AHC: Modern British America

I don't think that British rule would be as repressive as some people are suggesting. Britain simply lacked both the resources and the desire to place the Thirteen Colonies under permanent military occupation, so any plan which required ongoing massive repression would be a non-starter. The most likely peace settlement, in my opinion, would be either (a) the Colonies are directly taxed, and in return get representation in Parliament, or (b) the Colonies have to pay a contribution towards Imperial defence, but they get to choose how to raise the money themselves.

If it gets to war and defeat, it's likely all or some of the colonies would rebel at a later stage, depending on how the British handle matters. Places like New England and New York would likely forget memories of the war due to ongoing immigration, but the rest would nurse grievances and are growing in power all the time. It's possible you would have a bit of a balkanised system, with sectarianism meaning independent southern and mid-Atlantic states, with British dominions in the north.

I don't know, the South was historically more loyalist than the North, wasn't it? Plus, if the general trajectory of history goes at all as it did IOTL, Britain will soon be reaching the height of its power, so it's not likely the southern and middle colonies would be able to win a War of Independence Round 2.
 

Albert.Nik

Banned
Settlement of more British origin Americans only,establishing the British Aristocracy there too,reduce the proportion of working class immigrants and hence build a more industrialized settlement as much as possible. These are some of the PODs I could think of.
Edit:Another option is to Establish a more Fascist like rule where the Settlers would be educated to be very proud of the British Empire and make any secession thoughts heavily taboo.
 
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If the Americans lost the Revolutionary War, then what would North America look like in 2017?

Any thoughts, write ups or maps/photos would be appreciated.
Unless the Brits loosen up taxation of the Thirteen Colonies, America could probably jump off ship once Britain gets into a war with major European powers (anything after Napoleonic Wars will definitely get butterflies)
 
My typical answer for something like this does really depend on the exact nature of the post-war settlement.

I expect you'd probably see the institution of some sort of central authority in the colonies that is under the authority of a Westminster-Appointed Governor-General. How exactly that institution evolves is up for debate - but the main result IMO is the development of stronger Imperial institutions for the Empire. Both to provide the decentralisation and centralisation desired in the Intolerable Acts AND the Galloway/Albany Plans.

So basically an East Coast Parliament that is restricted in its authority by the Proclamation Line, but with far fewer powers allocated to its own Commons, instead having a much stronger Executive in the Governor General. (Determine your own balance of power).

The only thing I'd be confident on is a higher likelihood of a British Federation ITTL - because it'd already be at that point. However, the East Coast Parliament may well become more important than Westminster after some time, but I expect pressure well before then to make Westminster and East Coast equals in a system, rather than Westminster being supreme.

What a shift to a more "Regional Institutional" form of control would do in Westminster, I don't know - perhaps a lighter touch, more brutal local authorities, or more regional diplomacy (Protectorate Status for the Iroquois Federation to limit American settlement in that direction, later the Iroquois becoming a defacto part of the Empire if not on paper. Who knows? Not me.
 
What if Britain allowed only migration to the Colonies in small numbers and have a limited size of settlers going West.
European migrants in large numbers to Brasil Argentinia and South Africa?
 

zhropkick

Banned
What if Britain allowed only migration to the Colonies in small numbers and have a limited size of settlers going West.
European migrants in large numbers to Brasil Argentinia and South Africa?
Fun fact, the VOC did exactly what you're describing in South Africa. They were a for-profit company trying to run a little trade route pitstop, so migration to the Cape was very limited. European migrants probably wouldn't be going to South Africa.
 
My typical answer for something like this does really depend on the exact nature of the post-war settlement.

I expect you'd probably see the institution of some sort of central authority in the colonies that is under the authority of a Westminster-Appointed Governor-General. How exactly that institution evolves is up for debate - but the main result IMO is the development of stronger Imperial institutions for the Empire. Both to provide the decentralisation and centralisation desired in the Intolerable Acts AND the Galloway/Albany Plans.

So basically an East Coast Parliament that is restricted in its authority by the Proclamation Line, but with far fewer powers allocated to its own Commons, instead having a much stronger Executive in the Governor General. (Determine your own balance of power).

The only thing I'd be confident on is a higher likelihood of a British Federation ITTL - because it'd already be at that point. However, the East Coast Parliament may well become more important than Westminster after some time, but I expect pressure well before then to make Westminster and East Coast equals in a system, rather than Westminster being supreme.

What a shift to a more "Regional Institutional" form of control would do in Westminster, I don't know - perhaps a lighter touch, more brutal local authorities, or more regional diplomacy (Protectorate Status for the Iroquois Federation to limit American settlement in that direction, later the Iroquois becoming a defacto part of the Empire if not on paper. Who knows? Not me.

The last thing they would do is provide a centre of power to rival Westminster. The Brits only ever did that when there was a foreign power that threatened the place. They are much more likely to agglomerate the smaller states into larger bodies with the explicit purpose of creating rival power centers in America. E.g. having New England, New York, Mid-Atlantic, Mega-Virginia and the Carolinas each as separate states. Give them each a House of Lords (appointed by London) as a way to buy-off local men of wealth. Make them responsible for their own small standing army, require a set amount each year to contribute financially (raised as they want to), give them token representation in parliament and otherwise give them autonomy.

