British North America

Yeah, I see roughly 4 Regions: New France, "New Scotland" from Mass northwards, "Atlanta" from Virg southwards, and "New England" in between. Additional Regions being added depending on the expansion west and whatever country is there - USM? California? Texas? Indiana?

Four is too few. You'd likely get:

- The St Lawrence valley, including English settlement in what was OTL Upper Canada.
- New England as one, but this won't be mixed with anyone further south. They won't want to go in with New York, which is ethnically and religiously different and would dominate them.
- 1-2 in the Mid-Atlantic. I used to think Pennsylvania, New Jersey and New York could go in together, but some people felt very strongly that NYC and Philadelphia were too big of rivals to do that. I wasn't 100% convinced but there was a reasonable case, so maybe NJ could be cut in half.
- Maryland, Delaware, Virginia and North Carolina. These are all tobacco slave colonies. This would be a damn big colony as it is, so it won't be combined with anything south of the NC sounds. The roads between Virginia and SC are terrible and there's nowhere ships can land for a very large chunk of coastline, so they're naturally going to grow apart.
- South Carolina, Georgia and north Florida. All rice colonies that naturally face Eastwards together.
- The bulk of Florida is likely to remain some sort of directly controlled territory to look after the Indians.

Depending on how quick the process goes, there would also likely be more Western dominions:
- The Ohio country, combining something like OTL west Pennsylvania, Ohio and Indiana. Illinois might be added in time, but probably would be split off.
- Kentucky/Tennessee, as these guys will be sick of Tuckahoe rule.
- A deep South dominion of Mississippi/Alabama/Louisiana based on cotton plantations
 
After the rebellion, I wouldn't see the British being overly keen on any federations for quite a while.

Play up their differences and keep them divided and weak, for as long as is possible, is the policy I imagine them following.

Eventually that might change, but small manageable areas would be my guess. So no fewer than 6-7 otherwise they may become too difficult to control. Much later the British might accept a federation of North American Dominions, but that'd probably take a while.

Perhaps there would be less of an 'american' identity too, tainted as it would be by those dastardly traitors.
 
The question is, is there too much bitterness left over from the failed Revolution to make this work? It probably depends on when the British manage to defeat the last of the rebellion, and when more colonial autonomy is granted, as well as how things are going in Europe.

If the King's Friends emerge triumphant, as I expect they will, well...just remember that this will be happening just 30 years after the Harrowing. And those were Scots! I really don't think that the English (sorry, but that term applies here) underwent some kind of moral and political transmogrification in just three decades.

After the crushing of "The Great American Rebellion", you can expect the strictest direct rule from London, which is where things were heading when the shooting started anyway.

I agree with most of your analysis. At some point fairly soon after the war, a politician is going to realize the status quo is impossible to maintain, and either set the colonies up with sweeping autonomy similar to Dominion status, or else try a scheme of giving them representation in Parliament, which I don't think would have worked out very well.

Said politician heading straight for the political wilderness, of course. Here ITTL the side demanding unchanged mercantilism and Colonial Submission will be seen as vindicated. The British Empire of the 1770s-80s was no more ready to recognize Colonial Dominions than they were Colonial Independence. At a distance of 220-230 years its easy to be gulled into believing that people of one generation (Middle Hanoverian) could think along the same political lines as that of their great-grandsons (Victorian). Especially as both generations are separated by as vast a distance of time from each other as the Victorians are from us!

As to equal representation in Parliament, that was never going to happen in an age of rotten boroughs and an extremely limited franchise. Not to mention that even contemporary Parliamentarians were sharp enough to foresee the population timebomb that this would present British politics in future generations. Imagine Parliament being in the position of being forced to have the Americans "declared independent", whether they want such independence or not, just so Britain can maintain its "British character". Only to discover that they no longer have the votes in the House of Commons & Lords to do it!:eek:

Does-*shudder!*-King Ralph become a reality?:eek::p


The longer the war goes and the longer it goes before this happens (like, more than a few decades) the more likely another violent rebellion is. At that point, given the likely colonial population (approaching the size of England's at this point) I would expect the British to grant the colonies sweeping autonomy as soon as they see rebellion as otherwise inevitable, but if American Nationalism has taken too strong of a hold as a result of the war, it won't do them any good.

