Could British empire have survived?

RousseauX

Donor
When you have the Smoot Hawley Tariff Act you don’t need carrots and sticks to persuade people to trade with you rather than the Americans. I think you forget how mild in comparison the depression was in the UK compared to the US. Absent WW2 then America could have been isolated from world trade till the late 40s
The Roosevelt administration effectively started repealing smoot Hawley in 1934
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reciprocal_Tariff_Act


The American trend towards trade liberalization started with FDR's election, long before the war started
 
Hmm you have to think what an empire is in the 21st century formal colonial governors with ostrich feathers have been replaced by financial institutions and companies with mineral exploitation rights, with perhaps discrete military backing for our man. Look at Oman or Brunei for examples.
So if the nuclear weapons had preserved the powers of the 1930s the UK could be the financial leader of a Sterling Zone that was the largest part of the world economy. With a lot of ex colonies that were financially tied to a UK dominated financial system

Nuclear weapons would only preserve existing powers if they were used, otherwise the threat of using them would not be credible. Does that actually sound worth it?

Also, with regards to your post below this, what makes you think Smoot Hawley would last any longer than OTL?
 

hipper

Banned
Nuclear weapons would only preserve existing powers if they were used, otherwise the threat of using them would not be credible. Does that actually sound worth it?

Also, with regards to your post below this, what makes you think Smoot Hawley would last any longer than OTL?

Well in OTL they were used exactly twice, and they Successfully averted large scale war. And almost anything that prevented World War Two would be worth it.
 
To be honest let there be an invention of atom bombs in the 1920s would probably preserve then UK’s position and freeze international relations that would probably preserve the British position for the maximum period.
There's a GURPS Infinite Worlds parallel where something like that happened.
 
It seems to me that the British pursued a rather short sighted all in policy during WW2 that cost them their empire in the aftermath, and loss of status as a superpower. Is there any way for Britain to keep it's empire, most of all India, by approaching WW2 diferently. Bonus points if Britain fights Nazi's alone and doesn't fall under US influence.

Also, is there any time travel timeline that you'd recommend on this forum which features a time traveler going to Pre-WW2 or WW2 period Britain and helping it out? I already found plenty of Nazi ones and was wondering about other side. Cheers

After WW2, I don't think so. The colonies are costing Britain hefty sums of money. I think the only way the British Empire could have survived is that WW1 ends earlier. If I recall correctly, there is a TL in this forum named Rule Britannia by Anaxagoras. (BTW, this TL is one the best I've read.)
 
If you have any want to save the Empire you have to start early. 1870-1890 and Chamberlain's Imperial federation is probably the latest. And what comes out at the end is very definitely not the British Empire
 

Anchises

Banned
Every Empire falls. What we are talking about here is how to delay the inevitable.

Imho there are 3 main ways to achieve this result:

1) The Dystopia:

An asshole ASB (or a dramatic POD) convinces the political Establishment of Great Britain that the Nazis are actually swell guys and that their desire to create a continental Empire of Barbarism and Slavery is a great idea.

They display "benevolent neutrality". Instead of burdening their budget with rearmament and the costs of war they make a ton of profit. They supply the Nazis with trucks, ressources etc. so that the Nazis are deep in their debt once the Lebensraum is conquered.

"Evil Bonus Points": Great Britain is "inspired" by the Nazis and uses genocidal violence in the colonies once the situation becomes unstable.

Pretty ugly TL and violates the "British" character of the Empire.

2) The Nazis are beaten early. Rhineland or Munich. Several people mentioned this already.

3) Great Britain stays out of WW1. WW2 is prevented and the costs of the Great War are prevented. Great Britain stays a super power at least until the 60s-70s.
 
Pretty much. Every Empire falls. If you'd want it to survive, you'd need to loosen the rules. Rather than political dominance, have economical dominance. Invest money, time and effort into building these places as proper nations and have them become reliant on British assistance as a result; the system too tied down. Hell, the Commonwealth could become this. They have their own rule and acknolwedgement but at the end of the day, Britain still has them firmly and tightly by the balls.
 
People are saying "every empire falls", but I think that is just because the most successful empires are those who last so long they can afford to rebrand themselves a nation. In fact big land empires like China and Russia seem almost impossible to get rid of sans genocide.

In any case, I think the best chance for a long lasting British Empire is to have a fully multicultural, multinational Imperial elite. This is near ASB culturally speaking but it is the only way a modern Empire could ever hope to match the longevity of an ancient one. In due course they'd have to accept a capital outside of Britain and the reduction of England to a well-off but demographically insignificant province of only sentimental value, and this was simply something no one dared think about.

In many ways the Modern empires were pretty pathetic as political constructs when compared to those of the ancients, and they were so because of the racism and class prejudice that sat so totally incoherently with the professed values of the European enlightenment.
 
