British America Dystopia Thread

[Beatriz]

I am sketching out a timeline where America staying in the British empire results in a dystopia, to counter the common assertion among some that America staying in the empire would have led to a less-biased version of the long 19th century with the world peacefully divided into empires.
Some ideas:

• slavery takes a generation longer to abolish than OTL (1890s)
• the importation of Asian Indians as indentured servants into BNA
• the creation of reservations to "protect" Black and Asian Indian residents (not legally citizens) of the BNA that are glorified bantustans
• the designation of "martial races" and the like from certain Native American groups
• the British use an American Pacific coast (e.g Oregon) as a base to colonize parts of Japan and China after Opium-wars equivalent
• the French and Dutch (with Cape, Ceylon etc.) and newer colonial powers also go on colonization sprees to rival the Brits, especially as BNA industrializes

Later in the 20th c:

• an India war of independence which involves BNA troops and helps foster a stabbed-in-the-back myth
• decolonization wars result in revanchist, racist regimes that blame the [insert here] for making them 'lose the colonies to savages'
• the rise of Asian- and black-supremacist ideologies in response to colonialists' white supremacism in postcolonial countries (e.g Imperial Japanese pan-Asianism)

 

[CalBear]

I am sketching out a timeline where America staying in the British empire results in a dystopia, to counter the common assertion among some that America staying in the empire would have led to a less-biased version of the long 19th century with the world peacefully divided into empires.
Some ideas:

• slavery takes a generation longer to abolish than OTL (1890s)
• the importation of Indians as indentured servants into BNA
• the creation of reservations to "protect" Black and Indian residents (not legally citizens) of the BNA that are glorified bantustans
• an Indian war of independence which involves BNA troops and helps foster a stabbed-in-the-back myth
• decolonization wars result in revanchist, racist regimes that blame the [insert here] for making them 'lose the colonies to savages'
• the rise of Asian- and black-supremacist ideologies in response to colonialists' white supremacism in postcolonial countries (e.g Imperial Japanese pan-Asianism)
• the British use an American Pacific coast (e.g Oregon) as a base to colonize parts of Japan and China after Opium-wars equivalent
• the French and Dutch (with Cape, Ceylon etc.) and newer colonial powers also go on colonization sprees to rival the Brits, especially as BNA industrializes

If the U.S. had never formed, Slavery would have been abolished in 1834

Slavery Abolition Act 1833 - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

The First Peoples would have been handled more like the various princely states in the Raj (it also wouldn't reach past the Rockies, maybe even the Mississippi, depending on how things are handled after the defeat of Napoleon). That was the model the Crown had already established (and was one of the things that pissed off the colonies who wanted to expand into the Ohio Valley.

Since the rest of the bullet points rest on these first two, i really can not discuss them in any useful manner.

 

[mythmonster2]

Part of the reason for British abolitionism was the decline of the Caribbean sugar plantations. If the American South stays with the empire, that creates more incentive to keep it around, in addition to a larger group that will be opposed to abolitionism. It is possible that slavery could still end up banned in certain parts of the empire, like in Britain itself, but kept around in the South.

As for Native Americans, if the POD is a failed American Revolution, the war could still scare the British and convince them to start siding with the colonists over Native Americans, if only to prevent a future rebellion.

 

[Umbric Man]

Mythmomster2 said what I would have. The slavery lobby from the south and buttressed by the still existing West Indian colonies would have been very powerful and influence/bribe MPs as need be, and that’s in a direct rule from London scenario. Presumably America will have some autonomy by then as well to further control itself.

Even Canada, Australia, etc. ultimately ran over the local Amerindians when push came to shove in settlement and I can see the same for a loyalist America. At best, the dominion and empire acknowledging the locals as citizens… and then their lands legally absorbed into X province, lots of individuals bought out of their land/moving around for opportunities, and thus absorbed into the greater culture anyway.

 

[Beatriz]

I am trying also to think of realistically dystopian way things can go wrong for the rest of the world

 

[Gabingston]

If the U.S. had never formed, Slavery would have been abolished in 1834

Slavery Abolition Act 1833 - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

The First Peoples would have been handled more like the various princely states in the Raj (it also wouldn't reach past the Rockies, maybe even the Mississippi, depending on how things are handled after the defeat of Napoleon). That was the model the Crown had already established (and was one of the things that pissed off the colonies who wanted to expand into the Ohio Valley.

Since the rest of the bullet points rest on these first two, i really can not discuss them in any useful manner.

Are you sure that abolition would've taken place on the same timeframe with millions of additional slaves in British North America?

 

[CalBear]

Are you sure that abolition would've taken place on the same timeframe with millions of additional slaves in British North America?

Unquestionably. It was a moral hot potato with enormous popular backing. Trade in slaves would have ended in 1807, as it did across the Empire (the East India Company got some extra space even in the 1833 Act). By 1811, His Majesty's government had taken things to the next level and made slave trading a serious crime for British citizens, anywhere in the world (with a sentence of "transportation" i.e. exile to Australia). One thing about the Empire in those days was that criminal sentences were off the charts severe.

Under the circumstances it is unlikely that the number of slaves in BNA ever hits one million.

Slave Trade Felony Act 1811 - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

As was the British freed better than 800,000 slaves (and used a rather interesting financing method) in 1834.

 

[Beatriz]

• parts of China and Japan being colonized
• Western European dictatorships in the present day
• regional nuclear wars
• exile states for a colonial empire
• Fiji becoming majority-Irish because the British sent Irish rather than Indian peasants, and the resulting country referring to itself as "New Ireland"