DBWI: What if France hadn't preserved its national honor in the Franco-Prussian war?

Do the British really consider themselves a third bloc historically? Even soon after the Anglo-Entente War, they were fairly cordial with the other European monarchies which were F.E.K. members, mainly due to having a greater threat in the U.S., which wanted to spread technocratic rule to Canada and Britain's other New World colonies, and even after the détente the I.F. has remained on good terms with the rest of Europe. They may not be a formal member of the F.E.K., but they're clearly aligned towards their fellow monarchies on the mainland.

Well, there's a reason I put in in inverted commas :p

I see what you're saying, and there are lots of cases where Britain has leaned more towards Europe. The Calais Accords of the 1930s are one great example - the provision of joint patrols between the Royal Navy and the various European fleets in the Atlantic are commonly thought to have been a response to increasing US naval buildup in the Caribbean and on the Great Lakes.

I would hesitate to place them firmly in the European camp, however. It's important to remember that the original rise of the Franco-German partnership was a significant challenge to Britain (partly motivating the Imperial Federation movement, which is why I was asking about its plausibility in a timeline without rapprochement in Europe). The Naval Races of the 1890s and 1910s between Britain and the F-G Entente were a realm threat to Britain's imperial position.

And of course, as HIM Dogson mentioned, the Partition of Belgium in the leadup to the Great European War was the big moment where Britain realised it would have to abandon its commitment to preventing a single, hegemonic bloc forming on the Continent. It was that or making up with the hated Russians, which is vaguely plausible but unlikely, given the nature of the regime.

Now of course these events never forced London into America's arms, and relations between Britain and the continent have improved since the Great Eastern War and the War to End All Wars (dynastic relationships helped there, of course). But I would still hesitate to place the British Commonwealth wholly in the European camp - there are still significant disagreements, particularly over Britain's insistence on upholding the Two-Power Standard in navy size, even if that is a mostly theoretical discussion these days.

India was always a lost cause once decolonization began in earnest; maybe you could get a more unified country instead of the mess we have in the subcontinent today, but even then that's unlikely due to the sheer diversity of the lands of the former British Raj. The British weren't very popular in most of Africa (save, of course, for Cape), so decolonization there was also pretty inevitable.

I quite agree. I think a united India is almost totally implausible - the cultural and religious diversity is a non-started for any type of uniform nationalism. 'India' was a British construct, and the fall of the Raj inevitably left us with that patchwork-quilt of a confederation we see today. It would be interesting to see to what extent a more prolonged British presence there (perhaps into the 1920s, after OTL's Great European War) would produce a wider regional identity.

I'd also agree about Africa. I think the Cape and the Suez Sovereign Base Area is about the maximum they can reasonably keep in continental Africa - and of course the latter exists on the sufferance of the King of Egypt.
 
I'd also agree about Africa. I think the Cape and the Suez Sovereign Base Area is about the maximum they can reasonably keep in continental Africa - and of course the latter exists on the sufferance of the King of Egypt.

Maybe that was true up 'till the 50's with the British Empire still recovering from the Great European War, or even the 70's with the Arab revival and the American/Franco-German blocs dueling for influence and giving out handouts, but the situation has long since swung back around. Egypt exists, in its current state, only at the sufferance of the British Empire. If they were to pull out of the Suez, Cairo would fall to neo-Zoroastrian reactionaries, Palestine would occupy the whole Sinai peninsula, and Sudan would secede to form their own Jewish state, like they've been threatening to for the past five decades. The Sultan only stays in power so long as he has a backer, and the British are the best backers he's going to get.
 
Maybe that was true up 'till the 50's with the British Empire still recovering from the Great European War, or even the 70's with the Arab revival and the American/Franco-German blocs dueling for influence and giving out handouts, but the situation has long since swung back around. Egypt exists, in its current state, only at the sufferance of the British Empire. If they were to pull out of the Suez, Cairo would fall to neo-Zoroastrian reactionaries, Palestine would occupy the whole Sinai peninsula, and Sudan would secede to form their own Jewish state, like they've been threatening to for the past five decades. The Sultan only stays in power so long as he has a backer, and the British are the best backers he's going to get.

