AHC: Implement the Imperial Federation idea

Why not just let India go? I get that it was the 'crown jewel' or whatever, but after a while it will be more trouble than it's worth. A British Imperial Federation without India is still going to be a massive force in the world. They could release India on amiable terms - maybe an observing member of the federation, with an economic and military alliance or something. :)
 
India was the only profitable non-white colony other than Hong Kong and Malaya. It justified the unprofitable African colonies. So either Britain must also abandon its African colonies *and* expose the sea routes to India *or* accept the losses of the Africa colonies in order to retain its links with India. It's also likely India will build friendly relations with whoever is Britain's main rival, be it the US, Japan, Germany, or the USSR.
 
The very most you could get would be a two tiered system where The UK, Canada, NZ, Australia, possibly some of the small territories such as Hong-Kong, Singapore, Malta etc and as a long shot maybe South Africa form a EU type union that starts out as very limited at first and gets built up over time as travel time becomes less of an issue and the disparity between Britain and the Dominoes declines.
Alongside that you could also have a NATO type military alliance with some limited economic and diplomatic cooperation that includes the rest of the Empire.
 
Why not just let India go? I get that it was the 'crown jewel' or whatever, but after a while it will be more trouble than it's worth. A British Imperial Federation without India is still going to be a massive force in the world. They could release India on amiable terms - maybe an observing member of the federation, with an economic and military alliance or something. :)

Agreed.

As the other chap said, without India (plus Malaya and Hong Kong), the rest of the Empire becomes a burden. Even if you're breaking up India, as was suggested elsewhere, you're going to see economic interests spurring unity in an Indian bloc, notably the neo-Mercantilist approach the British tended to extend to India, restricting local development. So the options if you're going to include the Asian/African colonies are between an equal India dominating the Federation or a de facto white supremacist Federation which will see its Asian and African components split off at the earliest opportunity.

Basically the only workable option is, as you say, to just keep it to a federation of the white dominions plus crown colonies like Singapore and HK but even there I suspect you'll see tensions- one reason the Commonwealth never worked all that well is because even within the core white commonwealth, everyone had different economic priorities.
 
I thought that Ghana was reasonably profitable.

Probably a volume issue. India is profitable for a lot of different people or groups, where as Ghana was and is a comparatively small place.

Tens of thousands of British worked in India and did well out of it, alongside the big commercial interests, then if we add in the added strength given to the Empire by having the hundreds of millions of Indians able to be directed in the former's interests it all makes sense.
 
Perhaps, yes, two-tier system:

A British Commonwealth ( BC ) consisting of:

1. Concentrate the white settler colonies into expanded unitary ( but internally devolved in various degrees for practical reasons ) United Kingdom ( UK ) of England, Wales, Scotland, Ireland, New South Wales, Queensland, South Australia, Tasmania, Victoria, Western Australia, Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta, ... ... Hong Kong, Singapore, New Zealand, Oceania, Carribea ... ... + the white colonies of South Africa, Namibia...

UK with single Parliament, Gvt etc. in London.

and

2. Indian empire ( IE ) - to which to be given/included all the non-white lands - Africa, Papua ... ...

IE - federal state of hundreds of states, provinces and territories governed by a vice-roy appointed for 4 yrs term by the UK king after election by the IE 2-houses separate Parliament with approx. the powers of the US President.

such IE will have the power, economics and demographics to keep the African colonies and even to expand in Africa. ( per instance Congo and Portuguese Africa joining "voluntary" at some point ).

I reckon Hindustani elites would prefer to be furnished with and empire for free instead of being "independent".

BC = UK + IE = NATO like military union with joined command + EU like monetary, tax, economical union...

I guess such structure will be stable.

such BC would have both the strongest economy and the biggest population / territory in the World.

bcukie.jpg
 
Perhaps, yes, two-tier system:

A British Commonwealth ( BC ) consisting of:

1. Concentrate the white settler colonies into expanded unitary ( but internally devolved in various degrees for practical reasons ) United Kingdom ( UK ) of England, Wales, Scotland, Ireland, New South Wales, Queensland, South Australia, Tasmania, Victoria, Western Australia, Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta, ... ... Hong Kong, Singapore, New Zealand, Oceania, Carribea ... ... + the white colonies of South Africa, Namibia...

UK with single Parliament, Gvt etc. in London.

and

2. Indian empire ( IE ) - to which to be given/included all the non-white lands - Africa, Papua ... ...

IE - federal state of hundreds of states, provinces and territories governed by a vice-roy appointed for 4 yrs term by the UK king after election by the IE 2-houses separate Parliament with approx. the powers of the US President.

such IE will have the power, economics and demographics to keep the African colonies and even to expand in Africa. ( per instance Congo and Portuguese Africa joining "voluntary" at some point ).

I reckon Hindustani elites would prefer to be furnished with and empire for free instead of being "independent".

BC = UK + IE = NATO like military union with joined command + EU like monetary, tax, economical union...

I guess such structure will be stable.

such BC would have both the strongest economy and the biggest population / territory in the World.

The Indians wouldn't want Africa (OTL Britain tried adding chunks of the Middle-East - such as Aden - to the Indian Empire, but it never worked out), but apart from that something like this is probably the only way of doing it. So long is India is genuinely independent, with the only institutional link being a shared crown (a genuine King-Emperor) and various treaty links covering trade, mutual defence etc., it might work for a while.
 
The Indians wouldn't want Africa (OTL Britain tried adding chunks of the Middle-East - such as Aden - to the Indian Empire, but it never worked out), but apart from that something like this is probably the only way of doing it. So long is India is genuinely independent, with the only institutional link being a shared crown (a genuine King-Emperor) and various treaty links covering trade, mutual defence etc., it might work for a while.

Indians wouldn't want Africa, but if it comes together ( as conditio sine qua non est ) independence, they'll get used to with. In several decades Indian Africa may get pretty much Indi-zed demographically. OTL British conquest of African colonies was too late and not backed up well demographically. With BC=UK+IE there will be 300+ million people in the mainland IE vs. dozens of millions of Africans. For IE this will be a bonus from the ex-metropoly of underdeveloped and underpopulated territory where they'll be able to expand as markets, resources, settlement without to be in direct competition with UK/BC. Colonialism will persist as non-white one. BC IE would be the biggest muslim state too with more than a half of the worlds muslim population but still being sizeable minority.
 
What about the West Indies? Seems like they always get neglected in these discussions.

In 1912, the British West Indies were divided into eight colonies: The Bahamas, Barbados, British Guiana, British Honduras, Jamaica (with its dependencies the Turks and Caicos Islands and the Cayman Islands), Trinidad and Tobago, the Windward Islands and the Leeward Islands.[4]

of course - all these = integral part of the UK in BC = UK + IE.
or rather constitutionally similar to Channel Isles and IoM.
 
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