Alternate British Empires

JJohnson

Banned
I'm working on an alternate timeline with a British Empire that has successfully made the following settler colonies (in addition to OTL):
-Patagonia (Uruguay, Chile, Argentina, and Rio Grande do Sul in land size, over the course of several decades of expansion)
-New Caledonia
-Cuba
-at least 2 or 3 more settler colonies in Africa (I'm not sure where)
-Belize including Peten from Guatemala
-Bay Islands
-Providence Islands

But lost:
-Province of Canada
-Bermuda
-Bahamas
-Rupert's Land (sold)
-British Virgin Islands (sold)

In this version of the British Empire, how would the British attract settlers to those colonies? Where do you think the majority of British settlement would go, and who else would join the British (from other European countries)? And how would those colonies develop over the next 2 centuries? Which ones do you see remaining as 'territories' and which ones going independent?
 
You could have it that the British send poor to the colonies.

Say, for example, those unfortunate souls that require the "assistance" of the workhouse are actually then readied to be settlers. How are they prepared for it though? Are they taught how to read? How to farm?

Could obviously also send convicts there. Perhaps even the Irish? Have it so that Ireland is populated almost exclusively by the English.

What happens to British New Guinea? They never really got a fold hold in there. Does this change?

How these colonies develop depends on what happens in your Timeline. Does WWI happen? Do Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa (maybe) and Britain federate? Does New Zealand become the "Britain of the South" that Richard Seddon hoped she would. If WWI happens how do Australia and New Zealand respond to the Gallipoli Campaign?

How competent at colonisation are the British in this timeline? In real life Britain was pretty bad, better than anyone else, but still pretty lousy. For all the chest puffing of the Empire they didn't put as much effort into it as they could have.
 
Most British settlement will probably be to Patagonia: the climate is European-like in places, and there is plenty of land to settle. Natives are a problem, but the same could be said of the rest of the continent.
However, in order to attract more settlement there, you need to offer some sort of advantage over North America (US* and Canada*). If the states of North America are stable, people are going to want to go there, rather than equally stable Patagonia, due to the distances involved.
Furthermore, there are the gold rushes in North America, which will probably upset immigration to Patagonia.

In Africa, I can see East Africa (Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, maybe Somalia) becoming settler colonies, but they're going to be disadvantaged by the presence of disease. Elsewhere, I think you'd need higher altitudes in order to offset the climatic differences. Natives could make things difficult in the long run, too.
 
In Africa, I can see East Africa (Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, maybe Somalia) becoming settler colonies, but they're going to be disadvantaged by the presence of disease. Elsewhere, I think you'd need higher altitudes in order to offset the climatic differences. Natives could make things difficult in the long run, too.

Mozambique: many Portuguese lived there IOTL. Britain could conquer it, allow the white Portuguese to stay and sent more British too.

I could see Zanzibar turned into some kind of Singapore too.
 
Say, for example, those unfortunate souls that require the "assistance" of the workhouse are actually then readied to be settlers. How are they prepared for it though? Are they taught how to read? How to farm?

Well, if you do that then you've just crippled the Industrial Revolution back home. Like it or hate it (and I'm not sure how you could like it), the Industrial Revolution relied on exploiting the poor via workhouses. No exploitation, no production economy.

Also, as you say, those poor have absolutely zero transferable skills.
 

katchen

Banned
This looks quite interesting.. If the British control the entrance to the Rio de La Plata, at the very least, they would likely take over Paraguay and the Paraguay River Basin up to Cuaiaba. From there, it's a short portage to the navigable Guapore River to the upper Madiera Basin in what is OTL Eastern Bolivia. The Madiera has bad rapids, but it's a short portage to the Purus River which gets travelers to the Amazon Basin and it's rubber. Then the Cassiaquare Canal gets one to the Orinocco Basin and one set of rapids to Trinidad and British Guiana. So you might be loooking at a British settlement belt up and down rivers lengthwise through the heart of South America.
But why stop there?
Chile had a great deal of Spanish white settlement but Peru and Bolivia did not. In fact Peru and Bolivia's population got depleted down to about a million or so by 1600, mostly non Spanish speaking Queschua and Aymara. The British might have a great deal of incentive and not a great deal of difficulty in capturing Peru through the "back door" as it were, via the Pilcomayo River and taking Potosi and it's silver. Then working their way up to Quito and Popoyan, wherupon the going might get tougher.
The British would have a great deal of incentive to settle Peru more intensively than the Spanish did too. Read the wikipedia articles on llamas, alpaca, vicuna and guanuco. Those camelids yield fiber that are the texture of cashmere wool. Their only drawback is that without lanolin, they don't shed water the way sheep wool does.
But they have a niche. And Brits would be drawn to settle in Peru and Bolivia where the climate is good to raise llama and alpaca and vicuna--and down in Patagonia as wel as over in Australia and the Cape. The English woolen industry would take whatever they could send them.
And that will do until more raw materials can be found to turn a profit with.
 
This looks quite interesting.. If the British control the entrance to the Rio de La Plata, at the very least, they would likely take over Paraguay and the Paraguay River Basin up to Cuaiaba. From there, it's a short portage to the navigable Guapore River to the upper Madiera Basin in what is OTL Eastern Bolivia. The Madiera has bad rapids, but it's a short portage to the Purus River which gets travelers to the Amazon Basin and it's rubber. Then the Cassiaquare Canal gets one to the Orinocco Basin and one set of rapids to Trinidad and British Guiana. So you might be loooking at a British settlement belt up and down rivers lengthwise through the heart of South America.

Huh?

Are you even aware how miserable the terrain where those "short" portages is?
 
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