AHC: The Sun Never Sets on the French Empire

Genghis Kawaii

Gone Fishin'
The challenge is to create a PoD that leads to France being the premier European empire by 1900. Simply put, France must be in the role that England was OTL by this time, and must have an empire of similar or larger size than England had in 1900. The PoD may be at any point in history and be whatever sort of event desired so long as it leads to the required outcome in a plausible manner.

Bonus points: If you think you can, try to complete this AHC using Sweden, Denmark, Norway, or Germany instead of France, without being overly implausible.
 
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Problem is the France is on the continent, so they have to be the premier continental power to be seen as the most potent empire. Their colonial stretch is inherently limited since they cannot rely on water for domestic security like the UK.

Basically, unless you can somehow reverse their demographic decline, Germany needs to be stopped from unifying.
 

Genghis Kawaii

Gone Fishin'
Problem is the France is on the continent, so they have to be the premier continental power to be seen as the most potent empire. Their colonial stretch is inherently limited since they cannot rely on water for domestic security like the UK.

Basically, unless you can somehow reverse their demographic decline, Germany needs to be stopped from unifying.
That's why it's an alternate history challenge :D.

I do think it may be doable. France was the premier continental power with a fair number of colonies at one time. Only Spain and England did better. Having to worry about land security is a problem, but perhaps not insurmountable, especially with the right events in Spain, Italy, and Germany to lessen land based threats in Europe. It may not be easy, but I think it can be done.
 
Have the French win the battle of Blenheim. Louis XIV achieves his aims of French continental hegemony, with a Bourbon on the throne of Spain and the Empire suitably cowed France will be able to concentrate on her overseas colonies more.

The period 1704 - 1759 is a crucial period, it was by no means certain that Britain would emerge victorious in her global wars with France. Certainly a stronger metropolitan France would stand a much better chance of beating her.

Just my two pennies worth.

Lord I
 
Britain would in the war of the Spanish Succession just retreat to the UK if things weren't going their way, their navy was superior to the French at the time. Maybe you could do that if France and the Dutch ally against the UK there, their navies combined would outnumber the British. But otherwise the UK would just cut their losses and abandon the Dutch, Austrians etc.

Your best bet would be the Seven Years War. Have Prussia collapse, and then let Europe gangbang on the British. If the French commited their full resources to their navy (which they could probably do for a while if Frederick was defeated) they could defeat the UK. An attrition war between the French and the British will end in favour of France here.

Your last chances are either the ARW or the Napoleonic wars, though that's more difficult.
 
Britain would in the war of the Spanish Succession just retreat to the UK if things weren't going their way, their navy was superior to the French at the time. Maybe you could do that if France and the Dutch ally against the UK there, their navies combined would outnumber the British. But otherwise the UK would just cut their losses and abandon the Dutch, Austrians etc.

Although its military performance was mediocre in the War of Spanish Succession, France actually won the war in that they succeeded in putting a Bourbon king on the Spanish throne. But France treated Spain like crap following the war which made a Bourbon Alliance between the two difficult in future wars.

Your best bet would be the Seven Years War. Have Prussia collapse, and then let Europe gangbang on the British. If the French commited their full resources to their navy (which they could probably do for a while if Frederick was defeated) they could defeat the UK. An attrition war between the French and the British will end in favour of France here.

yes, it was Frederick the Great that was the cause of France's loss of its colonies. If Frederick had been defeated as had been predicted and France occupied Hanover, Britain would have been forced to give back the captured overseas colonies in exchange for Hanover. Even better, an alliance with Spain at the beginning of the SYW would likely have prevented the loss of those colonies since a combined French-Spnaish fleet at the time would have been formidable and therefore would have given Britain trouble.

Basically, if France had treated its allies better, especially great maritime powers like Spain, (or sought new allies like the Dutch) it would have had a chance to compete successfully for overseas colonies against Britain.
 

yourworstnightmare

Banned
Donor
1. England wins the Hundred Years War
2. England becomes France
3. With England being a part of France, France get a more Atlantic focus and ignores the Continent/ don't bother trying to become a Continental Power.
 
