AHC: Unitary British Isles

Your challenge, should you choose to accept it, is to create a unified British state of England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland that is unitary in a manner to France post 1789: one central government, one legal system, one language and one national identity, with separatist movements only tiny minority positions.

Bonus points for including the Isle of Man and super bonus points for maintaining a similar course of constitutionalism and representative government.
 
I think it's a almost impossible by 1789. Ireland is Catholic and going to stay Catholic and as long as that division remains you are never going to see a single unified culture.

The earlier the PoD they easier it is. Imho it's much more difficult for 1300 French were to assimilate the Bretons and Occitans than it is for the English who have a much greater population and are much more culturally sophisticated to assimilate the Irish and Scots. I think a big part of why it didn't happen is that the English Kings were much more focused on conquering/holding onto France for the Middle Ages than their own backgarden.
 
I'm not even sure if it's a simple dichotomy such as that (it might help to avoid the Angevin inheritence though. Norman Conquest is pretty necessary though as the Saxons weren't anywhere near as interested in expanding into Ireland and so forth). Wales was conquered very early on, and as loyalty was preferred over notions of ethnic settlement and so forth, once the big rebellions ended in the early 1400s, there really wasn't any drive to crush the Welsh Language, hence it survived much better than Gaelic or Cornish.

Indeed, this is despite the fact that Wales was centralised into the English legal system in 1536. There is, however, a direct correlation between the areas which were left to the Principality of Wales after the Edwardian Conquest and the modern areas of greatest Welsh speakers, possibly due to the fact that the Marcher Lords tended to impose a stricter ecclesiastical hierarchy to get more control over the populace. Ironically therefore, it would appear that a more decentralised crown or a more drawn out, piecemeal conquest of Wales would actually help in this case.

Generally speaking a heavily retarded reformation would probably help cultural unity, and for Scotland we probably a way to end Scots Law without causing the OTL resurgence in Celtic nationalism.
 
I'm not even sure if it's a simple dichotomy such as that (it might help to avoid the Angevin inheritence though. Norman Conquest is pretty necessary though as the Saxons weren't anywhere near as interested in expanding into Ireland and so forth). Wales was conquered very early on, and as loyalty was preferred over notions of ethnic settlement and so forth, once the big rebellions ended in the early 1400s, there really wasn't any drive to crush the Welsh Language, hence it survived much better than Gaelic or Cornish.

Indeed, this is despite the fact that Wales was centralised into the English legal system in 1536. There is, however, a direct correlation between the areas which were left to the Principality of Wales after the Edwardian Conquest and the modern areas of greatest Welsh speakers, possibly due to the fact that the Marcher Lords tended to impose a stricter ecclesiastical hierarchy to get more control over the populace. Ironically therefore, it would appear that a more decentralised crown or a more drawn out, piecemeal conquest of Wales would actually help in this case.

Generally speaking a heavily retarded reformation would probably help cultural unity, and for Scotland we probably a way to end Scots Law without causing the OTL resurgence in Celtic nationalism.

Why is the Norman conquest necessary, do you think?
 
Why is the Norman conquest necessary, do you think?

The Saxon kings didn't really go in for the same sort of conquest mentality as the normans, mainly due to differing inheritance laws reducing land pressures.

Note, for example, that despite centuries of raids from Wales that had seen Offa's Dike constructed, the Saxons had never gone further than punitive invasions to end these.

The Norman Conquest, meanwhile, stretched their forces thin and so the border lords were given a lot of power, which they used to start making large inroads into Wales within 20 years of Hastings.
 
Top