An extra thing that would help is that Adam Smith's pro-free trade mentality became popular in the next 20 years. That will help dismantle the navigation acts.
 
The last thing they would do is provide a centre of power to rival Westminster. The Brits only ever did that when there was a foreign power that threatened the place. They are much more likely to agglomerate the smaller states into larger bodies with the explicit purpose of creating rival power centers in America. E.g. having New England, New York, Mid-Atlantic, Mega-Virginia and the Carolinas each as separate states. Give them each a House of Lords (appointed by London) as a way to buy-off local men of wealth. Make them responsible for their own small standing army, require a set amount each year to contribute financially (raised as they want to), give them token representation in parliament and otherwise give them autonomy.

An extra thing that would help is that Adam Smith's pro-free trade mentality became popular in the next 20 years. That will help dismantle the navigation acts.

I mean, regionalisation makes sense - in my mind it seemed natural that they'd create new centres of power the other side of the proclamation line. However, it depends on whether being able to organise the strength of the colonies easily against Spain and France is more important than regionalisation.
 
I mean, regionalisation makes sense - in my mind it seemed natural that they'd create new centres of power the other side of the proclamation line. However, it depends on whether being able to organise the strength of the colonies easily against Spain and France is more important than regionalisation.

You need to remember not to look back on things like we do with the Founders and the Constitution. Nobody expected to setup a system of government that would be as permanent as that turned out to be. Certainly not the British, who had a lot of experience with an evolving constitution. They would be looking for stability for the next 25 years, when the East coast would continue to be dominant.
 
You need to remember not to look back on things like we do with the Founders and the Constitution. Nobody expected to setup a system of government that would be as permanent as that turned out to be. Certainly not the British, who had a lot of experience with an evolving constitution. They would be looking for stability for the next 25 years, when the East coast would continue to be dominant.

Fair. So why those five specifically?

New England, New York, Mid-Atlantic, Mega-Virginia and the Carolinas

I'd have expected New England and New York to be in the same grouping, Mid-Atlantic and Mega-Virginia, and then the Carolinas/Georgia - each large enough to have significant internal squabbles, but smaller than the initial plans.
 
Fair. So why those five specifically?

New England, New York, Mid-Atlantic, Mega-Virginia and the Carolinas

I'd have expected New England and New York to be in the same grouping, Mid-Atlantic and Mega-Virginia, and then the Carolinas/Georgia - each large enough to have significant internal squabbles, but smaller than the initial plans.

A combination of city rivalries and regional geographies. Boston, New York and Philadelphia would all get fed up if they were dominated by one of the others, and it's in the British interest to encourage those rivalries rather than having them United. Plus NYC is much more ethnically mixed than Anglo New England. Virginia has a major identity of it's own by this point, and is a natural centre of the tobacco economy, absorbing Delaware and most of Maryland and northern North Carolina. North Carolina was low population at this point, inaccessible by sea, and mainly owned by Virginians anyway. Then South Carolina is the next natural centre, absorbing what is left of NC and still being settled Georgia.
 
I mean, 45% of the population was Patriot, and I’m not completely sure that you can put that genie back into the bottle. Even a lot of the Loyalists thought that independence was basically inevitable. Many of the Neutrals were sympathetic to the patriot cause, but didn’t think they’d suceed. I think a decent number of the contintental army might become trekkers, and establish a new society west of the mountains. Either way I’d see another rebellion in another 20-30 years, and the more heavy handed the British are, the more likely that is.
 
BNA probably gets de facto dominion status, or they stick some younger/more distantly related member of the royal family on the throne in BNA then call it quits by 1820 due to the expense of subsidizing colonies. Perhaps they build a city in the area between Maryland/Virginia as a capital. Call it Kingston perhaps.
 

xsampa

Banned
The matter of a British North America raises the question of how British such an entity would truly be. First, we have to consider that the power of London would wane and the locals would find some level of national pride, even without anything comparable to Gallipoli. Second, immigration within this vastly expanded Empire may well change it demographically, and politically in the long run, beyond the bounds in which the motherland is willing to recognize as British. India, for instance, will serve a resevoir for immigration and cheap labor when the abolitionists manage to restrict it to the Southern colonies and the West Indes, at most. The presence of Indian migrants, as a working-class immigrant population in the industrial cities of the North, assuming that they do not become gutted in the aftermath of the American Rebellion, will feed into anticolonial feelings which render the rule of British difficult in the long run, if the organizers manage to cross color lines set up by industrialists, slavers and the byproducts of these. Furthermore, the assumed absence of European migration due to the more metropolitian-fixed orientation of the colonies need not imply an absence in the future, especially if the absence of a successful Revolution leads to a more tumultous Continent with radicals fleeing for a Britain that is marginally more liberal than the absolute and semiabsolute monarchies of Europe, and from then onto the comparable vastness of British North America. In closing, it can be said that British America will not stay so, a large part due radicalism spread from immigrants whose experiences of colonial rule and absolutism lead them to chafe against the similarly restrictive nature of the various colonies.
 
I would actually be extremely interested in reading a TL wherein the American Revolution fails, but persistent anticolonial sentiment and geopolitical factors lead to full (non-Dominion) independence further down the line.
 
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