Could a British Empire including North America have maintained colonialism indefinitely?

Imagine the British had avoided the American Revolution through various concessions including giving the colonies political representation in the Commons. Imagine this evolved into some sort of federal system whereby the white dominions were democratically represented and became pro-Empire. Imagine the British Empire continued to expand into Asia and Africa in a similar manner to what it did in OTL.

Would the much stronger resource base of pro-British populations have allowed the Empire to hang on to its subjugation colonies into the 21st century? Or would the forces of expanding education, desire for political rights and mass protest/rebellion have forced the British into granting independence ultimately, similar to what happened to all the European colonial empires in OTL?

Let us assume butterflies in terms of intellectual thought and technology advancement are fairly restrained and those things develop similar to OTL.
 
Imagine the British had avoided the American Revolution through various concessions including giving the colonies political representation in the Commons. Imagine this evolved into some sort of federal system whereby the white dominions were democratically represented and became pro-Empire. Imagine the British Empire continued to expand into Asia and Africa in a similar manner to what it did in OTL.

Would the much stronger resource base of pro-British populations have allowed the Empire to hang on to its subjugation colonies into the 21st century? Or would the forces of expanding education, desire for political rights and mass protest/rebellion have forced the British into granting independence ultimately, similar to what happened to all the European colonial empires in OTL?

Let us assume butterflies in terms of intellectual thought and technology advancement are fairly restrained and those things develop similar to OTL.
At some point there would be little incentive for the British to keep occupation going, depending on the territories they have they would probably try to make some sort of stronger Commonwealth as trade bloc and military alliance, I imagine that a Britain that controls most of North America would probably also still control Ireland to this day but I wouldn't think they would be able to keep most of their African and Asian colonies.
 
Do major intra-European conflicts with global dimension occur ITTL? WWII in particular had a major effect on decolonization.
However, ITTL the changes would be politically visible and accumulating since the French Revolutionary wars; they probably would still occur, but not necessarily similar to OTL.
 
It wasn't just a matter of ability but also will. As in OTL, public opinion would probably turn against the African/Asian colonialism eventually. Consider the American experience in Vietnam (or the Philippines).
 
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It wasn't just a matter of ability but also will. As in OTL, public opinion would probably turn against the African/Asian colonialism eventually. Consider the American experience in Vietnam (or the Philippines).

What about French Guyana, Guadeloupe etc?
 
What about French Guyana, Guadeloupe etc?

Those are no longer colonies but have become integral parts of France. This was helped by the fact that they have small populations, so their incorporation did not change the French population too much.
 
Those are no longer colonies but have become integral parts of France. This was helped by the fact that they have small populations, so their incorporation did not change the French population too much.

Ok, so India is out, but what about a handful of African colonies? Assuming similar population growth in North America and Britain, the white areas of the Empire would have 400-500 million to dominate smaller groups.
 
Ok, so India is out, but what about a handful of African colonies? Assuming similar population growth in North America and Britain, the white areas of the Empire would have 400-500 million to dominate smaller groups.
I don't think any continental territory could feasibly stay part of the empire, maybe South Africa but even there it wouldn't be that easy and it would depend on the relation with the Boers and Africans in the East of the country.
 
If you can somehow manage to get Napoleon in charge of France in this ATL and have him succeed in establishing the continental embargo system, that might force Britain to treat its colonies a bit more fairly. At that point you have two notable paths forward:
1) Some sort of alignment between the British desire to maintain the settler colonies as markets and colonial leaders like Jefferson who wanted a nation of small farm owners, who could serve as a market
2) A concerted effort to industrialize the settler colonies just like the home islands. Somewhat more effective I think.

The French led embargo then only needs to last long enough for the colonies to gain meaningful representation in London. Which is good because the embargo probably wouldnt last much longer after Napoleon's death.

From there the various colonies of Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa are all at least somewhat plausible to retain. There are plenty of TLs about Britain retaining each of them, sometimes all of them and Canada, the old idea of the Imperial Commonwealth. Improved communication and transport tech is usually key here, steam ships and telegraphs as early as possible.

Politically Britain's greatest strength is also its greatest weakness. It is flexible enough to just make up solutions to problems when they arise, but this means they are not great at creating sensible long-term plans. This is not a uniquely British problem, but it is still a problem. This means that the push to keep the Empire together would have to come from the people generally, or else a possibly implausibly long string of politicians who see it as a priority.

Non-settler colonies are more difficult to integrate because of racism, but if they can hold on to them long enough, maybe. India is the big one, but even it might be doable in this situation. First, split it into smaller dominions, maybe 5 or 6, maybe more. This way it becomes possible to play them off of each other, a dangerous game, but a winnable one. Keep the voting franchise to the anglicized elites for as long as possible. With the population of British North America that includes the US, Britain would not automatically be overwhelmed by Indians in the Imperial Parliament. North America itself would probably host 4-6 Dominions itself, this division may in fact serve as the model for dealing with India. South Africa, Oceania, and the Home Nations would probably all be Dominions or equivalents too.
 
I don't think any continental territory could feasibly stay part of the empire, maybe South Africa but even there it wouldn't be that easy and it would depend on the relation with the Boers and Africans in the East of the country.

