Can Britian just give up on North America like France did?

Of course this would need to happen reasonably early but could it be possible for Britain to just encourage their remaining North American possessions to join the United States. I mean their line of reasoning might be that "we're going to trade with them anyway why do we really need them, we may as well sell them to the US and avoid future confrontation"
 
Uh, unlikely. Why would they encourage them to join the states in the vague hope that it will avoid conflict? Why not just give them more independence to defend themselves or just fortify them? After-all it wasn't until the 20th century that the military might of the United States was comparable to the British. To have something like this you need the British to be utterly destroyed to the point of trading away its citizens (god knows how this would be viewed by the people in London) and colonies(which were profitable within the British mercantilism system) or make the Americans a friendly protectorate of the British.

There's also the problem that Canada was Britain's only secure source of lumber for its royal navy, as the Napoleonic continental system convinced them that European sources were unreliable. Giving the Americans control of the lumber supply for the British navy wasn't an option.
 
Well, yes, it did, actually. Choiseul , and he not alone, strongly believed that large scale colonies were a millstone round the mother country's neck. Trading posts, yes, sugar islands, yes, colonial states, no.

Hence his willingness, even eagerness to give up New France, and to give Louisiana to Spain.

Given the subsequent colonial history of Britain, it is hard to say he was wrong.
 

katchen

Banned
Given the subsequent colonial history of Great Britain, it's hard to say that Choiseul was RIGHT!
If Great Britain did not have Cousin Jonathan and the Dominions which speak the English tongue, Great Britain would have been swept away by either France or France and Great Britain would have been swept away by Germany 100 years later. It's the number of speakers of a language that begin to make a nation.
Where Greatest Britain failed to gel was integrating all of it's Anglophonic Christian colonies into one global Imperial kingdom. Or if not all, at least some...those colonies that had become Dominions or were small islands such as the West Indies and could be integrated with the Home British Isles, taking advantage of improvements in communications.
Which is something that France has done with what the remnants of it's colonial empire, from French Guiana to New Caledonia to Reunion to Mayotte and the Comoros. All of whom have substantial undersea resources in the seas surrounding them.
France could have done more though, by partitioning coastal Algeria instead of withdrawing from the entirety of Algeria and also keeping the Saharan portions of Algeria, Mali, Niger, Mauretania and Chad, all of whom have very low populations and the combination of which have under 2 million people, but which not only have significant mineral resources, but as it turns out, vast aquifers that can be used to cultivate vast portions of desert for hundreds of years. The United States has shown what can be done with desert in it's desert Southwest. And France could have and should have been gearing up to do this before World War II.
And then of course there is the Chinese contemporary example of Sinkiang, Inner Mongolia, Manchuria and Tibet. And Russia in Siberia. And Brazil in the Amazon and Mato Grosso. And Argentina and Chile in Patagonia.
No, properly handled, colonies are not a millstone around the colonizer's neck and saying that it is is a self serving" fox and the grapes" attitude.
 
Well, yes, it did, actually. Choiseul , and he not alone, strongly believed that large scale colonies were a millstone round the mother country's neck. Trading posts, yes, sugar islands, yes, colonial states, no.

Hence his willingness, even eagerness to give up New France, and to give Louisiana to Spain.

Given the subsequent colonial history of Britain, it is hard to say he was wrong.

I disagree, like katchen.

The UK, even today, benefits from the fact that English is the dominant language in the world. It is able to export its culture around the world and profit from it. The culture advantage also benefits the other anglophone countries: USA, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. The English language would not achieved such dominance if the British didn't populate the world with its own people.

Choiseul was brilliant in other ways but, concerning colonies, he was a short-sighted fool that didn't grasp the importance of geopolitics.
 

GarethC

Donor
How about a different outcome to an Anglo-Dutch War (any of them) gives England more of Batavia and not Nieuw Amsterdam?
 
One way to have Britain 'give up' on North America is to have the colonies receive greater autonomy gradually. There was some sort of agreement that was never passed in the 1750's that would have really granted the colonies much more independence, especially relating to courts and the military.

Have that happen, then have more reforms by the 1790's and more reforms by the early 1800's to the point where the colonies are de-facto independent but still close to Britain.
 
I really dont get the question.

France didnt 'give up', she was forced out (haiti and canada), and about to be (louisiana).

France had real problems projecting power across the Atlantic in the face of the RN. For Britain to have that problem is ... unlikely. Britain was able to sink all her money into a navy, while France, for instance, had to maintain a large army, too.
 
If Britain loses Nova Scotia and Quebec, with just Rupert's Land left, it's hard to see them not giving up.
 
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