alternatehistory.com

Inspired by some recent thoughts about vast differences in culture between the Northern and Southern United States.

Let's say that Great Britain gets some absurdly good luck and manages to crush the American Revolution very quickly, before any major foreign powers step in. The Americans are kept under control on a tight leash by British governors, with many colonial assemblies dissolved as dangerous bunches of malcontents, but the British colonies in North America become a constant drain on Great Britain's money and soldiers, even with increased taxes. This leaves a situation in Europe where Great Britain is dangerously hegemonic, and within one or two decades a large anti-British coalition arises on the Continent, due to some trigger other than the American Revolution (which served as the appropriate trigger IOTL). For the sake of argument, let's say that this coalition is strong enough to inflict several major defeats on Great Britain, such that eventually Parliament, trying to protect the British homeland, withdraws most British forces from North America.

So the British colonies in North America become de facto independent, but there's no uniting experience of a revolution to tie them together, and the experience of democratic rule is more or less gone. What happens?
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