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Offer the conditions that they offered after Saratoga in early 1776. At that time, fighting had been going on for almost a year, but a majority of delegates in colonial legislatures and the Continental Congress were still opposed to declaring outright independence. Effective autonomy in...

Without any French aid, the British will probably be able to decisively defeat the American field armies sooner or later, but that in and of itself would not end resistance to British authority. In areas where most of the population was pro-independence by 1776, such as New England, most of...

The US with the 80-man standing army was during the Articles of Confederation period - this was almost 20 years later, when the US had a proper, but quite small army and navy. Apart from that minor quibble, though, I would tend to agree with you and most of the other sceptical posters. The...

William Seward, Secretary of State under Presidents Lincoln and Johnson, and the man behind the US purchase of Alaska, wanted to purchase Greenland from Denmark at around the same time that the US purchased Alaska, but the deal didn't go through. Seward was a big advocate of expanding US...

This sounds like it could be interesting, although implausible - especially the POD. I can't see the Lincoln administration supporting such a wildly provocative action after taking a moderate course during the Trent affair. A "Stars and Stripes Forever" scenario is ridiculous, but I don't...

If Britain did get involved in a European war over Poland in the early 1770s, it might prevent or at least postpone an attempt by the American colonies to gain independence. There could be a feeling that disagreements with London should be put aside as long as Britain was actually at war with...

I agree that small new states taken from French territory are going to have a difficult time maintaining their independence without support from the other powers. There would be substantial underground movements in these principalities to reunite with France, which would certainly get support...

I think that the biggest problem with having a more extensive area with a "Turkish" language and identity is that historically the Turks started out as steppe peoples, mostly nomadic or semi-nomadic. Generally, when nomads conquered or simply moved into more densely populated civilizations...

Unrestricted bombing probably could have won the war, by smashing cities and breaking dams that would destroy much of the agricultural land in North Vietnam. It would also have killed hundreds of thousands directly and created a famine that would have killed millions more. If you think that...

Yes - most of the northern states followed the practice of putting most or all new recruits (or conscripts later in the war) in new regiments, while letting their older veteran regiments gradually dwindle away without receiving new men. This resulted in new regiments of almost 1000 men, but...

I can't help agreeing with Lord Grattan that the USA might be better off if Reagan had won in 1980. Sure, we have energy independence and nice fuel efficient cars and cleaner air, but take-home wages have actually declined over the last 25 years because taxes are so much higher. The middle...

Well, conservative in a European context (especially continental Europe) is different from the US context. Traditional European conservative generally means socially conservative but also paternalistic and in favor of a fairly strong state. In the US context it usually means socially...

As others have pointed out, it depends on what kind of "liberal" you are referring to. Classical economic liberal? No Great Depression and New Deal, and/or no "Great Society" type welfare programs, and fewer international military commitments leads to much lower government spending and lower...

No French Revolutionary or Napoleonic wars. Spain needed peace in the late 18th and early 19th centuries to allow more moderate reforms. Instead they got reforms being cancelled because of fears of the French Revolution, defeat by France, years of being dragged along as a reluctant ally...

It looks like Britain comes off surprisingly well. As one of the posters noted below, a country that got nuked three times and can be starved out by her enemies has to be uncommonly lucky to keep a large colonial empire.

There could easily have been a French Revolution at some point even if France did not assist the American colonies against Britain. It might have happened 10 or 15 years later, though. It's very difficult to say if it would have followed a course similar to OTL or something completely...

Any time line where most or all of the Balkans was united into one political unit with relatively little ethnic tension would work. It could be the Ottomans, Byzantines, Hapsburgs, or some group that never even existed in OTL.

Some of that is true, but Britain has similar problems, although they are better at hiding them. I'm pretty sure that many of the Indians, Afrikaners, Nigerians, Irish, and even Australasians whose support the British take for granted are getting sick of fighting in wars that do not directly...

Food was used as an equivalent to precious metal-based money in a barter economy, but cash based on gold or other precious metals has 3 big advantages. First, it lasts a lot longer - coins are far more resistant to decay than any foodstuff. Second, they are much more portable. A few coins in...

Since this has turned into an argument about the actual Anglo-American war of 1812 ... The US did have some legitimate grievances against Britain. The British navy took quite a few US citizens into service forcibly on the excuse that they were British deserters. In fact, they usually made...