post, substituting "conciliation" for "appeasement." I think I even remember thinking, "hey, the OP wouldn't use such an absurdly overblown word, would he?"

There were certainly cases, especially later in the 19th C and early 20th, where the British did indeed bend over backwards to mollify US concerns and claims that weren't very strongly founded; the border of the Alaska panhandle with BC and Yukon comes to mind--we claimed a strip of shore as well as the offshore island chain and I suspect it was a weak claim, but the British negotiator (not of course, a Canadian or BC negotiator) allowed it. You can reasonably call that conciliation.

It bought Britain, and Canada with it, a whole heck of a lot of valuable good will though.

 

[BooNZ]

2) VERY ATL. Britain's foreign policy post-William the Conqueror was always to back the second most powerful nation on the Continent, so that the most powerful could not threaten Britain herself. Every time Britain went to war on the Continent, it was against the Great Land Power of the time, with a major ally on the Continent to support Britain's own small army.

Generalise much? An alternative interpretation is Britain habitually backed any continental power that went up against the French - not actually correct, but equally as valid. I recall there were at least 3 wars against [that continental powerhouse] the Netherlands in the 16th C.

I find it curious the assumption Britain could never tolerate any nation (specifically Germany) economically dominating continental Europe, yet OTL over the course of WW1 & 2, Britain handed its world empire and financial independence to the US.

It would have been much cheaper to appease Willy in the late 19th century with glamorous boat rides, fancy uniforms and a few worthless colonies - perhaps in South America...

 

[BELFAST]

Generalise much? An alternative interpretation is Britain habitually backed any continental power that went up against the French - not actually correct, but equally as valid. I recall there were at least 3 wars against [that continental powerhouse] the Netherlands in the 16th C.

I find it curious the assumption Britain could never tolerate any nation (specifically Germany) economically dominating continental Europe, yet OTL over the course of WW1 & 2, Britain handed its world empire and financial independence to the US.

It would have been much cheaper to appease Willy in the late 19th century with glamorous boat rides, fancy uniforms and a few worthless colonies - perhaps in South America...

Britain's policy on Europe

Sir Humphrey: Minister, Britain has had the same foreign policy objective for at least the last five hundred years: to create a disunited Europe. In that cause we have fought with the Dutch against the Spanish, with the Germans against the French, with the French and Italians against the Germans, and with the French against the Germans and Italians. Divide and rule, you see. Why should we change now, when it's worked so well?
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Yes,_Minister

if it had work that well the British would not have lost their empire leaving America as the worlds only super power.

 

[robcraufurd]

Ya. 'Appeasement' is a very, very loaded word. I almost reported it as offensive.

I think I even remember thinking, "hey, the OP wouldn't use such an absurdly overblown word, would he?"

I'm not sure why people have a problem with the term appeasement, given it's been used in a historiographical context to describe this policy.

Appeasement has such dire associations with the failed policy of the 1930s that it may seem dangerous to use the term in a less momentous context. Yet the best evidence that British policy towards the United States from 1840 to 1865 was a form of appeasement is the language used by those who criticized that policy or the behaviour of the Americans, for it was the same as the language used by critics of appeasement in the twentieth century... The associations of the 1930s also assure a proclivity to assume that appeasement always must be wrong. Yet Liberal appeasement of America arguably was the right policy. (George L. Bernstein, 'Special Relationship and Appeasement: Liberal Policy towards America in the Age of Palmerston', Historical Journal vol. 41 no. 3 [September 1998] pp.749-50)

 

[Dathi THorfinnsson]

I'm not sure why people have a problem with the term appeasement, given it's been used in a historiographical context to describe this policy.

Try "I'm not sure why people have a problem with the symbol Swastika, given it's been used ..."

 

[TFSmith121]

There's this, as well:

Try "I'm not sure why people have a problem with the symbol Swastika, given it's been used ..."

There's this, as well:

The Confederate Flag is just a symbol of states rights... Yeah, and the Swastika is just a Tibetan good luck charm.
—Robin Williams Live on Broadway (2002)

Best

 

[robcraufurd]

Try "I'm not sure why people have a problem with the symbol Swastika, given it's been used ..."

You don't seem to have understood my point. I understand that appeasement has taken on a pejorative sense since the 1930s just as clearly as I understand why people have a problem with swastikas. What I don't understand is why anybody get offended by a post which describes a policy of appeasement as appeasement (to the point of considering reporting that post), any more than I can understand someone being offended by the swastikas on a two-thousand year old Buddhist temple.

British policy towards the United States from the late 19th century onwards was demonstrably one of keeping it satisfied. You can legitimately use the word "appeasement" to describe that policy, as indeed historians have often chosen to do. This doesn't imply that the policy was wrong, or that the United States was as deplorable or as aggressive as some of the other powers towards which the policy of appeasement was used.

 

[machine3589]

There's this, as well:

The Confederate Flag is just a symbol of states rights... Yeah, and the Swastika is just a Tibetan good luck charm.
—Robin Williams Live on Broadway (2002)

Best

Well, no disrespect intended for the recently deceased, but the "Swastika" is just a Tibetan good luck charm. The Nazis used the Hakenkreuz as their symbol, which is a bit differrent in appearence than the "Swastika".

 

[BELFAST]

Well, no disrespect intended for the recently deceased, but the "Swastika" is just a Tibetan good luck charm. The Nazis used the Hakenkreuz as their symbol, which is a bit differrent in appearence than the "Swastika".

That is the problem with symbols they mean different things to different people and get reused over time.

 

[raharris1973]

I meant appeasement in the nonjudgmental sense that Rob Craufurd used it.

...if appeasement works or leaves you in a better overall position than the alternative, why criticize it ?

And this thread question is inspired by exactly the type of argument he is quoting here:

Appeasement has such dire associations with the failed policy of the 1930s that it may seem dangerous to use the term in a less momentous context. Yet the best evidence that British policy towards the United States from 1840 to 1865 was a form of appeasement is the language used by those who criticized that policy or the behaviour of the Americans, for it was the same as the language used by critics of appeasement in the twentieth century... The associations of the 1930s also assure a proclivity to assume that appeasement always must be wrong. Yet Liberal appeasement of America arguably was the right policy. (George L. Bernstein, 'Special Relationship and Appeasement: Liberal Policy towards America in the Age of Palmerston', Historical Journal vol. 41 no. 3 [September 1998] pp.749-50)

 

[TFSmith121]

Yeah, but...there's a reason the 45th Infantry Division

Well, no disrespect intended for the recently deceased, but the "Swastika" is just a Tibetan good luck charm. The Nazis used the Hakenkreuz as their symbol, which is a bit differrent in appearence than the "Swastika".

Yeah, but...there's a reason the 45th Infantry Division used this patch:



and not this one:



Best,

 

[machine3589]

Yeah, but...there's a reason the 45th Infantry Division used this patch:

Best,

That still doesn't change the fact the the Nazis never used a "Swastika", and it gets especially annoying when you see Nazi characters in film calling the Hakenkreuz as a Swastika.