Tell me if any of this is just too crazy:

With some selective meddling in the early 1600s (it is a challenge; we don't have to be anal about plausibility) much of the civil and religious strife that France suffered in that period can be avoided. That'lll go a long way: the Huegenots can stay in France and not aid Britain, L'Etat will be better off financially, and France will generally have a freer hand.

Obviously the two biggest long-term problems for France are England and Germany, the former for its pesky world empire and navy driving it to power and the latter for the fact that, if it were united, it would inevitably vie with France for hegemony over Europe.

England, I think, can be dealt with fairly easily-they are due for a civil war. IIRC one of Tony Jones' TLs had a less popular Cromwell regime which in turn leads to a violent monarchist return, which in turn leads to a repressive, backwards Britain. Or, if we want to go back a bit farther, we could have the Spanish Armada have better luck (Drake's attack fails, clear skies all the way to England). England becomes a rather troublesome Spanish fief; even the obstinate Spanish Habsburgs, I think will let go eventually. So maybe sometime in the 1640s or 1650s some pretender or other gains foreign support and drives the Spanish out. England will be weak for quite a while; notably, they'll probably have to build a navy basically from scratch, and they won't even be able to think of colonization for a while. If we want to go over the top, maybe we can have the French and English somehow get into a tussle quickly, ending with a succesful French invasion. Combine that with some extra focus on the New World by an alt-Louis Xsomething (maybe sending some dregs of society over), and I think we might see a New World divided between the French, Dutch and maybe Swedish.

Germany is a bit harder-the trick is to keep nationalism from becoming the overpowering force it did in OTL. A good place to start with that would be having the Thirty Year's War be either butterflied away or drastically shortened, as it was one of the major causes of modern German nationalism. Prussia should be crushed somewhere along its insanely fortuitous rise to power. If a situation can be set up where, with limited German nationalism, there's no one power strong enough to dominate Germany (the Austrians being focused on holding their multinational empire together), I think France is set for long-term hegemony in Western Europe.

So, I'm thinking that by the 1730s England is a quiet little island (quite probably without Ireland or Scotland) with no pretensions at power, the HRE is the mess its always been with a lot more French influence, Italy is disunited but remains a battleground between the French and Austrians, and Spain is in its Inevitable Decline (I'm being sarcastic-I know full well how uninevitable Spain's decline was; unfortunately, powerful Spain doesn't mesh well with super-France), and Russia is a rising power in the East. France is set for quite a while.
 

Grimbald

Monthly Donor
France...

France joins US in invasion of Canada in1782...France gets lands north of St Lawrence; US gets lands south. French settlers dominate W Canada and eventully buy Alaska from Czar.

No French revolution or a much softer gentler one.

US fights Spain instead of England in 1810's, takes western part of North America. No Monroe Doctrine. France joins US and gets foothold in South America and expands it.

French sailors discover NZ and settle there.

France takes virtually all of Africa by being more aggressive.

German unification butterflied. France takes some small western German states one a a time.

War with UK in 1870's results in larger French Africa and inroads in near east and India....

Not very likely but probably not ASB.
 
yes, it was Frederick the Great that was the cause of France's loss of its colonies. If Frederick had been defeated as had been predicted and France occupied Hanover, Britain would have been forced to give back the captured overseas colonies in exchange for Hanover.

This is a bit of a myth. Hannover had defeated the French army before Prussia came close to collapse.
 
France sort of was that IOTL, it controlled territory across the world (South America, most of Africa, Indian Ocean, South-East Asia, Oceania) and was the second largest after Britain (who's size was greatly inflated by India).

Territorial Size (1922):
-Britain - 33,700,000 km² (13,012,000 sq. mi.)
-France -13,018,575 km² (4,980,000 sq. mi.)

Population Size (1922):
-Britain - 458 million
-France - 95 million
 
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