Exactly. Multiple crushed rebellions will mean too much blood has passed between the two countries.

If there is another violent rebellion, it's likely to happen at the same time as a European war, and the British won't be able to contain it. Depending on regional differences, though, they might be able to hang onto some of the mainland colonies. Hard to guess. Bottom line, I think the colonies either get Dominion-ish status by 1820, or go into revolt, and might go into revolt anyway due to anti-British sentiment.

Based on OTL, "regional differences" are unlikely to be an issue. Too much hatred between Uncle Sam and John Bull, too little between the individual states.

Also, one of the big things going on in the background of this scenario is going to be changing economic theories, because this is the period of the decline and end of Mercantilism. I would expect that to be a major driver behind the change in British government policy towards the North American colonies, starting with unwillingness to grant autonomy for economic reasons, then going to willingness to grant colonial autonomy due to different economic beliefs.

I disagree. Greed had a lot to do with mercantilism going forward far beyond the point where it should have collapsed. That pre-ARW not a single legal operating forge existed in a population of nearly three million people...the Colonies were no longer isolated fishing villages holding on for dear life against French raids and teeming Natiive populations. On the floor of Parliament, even William Pitt the Elder was speaking up ferociously in favor of restricting any thought of American industry, even on the most primitive scale, as late as the 1770s.

Perhaps there would be less of an 'american' identity too, tainted as it would be by those dastardly traitors.

Did having their various uprisings over the years being crushed again and again make the Gaelic people feel more British and less Irish?:p
 
Did having their various uprisings over the years being crushed again and again make the Gaelic people feel more British and less Irish?:p

Well there are a few fundamental flaws with that argument, at least in my opinion.

The colonists were mainly English. They were not having another identity forced on them, they were keeping their original ethnicity. One of the justifications for the revolution was that they were being denied their rights as Englishmen.

Based on a lot of the sources I've seen the 'American' identity largely arose during the revolution. No revolution/ a failed one where people identifying as Americans are now widely shown as traitors and widespread knowledge of the more unsavoury things the patriots did, then I can't see many wanting to define themselves as such.

In what I've read being a 'whig' or 'tory' was a more common descriptor. It is clear that a sense of American identity (as seperate from a kind of British or English identity) wasn't all pervasive even at the end of the war. As is evidenced by the large number of loyalists still extant.

That's not to say that I haven't seen other sources that argue that a clear American identity existed prior to the war, but I'm not sure how widespread it would have been, as they mainly seem to quote the main agitators for revolution. (Who perhaps are not the most reliable and unbiased sources ever, and for whom a separate identity allows them to suggest that far from the treason it may at first appear, revolution would actually be patriotic as they are no longer English/British; and are therefore an oppressed group like the Irish.)

It's actually a fascinating phenomenon.
 
Said politician heading straight for the political wilderness, of course. Here ITTL the side demanding unchanged mercantilism and Colonial Submission will be seen as vindicated. The British Empire of the 1770s-80s was no more ready to recognize Colonial Dominions than they were Colonial Independence.

I do think it's pretty telling that in New York City and the occupied southern colonies, Britain never tried to implement self-rule or even reestablish the colonial legislatures.

Exactly. Multiple crushed rebellions will mean too much blood has passed between the two countries.

Well... how many times did the Scots rise up?

The longer the war goes and the longer it goes before this happens (like, more than a few decades) the more likely another violent rebellion is. At that point, given the likely colonial population (approaching the size of England's at this point) I would expect the British to grant the colonies sweeping autonomy as soon as they see rebellion as otherwise inevitable, but if American Nationalism has taken too strong of a hold as a result of the war, it won't do them any good.

The problem of course is that after December 1776, the Brits can't win, right?


Plus sectional splits are going to start kicking in. New York City will have more in common with London than it does with Charleston.

Why is this the case? Intuitively it makes sense, but the differences between the two already existed in 1776.
 
I thought I recalled previously strongly disagreeing on this subject with Faeelin, which is odd because I agree with every word (s)he just said. Interestingly, British attitudes viewing the Americans as actually Britons who wouldn't admit it continued long, long after American independence IOTL. There were British generals in the War of 1812 who refused to fight the Americans on the grounds that they wouldn't fight their own countrymen.