Well I suppose that all links into the nature of the lease. It does theoretically rely on the King's favour, but I'd agree that the military cooperation agreements between the British and Egyptian governments (including assistance in the event of 'internal unrest') is what keep the aforementioned King on his throne. In fact, I'd go so far as to argue that British favour is all that keeps Egypt together at present - with the R.E.K favourable to the Palestinian Khedivate and the U.S.A supporting the Sudanese Jews, external forces would otherwise be too much for Egypt to bear.

Anyway, back to the question at hand. What would Egypt look like without an F.E.K? I suspect that the British would still become involved there, but might be able to exert power more forcibly without the extra strain incurred from the naval races.
 
Well I suppose that all links into the nature of the lease. It does theoretically rely on the King's favour, but I'd agree that the military cooperation agreements between the British and Egyptian governments (including assistance in the event of 'internal unrest') is what keep the aforementioned King on his throne. In fact, I'd go so far as to argue that British favour is all that keeps Egypt together at present - with the R.E.K favourable to the Palestinian Khedivate and the U.S.A supporting the Sudanese Jews, external forces would otherwise be too much for Egypt to bear.

Anyway, back to the question at hand. What would Egypt look like without an F.E.K? I suspect that the British would still become involved there, but might be able to exert power more forcibly without the extra strain incurred from the naval races.

Regardless of anything else, the British will still have built the Suez canal (which was completed before my POD). So considering how utterly critical it is to keep the British isles in contact with Australia, and previously with India, it stays a strategic priority of the British basically regardless of how the timeline goes. After all, we've seen firsthand how badly the British Commonwealths want to be united.

But meanwhile, as we've seen with the Roman Empire, the Byzantine Empire, the HRE, and now the F.E.K., Europe is destined to unite, fall apart, and reunite in the same way as china. But with a different Franco-prussian war not leading into a Franco-german entente and therefore the F.E.K., the bloc leaders likely becomes someone else.

Maybe the French ally with the Russians, to get back at the Germans, we get a late Great European War after the french help the Russians mechanize, and we get an absolutist bonapartist-romanov europe, which likely ends with the continentals seizing the suez for themselves to maintain their connection with Russia's pacific holdings and French indochina. Maybe the germans turn a more decisive win against france into an early Großgermany, possibly including the rest of the Austro-Hungarian empire's holdings this time. In this case, while they won't care about the Suez for its own utility, they might use it to provoke the British into war, which means france will likely find itself backing them against their ancient enemy, resulting in the formation of a germany-lead block. Or hell, since the consensus seems to be that the Bonapartes stay in power, maybe Napoleon IV just works his magic as in OTL, reforms the Napoleonic empire (without the germanic parts), and then swarms the rest of europe with Gallo-italic and Catalonian manpower to reform the Napoleonic empire (with the germanic parts.) In which case, obviously the french would take the chance with fuck with the British, because when have they not?

So with Britain virtually guaranteed to come in conflict with the continent at some point, and the conditions that caused the Great European war to happen as it did so unlikely in any other timeline, I think it's very likely we'd get a harsher war, and in turn a harsher peace. (Like seriously, that war was weird; we've lived our whole life with the status quo, so we can't properly conceive of how bizarre the Franco-German-Russian entente would have seemed to anyone before the 1900's, even with the treaty of Versailles heralding good Franco-german relations, and the Polish Agreement easing the Russo-german tensions, it was essentially a mistake that lead to Germany's direct involvement on the side of the Netherlands during the Belgian Partition). It would take much longer, ATL, for the British commonwealths to reform under some analogue to the Imperial federation, and in the meanwhile whichever european power(s) form a bloc are going to take Egypt. And without a "neutral" egypt, that bloc probably has a much easier time spreading influence throughout the middle east, and therefore doesn't need to invest as much into it, which in turn would prevent the prosperity that lead to the Arab Revival and therefore the Caliphate Wars. So without all the knockoffs from that, Egypt is likely, ironically, far more stable ATL. Maybe even enough to seize the suez back for themselves by the late nineties. Plus, they probably wouldn't fold to anglo-american demands to resettle Jews to the Sudan in the first place, so they wouldn't have to deal with separatists.
 
But meanwhile, as we've seen with the Roman Empire, the Byzantine Empire, the HRE, and now the F.E.K., Europe is destined to unite, fall apart, and reunite in the same way as china. But with a different Franco-prussian war not leading into a Franco-german entente and therefore the F.E.K., the bloc leaders likely becomes someone else.
This mostly just seems like European propaganda. When did the Eastern Roman Empire or Holy Roman Empire unite Europe? Similarly, while there are obviously debates over it, to me the F.E.K. seems more like a supranational organization than a country. Granted, the alliance is fairly centralized, but the constituent monarchies have enough autonomy to where I think it's more accurate to refer to it as a multinational organization. Of course, I understand the idea of it being a full-on country, but that's just my opinion.

