AHC: American Unitary State

Even after the Civil War, as long as people can go "west" to someplace like California that is geographically more isolated it's going to be exceedingly difficult to make a unity government work. I think the best way is to have Britain start its colonies as unitary, but is that something Britain could do in the early 1600s?
 
Inventing the telegraph about a century early is not outright impossible. Theories were going around as early as 1753, The voltaic pile was essentially stumbled upon in 1800, and IOTL we got an electromagnet 25 years later and the telegraph a decade after that.

That certainly makes centralization possible.
 
Depends if you can get another three middling cities on the coast then have people from the main ones moving back and forth marrying each other or staying for the summer or winter.

You could do this in the North perhaps, but you'll struggle in the south. Slavery means it simply won't have the incoming immigrant population to populate these cities.
 
Even after the Civil War, as long as people can go "west" to someplace like California that is geographically more isolated it's going to be exceedingly difficult to make a unity government work. I think the best way is to have Britain start its colonies as unitary, but is that something Britain could do in the early 1600s?

China manages, although it's not democratic.

One thing people don't appreciate is that you can still have state level government and be a unitary state. Unitary just means sovereignty lies at the central level, so you can be a unitary state and still have lower level assemblies, like the UK or France does.
 
Maybe a greater and more immediate outside threat, like a surviving and aggressive New France or large-scale Indian warfare backed in a big way by the British crown? That could lead to de facto centralization.
 
China manages, although it's not democratic.

One thing people don't appreciate is that you can still have state level government and be a unitary state. Unitary just means sovereignty lies at the central level, so you can be a unitary state and still have lower level assemblies, like the UK or France does.

True, but by that definition the US isn't that far from being a unitary state.
 
You could do this in the North perhaps, but you'll struggle in the south. Slavery means it simply won't have the incoming immigrant population to populate these cities.
They could attempt to make them fashionable vacation areas for Northerners.
 
Top