To those suggesting consolidation of the colonies into several 'Dominions' or a single 'Principality' or whichever, what I have to ask is: why? What motivation do the British have to merge colonies together? Just to be convergent to OTL? The last time they did it, it wasn't exactly a shining example of popularity; the Dominion of New England was a blatantly artificial, autocratic, profoundly unpopular creation of James II. That's a profoundly poor precedent.

And to those suggesting that the British would eventually realise they couldn't hold America and would hterefore have to give up the status quo and give more freedom to the Americans… again, why? That's just projecting modern-day conceptions—that if a subjugated people wish to be independent from an oppressive colonial government, ultimately they'll probably succeed—onto people who didn't have them. (Whether those conceptions are correct or not is completely irrelevant here; what matters is whether the British at the time would believe those conceptions to be correct.) In this scenario, the British have just experienced a major rebellion in British America that lasts around a year before being crushed. That's not very unusually successful on the scale of rebellions (there have been plenty of Irish rebellions much more impressive than that) and it's not going to convince them that British America can't be held without reforms. Instead, it will vindicate the American policy of the British government at the time. As Faeelin notes (I was unaware of that evidence but I'll quite happily use it), the American colonial assemblies are not going to be permitted to continue; any later British move to give autonomy to the Americans won't be a matter of giving more power to existing institutions, it'll be a matter of having to create democratic institutions from the ground up, against the fierce opposition of British American loyalists who have been administering British America more-or-less autocratically for the last decade or more.

The only way that comes to mind to maintain a stable British America ('British North America' as a term comes from after the revolution, when Great Britain had lost almost all of British America, as it was known, except the northernmost bits—hence the name) with a PoD after the beginning of the American Revolution is for the original factor restraining revolution to come back into existence: i.e. a powerful common enemy with a major presence in both Europe and North America. Great Britain had no shortage of powerful enemies in Europe and a distinct shortage of powerful allies there, mostly due to its own ill-considered actions. A coalition war against Great Britain—the same thing that was triggered by the American Revolution IOTL, but presumably started by some other cause ITTL—might lead to the defeat of Great Britain by France in Europe (IOTL the British got exceptionally lucky in that respect) and thus, perhaps, to France regaining what it lost in the Seven Years' War, not through any ability to project power to North America but purely through ability to project power to Great Britain and thus force the British to come to terms. Such a situation could also give the Spanish Florida and greatly weaken, perhaps even destroy, the British presence in the Caribbean. In that case, if the Native Americans whom Great Britain was attempting to court largely side against the British (presumably out of fear of American expansion against them), we might see an end to the Proclamation Line and a more vigorous pro-colonist attitude in London as a matter of national pride—which could bring British and American interests back into alignment. By that point the cozy pre-revolutionary status quo of 'benign neglect' is long-dead, but there might even be American representatives in Parliament. After all, a major cause of the expansion of Great Britain's suffrage IOTL was a matter of conservatives believing that the ordinary, poorer people would support their ideas more than the richer, liberal, currently-enfranchised people could (one of the greatest expansions of suffrage in British history was passed by ultra-conservatives for precisely this reason, though in that case for the cause of anti-Catholicism rather than anti-French nationalism), so if a Conservative government is in power in Great Britain, in that event—especially if it was a Whig government that was forced to give Canada back to France—the Conservatives might see American voters (though only the American property-owning classes, of course—not that radical!) as likely to vote for the Conservative Party's policies: focusing on Great Britain's worldwide colonial empire instead of Europe and taking a hard line against the evils of France, Spain and Roman Catholicism.

The biggest difficulty with that scenario, of course, is that in any such coalition war it'll be difficult to prevent the Americans from rebelling again and establishing independence with the help of France et al. Admittedly it's not the most plausible of scenarios, not by a long shot, but it's the best I can do if we require a PoD in 1776. (A PoD before 1776 makes things much easier.)
 
On the other hand, the British didn't see them as American.

Here's an older thread on this: https://www.alternatehistory.com/discussion/showthread.php?t=136186&highlight=identity

Sorry if I wasn't clear I was saying that in this TL the colonists would likely keep their original English/British identity.

