Carthage flees.

Theory - Not long after the end of the Second Punic war a few scared Oligarchs start to slowly move people and resources out of Carthage and it's colonies.

Carthage trades from the British Isles to the Ivory Coast. Where would you move it to? I figure they found Plymouth. What would twenty thousand Phoeniciansdo to British history?

They have fifty years to build in secrecy before Rome destroys Carthage and roughly a hundred before Rome follows them to Britain.

Could they forge a society with the local tribes strong enough to stop Rome?
 
You don't build a colony of that scale in secrecy. And it takes a lot of resources, resources Carthage lacks at this point.

Even if they managed to do it, I do not think the Romans would simply let Carthage continue to exist for another hundred years when they have set their mind to it. They would either go there themselves, or make an alliance with the local tribes and help them destroy the Carthaganian colony.

The Carthaganians usually subjugated the locals and used them as slaves in their mines, why would they suddenly form an alliance with the rather primitive celtic tribes of Britannia?
 
Why would they do it in the first place. Carthage the city, prospered between the second and third punic wars. They were perfectly fine with being a client of Rome, as it had great economic benefits for them because they no longer had to worry about running an empire.
 
The Romans did not know much about the waters west of the Pillars of Heracles. The Carthaginians could have done it, if they had wanted to. Would they?
 
If they head south, where the Sahel belt (grassland and savanah mostly) hits the Atlantic would be the best location. Past the Sahara, but before the tropics, thus able to support the same or a similar agricultural package as they'd be familiar with.

So that would put a New Carthage in northern Senegal or southern Mauritania, maybe specifically at Dakar.

I can see it already, as their new empire expands east along the Sahel belt, Carthaginians become the founders of Timbuktu.
 
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