AHC: United Kingdom of Great Britain, Northern Ireland, and India

Just what it says up there. With a POD no later than 1870, get a powerful, industrialized UKGBNII with about the same social unrest as OTL Britain.
 

Thande

Donor
Wouldn't work. You can't represent India in the same parliament as the Home Islands, that would give them over 90% of the seats.

I suppose it might work if they only gave the votes to whites in India (and a small portion of natives who passed some rigged test) but that seems a one-way street to Unpleasantness.
 
What about a kind of Clive-less World scenario, only where the French don't totally overtake the sub-continent instead? It would be jimmying the rules a bit, but you could have a scenario where Britain only controls the east coast and Bengal for a much lower population. If you preserve the eastern Princely States under company rule, too, and make them autonomous units without voting rights you could make it so that only those Indian subjects under the direct rule of the Crown have representation, meaning you might just be able to keep a situation where the UK is not outvoted by India but has a slightly larger population.

Clutching at straws, I know, but it's an idea.
 
Agree with Thande, this union would be unworkable as any British influence would be virtually negligible. You might as well call this state "India".
 
I've never understood why seats in parliament have to be proportionate to population. Why couldn't the system be changed to a set number of seats per region to accommodate for keeping India?
 
I've never understood why seats in parliament have to be proportionate to population. Why couldn't the system be changed to a set number of seats per region to accommodate for keeping India?

Generally because someone cries unfair, claims that the regions with less seats-per-person is being exploited, and brings the system down.
 
I've never understood why seats in parliament have to be proportionate to population. Why couldn't the system be changed to a set number of seats per region to accommodate for keeping India?

Maybe representation shouldn't be strictly proportionate to population (after all the European Parliament doesn't work that way) but there's no way that Britain could outvote India, considering the population is ten times the size at this stage.
 
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