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... Absent WW2 then America could have been isolated from world trade till the late 40s

Isolated has the wrong feel. Stagnated is a better term. Imports & exports still happened, but the gross was smaller than 1925 or 1905. The destruction of the US economy in the interwar years was a complex thing & the Tariffs were one of many factors.
 
I think if you found a way to give dominion status to those countries in Africa and India and make sure the locals have a say in it, then technically you'd still have a British Empire, but not fully. Also, such a position might still lead to a lot of issues. Imagine places in Africa or India having a civil war between dominionists and those who want a Republic.
 
I think if you found a way to give dominion status to those countries in Africa and India and make sure the locals have a say in it, then technically you'd still have a British Empire, but not fully. Also, such a position might still lead to a lot of issues. Imagine places in Africa or India having a civil war between dominionists and those who want a Republic.
Dominion status as it was evolving by the 1931 Statute of Westminster was pretty much being independent but within a currency, trade and defence union. Sort of a combination of the Eurozone and NATO, with the Law Lords taking the role of the ECJ. The UK did benefit because it had the financial centre and seigniorage powers, plus control of the armed forces and judiciary, so it might still be called an "empire". The term British Commonwealth and Empire (BCE) was in vogue then, to distinguish between Colonies (Empire) and Dominions (Commonwealth). It was IMHO a feasible strategy, especially if the process had started earlier than WW! or even with giving India Dominion status in 199-21.

How long former Colonies and even the Dominions would remain happy with this arrangement is another matter. It would be different from country to country - Canada for instance would have found trade with the US becoming more important than trade with the rest of the BCE very early, so it would leave the Sterling area quite quickly. Others might find the trade links beneficial (Australia & New Zealand) but find the City's dominance of their financial sectors unwelcome. Or the UK's inability to protect them in a WW2 analogue a reason to lean to the US.
 
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I don't think so, not without some significant changes. WW1 is often sited as the fist time the British government started to realise the problem with maintaining an Empire as large as theirs. Further integration is just not as possible without major changes to British society and law. These were things that just weren't acceptable at the time and to a degree even today.

They tried to head this off with the Commonwealth, but to myself I envision this as coming too late, combined with British politicians just wanting to get rid of colonial territories as quickly as possible. I don't think the British are entirely to blame for the violence that would follow in places like Africa and the Middle East, but I do think they share a large part of the responsibility in not managing this process better.

In theory a better way to handle this would be to present sooner a set list of requirements to reach dominion status. Agreed borders, languages, governance, representation agreed within the empire, laws, military. Setting these clear indicators up and starting this sooner would do a lot in tying the Empire together for longer and keeping it more stable.
 
The British Empire treated some countries like India differently from the others depending on the resources which led to some of the independence movements. Also the size of the empire led to the constant threat of an attack on the colonies by enemies of the British such as in WW2. Too keep the empire in one piece they would have to change their ruling policies and vastly expand their defensive forces.
 

Deleted member 94680

I honestly think the ‘best’ you can hope for is Britain plus the Dominions in a tighter union of some form - a *Commonwealth of some kind.

Whether the door is left open to Indian/African colonies to join at a later date if they want, I’m not sure.

I’m sure I remember reading a book on the Korean conflict quoting an Australian (IIRC) officer being positive about the Commonwealth Division / Brigade and looking forward to the formations as the future of “imperial” military operations.
 
Yes and no. Things change, I think the Empire had to evolve to survive, in many ways it did, look at the emergence of the Dominions, yet in too many ways it did not and thus it tore itself asunder. One root problem was trade, the British needed free trade and lower cost imports, exports to the Empire were not significant and once the notion of a trade bloc is seen the domestic industry is far too disadvantaged to thrive. And I agree, the closing of the global trade place and shift to fencing in your bloc was likely more hurtful than we can fathom to the Empire. Add to this the snobbery of the English who in this era not simply feel culturally superior but also racially so, a sentiment that not simply alienated African or Indian but set wedges with the "white" Dominions too. Even if we can keep the Empire sidelined in the Great War one must consider Irish Home Rule. In certain ways that was the test and the first string pulled to unravel the Empire.

Without going back further, I think the best starting place is the Great War, have it be without the British openly in it and give the Irish a way to regain their independence yet stay at the table. From that you wash away the crippling debt, the loss of invincibility, a Europe far removed from the eternal brink of war, familiar trade patterns surviving, the Empire left as the strongest European power. You still have India who will one day reassert her independence but even without it, the Empire had relevance if the Dominions become part of a Sterling dominated trade bloc, not a closed one but one linked by improving shipping, communications and continued cultural influence from Britain. A multi-polar world with the British Empire, Russia, USA, German Empire and Japan should give the Empire a place to fit in a world both more settled and still competitive. At that point British industry can better renew itself to compete globally like the USA and secondarily the Germans. We can at best get a world of peers, if the proud London barons can accept that fate then London remains one of the centers of the world and they hold far more power than they do today.
 
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