I really don't think the whole "the empire, long united, must divide; long divided, must unite" idea applies to Europe though. It was only really allied under Rome, Charlemagne for a brief period, Napoleon for a brief period, and now the F.E.K. (though again, that's somewhat debatable).
 
While most Americans don't particularly care about 18th-century european conflicts, the Franco-Prussian war remains famous for its exceptionally fair peace deal. Yes, France indisputably lost the war, Napoleon III's declaration of war a clear miscalculation. Prussia's superior mobilization speed and military won them a clear-cut victory over the course of the next year. However, due to a few lucky coincidences in the first months of the war, France was able to keep fighting for longer and with far more vigour than Bismarck had anticipated. In particular, France's rapid adoption of the Mitrailleuse rifle caused by prewar leaks and the nearly-miraculous feats performed by its users made the Prussians afraid that France could hold out long enough to form an alliance with one of the other continental powers.

Thus, the Treaty of Versailles.

Prussia gained roughly half of Alsace-Lorraine/Elsaß-Lothringen, splitting the territory across carefully drawn ethnic lines, but agreed to pay France in compensation for the territory gained. Both powers neatly sidestepped the issue of culpability for the war by agreeing that it was "an unfortunate incident caused by diplomatic miscommunications", and Emperors William I and Napoleon III swapped apologies. France agreed to recognize the unification of the German peoples, and "never seek to tear them once again asunder," and as we found out after the Belgian Partition, Germany made a secret agreement to remain neutral if France attempted to reconquer Wallonia.

But what if this hadn't happened? Let's take a POD where the existence of the Mitrailleuse rifle never becomes public knowledge, and the French government in turn keeps it too much of a secret to properly train their soldiers in its use. That means no improbable victories or escapes, which in turn means a much shorter, much more humiliating war. Let's say, six months. What does the ATL treaty of versailles look like? How does it affect the scramble for africa, or the scramble for Asia, or the Great European War, or the War to End All Wars?

OOC: In this timeline, is Belgium partitioned between France and the Netherlands, with Wallonia going to France and Flanders going to the Netherlands?
 
OOC: In this timeline, is Belgium partitioned between France and the Netherlands, with Wallonia going to France and Flanders going to the Netherlands?

OOC: That's for someone to write an in-character post to decide. It's been confirmed that France gets Wallonia, but the rest of belgium is up for grabs.
 
Well, that's assuming that the US still wins all the wars it does. The Great Eastern War basically established the US as a superpower OTL, but the war with Japan was a really near thing, especially because Russia only joined after the IJN had been decisively defeated. With Europe so different the GEW might be completely different (possibly being part of a sort of Second Great War) or not happen at all, given that it basically was caused by a clash of the American and Japanese spheres of influence in the power vacuum left by the fall of the British Empire.

You’d butterfly American involvement in China then—which IIRC was key to the victory of the Republican forces.

Maybe that was true up 'till the 50's with the British Empire still recovering from the Great European War, or even the 70's with the Arab revival and the American/Franco-German blocs dueling for influence and giving out handouts, but the situation has long since swung back around. Egypt exists, in its current state, only at the sufferance of the British Empire. If they were to pull out of the Suez, Cairo would fall to neo-Zoroastrian reactionaries, Palestine would occupy the whole Sinai peninsula, and Sudan would secede to form their own Jewish state, like they've been threatening to for the past five decades. The Sultan only stays in power so long as he has a backer, and the British are the best backers he's going to get.

Calling the modern Ismaili-influenced schools of Islamic thought in Egypt “neo-Zoroastrian” is a bit of an exaggeration. I’d call the relatively minor differences (apart from the extremist nature of these schools) Shia more than anything else.

Also, it’s the little region of Beta Israel in the far south of Egypt that throws around the idea of a Jewish state, not Sudan. And they’re more likely to throw in with the Ethiopian nationalists if they ever succeed in breaking free IMO.
 
If France is humiliated enough, they might try to go to war with Germany again. They might even still be enemies today.
 
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