If the Empire includes wealthy North America, might the economic advantages of staying in tilt the balance? I can imagine a situation where they voting rights in imperial institutions when they have white rule (but not full blown apartheid) and then the voting base is expanded to "educated" blacks. It's plausible you could have more South African-like societies in places like Zambia, Kenya, Tanzania. Of course, Rhodesia was similar in our timeline.
 
If the Empire includes wealthy North America, might the economic advantages of staying in tilt the balance? I can imagine a situation where they voting rights in imperial institutions when they have white rule (but not full blown apartheid) and then the voting base is expanded to "educated" blacks. It's plausible you could have more South African-like societies in places like Zambia, Kenya, Tanzania. Of course, Rhodesia was similar in our timeline.

Will the average Indian or African share in that wealth?

And if only some of them have voting rights, why would they tolerate that?
 
One question in this however that people don't seem to consider is if South Africa will be British. With open borders to the US it seems less likely, and if Napoleon can be beaten earlier, e. G. No war of 1812, and more troops. It is possible that the Dutch retain SA.
 
If they control North America then they might control Greenland and Iceland. Depends on what you count as colonialism of course, but if you don't count Ireland perhaps those would count. I doubt they'd want anyone else in the Atlantic.
 
Imagine the British had avoided the American Revolution through various concessions including giving the colonies political representation in the Commons. Imagine this evolved into some sort of federal system whereby the white dominions were democratically represented and became pro-Empire. Imagine the British Empire continued to expand into Asia and Africa in a similar manner to what it did in OTL.

Would the much stronger resource base of pro-British populations have allowed the Empire to hang on to its subjugation colonies into the 21st century? Or would the forces of expanding education, desire for political rights and mass protest/rebellion have forced the British into granting independence ultimately, similar to what happened to all the European colonial empires in OTL?

Let us assume butterflies in terms of intellectual thought and technology advancement are fairly restrained and those things develop similar to OTL.

I won't lie, I expect that whatever school of thought would emerge would be distinct, if not considered utterly different to Colonialism. If we keep this as a uniquely Anglosphere philosophy.

Its continued existence would have to depend on the value it had to the various colonies. The system of Imperial Preference is a good start, but there are risks of conflicts. Say we assume the same colonies as OTL for ease. Australia has huge interests in trade with East Asia in the modern day, so short of someone who is able to consume their goods that could cause conflict.

This isn't insurmountable, and a long-lasting federal system that includes the OTL US is quite potent - after all, we're including huge potential import markets - and if the American system of importing European Immigrants applies to the entire Empire? Then you've got potentially a significant population with consumption needs.

A big case example of where things could be drastically different is East Africa - if we assume an increased settler presence, as well as local government being empowered (which I assume means you have rail networks that do more than facilitate exporting goods to the UK - a common change for all of these colonies), then things could be very different. Rather than simply conquering territory from native peoples, the UK could quite literally invite them into the system - perhaps under their own authorities, which would suit British interests anyway, or as 'allies/protectorates', influenced by a long-running pattern of loose control, lacking independent foreign policy, no say in democratic governments and having to provide troops, but at the same time not having to pay taxes into the system like the settler colonies (presumably). Meanwhile the large settler colonies are effectively creating small industrial centres that are trading with those allies.

The relationship between this system and those allies is a further complication (perhaps defined by the actions taken to extract the mineral resources from their lands, which isn't likely to be that different unless the concept of "othering" is weakened by this emergent philosophy)
 
Will the average Indian or African share in that wealth?

And if only some of them have voting rights, why would they tolerate that?

I don't know, which is why I wanted to test the idea with people on here. I guess it all depends on what counts as "sharing in the wealth". The African American population of OTL clearly doesn't share much of the wealth of the USA, but, on the other hand, they are much wealthier than black populations of places like Zambia or Gambia. A smaller chunk of a bigger pie can often be better in purely quantitative terms... although I accept it may seem worse psychologically, which could cause a successful independence movement.

How much of a share could the native population get? In OTL India, none of them did as well as the whites ruling the place. Beneath this there was a big difference in different areas. Bengal was pretty much entirely exploited and kept dirt poor. Punjab had huge investment in land reclamation by the Brits and a lot of locals did very well out of it. This was part of the reason Sikhs were pro-Raj prior to Amritsar. In East Africa, Asians also did very well profiting from imperial trade. To me, increased investment in infrastructure and native education are both something the Brits could do and could plausibly create a pro-British class of natives.

To be sustainable longer term, voting rights need to be given to them. That is where the challenge comes in. If the newly enfranchised natives immediately outnumber the whites, then I think independence is highly likely. The local elite will tend to see it as their sudden grasp of power and want to grab more in foreign policy etc. However if the elite is still small and outnumbered by the white settlers, it might be possible for the gradual expansion of those natives meeting the voting threshold allows the electorate to gradually become majority native in a way that doesn't cause a sudden break. However, what you would need to happen is for the voting natives to be nervous about expanding the franchise rapidly, as a quick move to universal suffrage would likely cause that sudden break.
 
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