A Colonized Britain

[matashowski]

Hello everyone. I'm a longtime lurker, and i've noticed a common theme in most of the Alt History Tls. Great Britain never just gets straight up conquered. Another trope is them always being a united entity, regardless of the continental situation. I understand why this is, coming up on the thousand year anniversary of the last conquering, but i am curious what you all think it might look like. I don't know nearly enough about modern British history to do any speculating myself. I also figure that they don't often get conquered because this is an anglophonic forum and a good chunk of you are British. There is also a significant lack of "America getting conquered" in whole or piecemeal timelines. I think its just difficult, (considering between the two countries practically the entire world has been invaded/regime changed) to imagine our own culture beneath the influence of another.


And a side note: i have always thought that America very lightly conquering Britain is feasable. Granting statehood to Ireland, Wales, Scotland, and perhaps England into two. We share more than enough cultural ties. I figure if the situation got bad enough on the continent (as far as i know, Spain hasn't produced a Napoleon type figure) and it was the only option America offered, Britain would take it. (ah, and i could see the Royal family remaining intact but as figureheads)

 

[Lindseyman]

Conquered Britain possible up to about 1700. After then the Navy and the Industrial Revolution makes it one very tough proposition. Post 1945 with no nuclear weapons possible (just) but not very likely.

However the islands have been colonised several times! Celts, Romans,Angles, Saxons, Vikings, you could argue the Normans but they were more an occupying force.

The problem seems to be whoever tried to occupy let alone colonise the islands found the previous occupants stubborn and unwilling to know when they were beaten (except the Normans in 1066 and the Dutch in 1688 but you could argue they were special cases).

It must be something in the water!

 

[Indicus]

Well, after 1900, Britain became powerful. A superpower can scarcely be conquered. Also, it has remained united because it is an island.

 

[Perfidious Albion]

I will speak mainly of England because it is the heart of Great Britain in terms of population, wealth and fertile land. More-or-less anyone who can conquer England can conquer the rest of Great Britain, whereas the opposite is most definitely not true.

England has been successfully and lastingly conquered twice in the 2nd millennium. It's just that, like conquerors of China, foreign conquerors of England have a nasty habit of becoming English and just becoming the rulers of England who happen to have a foreign-sounding surname. The Normans did it, and it didn't take long (in historical terms) before they were treating their holdings on the Continent as a mere appendange of England; and the Dutch did it, and under the reign of the kings who came from that root, England—later Great Britain, later the United Kingdom—became more powerful than it ever had been before.

No-one thinks of the Qing as foreign conquerors in China, even though they originated as Manchurian conquerors, because they became Chinese. Why? Because China was so obviously the more important, more populous, wealthier and stronger part of their domain that it was obviously to their advantage to identify with it. To conquer England and remain as conquerors, rather than merely becoming English kings with a foreign origin, requires originating from a base stronger than England. England has historically been extremely powerful and it is difficult to think of another country, near enough to England and navally powerful enough (not, say, the Holy Roman Empire) to be able to conquer it and also populous and rich enough to remain as conquerors rather than being assimilated into Englishness.

There is one obvious exception, which is of course France. The easiest way for England to end up in a quasi-colonial relationship with France is actually for England to conquer France rather than the other way round; if England won the Hundred Years' War, it's overwhelmingly likely that, just like the Norman conquerors in England, the English conquerors in France would end up finding their homeland merely the minor appendage of a greater French domain (especially since by that stage the Norman nobility and monarchy weren't really assimilated into Englishness yet, and probably wouldn't have been if they retained a sizeable chunk of France, let alone conquering the whole thing). In that case, with England slowly being assimilated into Angevin France, it's not hard to see it resembling a colony.

Beyond that point, it's difficult to think of a time when England could have been so utterly subjugated as to become an outright colony, rather than, say, a vassal state. If England did badly enough in the 16th to even mid-18th centuries one can imagine it losing a war to France badly enough to have a foreign dynast placed on the throne… but there's the rub. Spain didn't become a French colony when Philip V took power, or even in personal union; it became an ally. Great powers in this era tended not to turn each other into colonies, but to place a candidate favoured by the victorious power on the throne of the other one.

So, essentially, the Hundred Years' War is your best bet. Failing that, I really can't see how this challenge can be fulfilled, though perhaps I'll discover something here to change my mind.

 

[Alex Richards]

Hell, even the Dutch example there is a bit iffy. William of Orange happened to be fourth (IIRC, low single digits anyway) in line for the throne anyway, and his wife was the second in line to the throne, and it didn't lead to a lasting period of rule by a Dutch dynasty but instead a single reign before going back to the previous lot, and the main affect was the establish the right of the English Parliament to decide who got to inherit the throne which then led to the German Electors of Hanover getting invited over. Certainly it's a successful invasion, but compared to the effect the Normans had in terms of 'lists of Kings' it's easy to see why it gets forgotten.

 

[Perfidious Albion]

Hell, even the Dutch example there is a bit iffy. William of Orange happened to be fourth (IIRC, low single digits anyway) in line for the throne anyway, and his wife was the second in line to the throne, and it didn't lead to a lasting period of rule by a Dutch dynasty but instead a single reign before going back to the previous lot, and the main affect was the establish the right of the English Parliament to decide who got to inherit the throne which then led to the German Electors of Hanover getting invited over. Certainly it's a successful invasion, but compared to the effect the Normans had in terms of 'lists of Kings' it's easy to see why it gets forgotten.

But he was not first in line to the throne, and, quite plainly, he got power by defeating the Royal Navy with a foreign navy and then marching across England with a foreign army. It undoubtedly qualifies as a foreign conquest (albeit one with a very large amount of help by the English themselves—William brought over more weapons for the English supporters he was counting on amassing than he did for the soldiers he crossed the sea with, and of course he came over in the first place with the agreement of significant parts of the English parliament and aristocracy).

I understand your point that it wasn't a lasting period of rule by a Dutch dynasty, though, and I accept that the fact that William was childless (so the throne passed back to the English royal line) means that it's an imperfect example. The Normans are a much better example of conquest followed by assimilation… though we could say that the Hanovers are also a good example of foreign kings who were assimilated and became more like the British monarchs with Hanover as this extra bit to deal with every now and then, rather than the other way round.