And well, some in government in Britain didn't really see them as 'American' until after the war of 1812. At least from some of the things I've read. But that is the nature of ethnicity, it is largely self-ascribed by the in-group rather than defined by an outgroup.

Thanks for the link, will take a look. I've written a few papers on the subject (though more on ptolemaic Egypt) and find the whole process really interesting.
 
What's to say America would be a dominion?
Actually, if history does follow that same route it would probably be outright called a kingdom since there would be no self-conscious republic next door to annoy.
There are so many other ways government in the Americas could be organised though. It could be that they are wholesale directly given seats in parliament
 
What's to say America would be a dominion?

Nothing in particular. There's no reason to expect them to take that path, except an utterly superficial "Canada did it so America would do it". I can think of what sounds to me like a not-completely-implausible scenario for the individual colonies to continue to exist as highly autonomous separate entities under 'benign neglect' (note the sheer number of disclaimers in that phrase) and I can think of a—rather less plausible but still, I think, non-ASB—mechanism for the Americans to have seats in the Parliament of Great Britain. But I cannot think of any plausible mechanism for the Americans to get a united 'kingdom' or 'dominion' or 'empire' or whatever it is called in various TLs—basically a Canada-equivalent—separate from Great Britain.
 
If the King's Friends emerge triumphant, as I expect they will, well...just remember that this will be happening just 30 years after the Harrowing. And those were Scots! I really don't think that the English (sorry, but that term applies here) underwent some kind of moral and political transmogrification in just three decades.

By the Harrowing do you mean the '15? I agree there's no moral transformation in parliament (at least not until the Great Reform Act brings in mass democracy), but I think some form of dominion-type status is not due to moral crusading, but due to sheer power politics. You accept you need to give stuff away sometimes to hang on to other things. Nobody in the British government is going to be stupid enough to believe they can defeat the locals once the population of America is surpassing that of Britain, and spread deep inland on the other side of a mountain range.

After the crushing of "The Great American Rebellion", you can expect the strictest direct rule from London, which is where things were heading when the shooting started anyway.

Agreed, but what people do far too often on these boards is to see a change happening from a POD, and make that change in trajectory permanent. 30 years is a hell of a long time in politics: look at the difference in the UK political scene between 1974 and 2004, for example. The King's Friends, (who incidentally were a lot weaker in the 1780s than they were in the 1760s) will surely get a boost from winning the war, but not a thirty year one. We're talking about a 19th Century grant of power here.

Based on OTL, "regional differences" are unlikely to be an issue. Too much hatred between Uncle Sam and John Bull, too little between the individual states.

You mean OTL where after the War of 1812, the Brits and the Americans never went to war again, while the North and South constantly fell out, eventually having one of the bloodiest wars in American history?

I disagree. Greed had a lot to do with mercantilism going forward far beyond the point where it should have collapsed. That pre-ARW not a single legal operating forge existed in a population of nearly three million people...the Colonies were no longer isolated fishing villages holding on for dear life against French raids and teeming Natiive populations. On the floor of Parliament, even William Pitt the Elder was speaking up ferociously in favor of restricting any thought of American industry, even on the most primitive scale, as late as the 1770s.

Please provide your evidence of Pitt "speaking up ferociously. There were plenty of speakers arguing against such things. Ever heard of Edmund Burke? He was incredibly appalled by mercantilism, and his bill to remove this system from India passed the Commons, and only got shot down by the King for other political reasons.

Why is this the case? Intuitively it makes sense, but the differences between the two already existed in 1776.

Differences certainly existed, but there's a reason why NYC was loyalist. London and NYC will be imperial trading cities with big financial hubs that want to profit from the expansion of industry and have increasingly politically aware middle classes that are appalled by things like slavery. Meanwhile the South is going to maintain traditional hierarchical society and will feel slavery is critical to its economy and identity.

On the other hand, the British didn't see them as American.

Here's an older thread on this: https://www.alternatehistory.com/discussion/showthread.php?t=136186&highlight=identity


We've had more than one thread on this. In one of them I brought up several pieces of evidence that the British did indeed see the Americans as British. The speeches by Pitt, Burke and Rockingham pointed this out quite clear. As did senior British Generals, including Amherst, by refusing to fight against their own kin in America. The British public notably did not get behind the war because of this aspect, until the French became involved.
 
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