Let's imagine a world where instead of drifting towards dominion status and then eventual independence, the British colonies which are mostly inhabited by British settlers (i.e. Canada, Australia, and New Zealand) are simply incorporated into the UK, as much a part of it as Northern Ireland is.
Centralized government might be tricky, given the distances... but if everywhere has representation in Parliament, this sort of setup should probably work. You might have to give a bit of autonomy though, make this country more federal akin to OTL Australia and Canada.
The UK's official name, by the present day, would be the "United Kingdom of Great Britain, Northern Ireland, Canada, and Australia". (with Canada and Australia considered equal constituent kingdoms just like Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and Newfoundland counted as part of Canada and New Zealand counted as part of Australia for these purposes). By land area, it would be the world's largest country: bigger than Russia!
In that map, I removed the most populous and francophone parts of Quebec from Canada, because in such a world I highly doubt the Quebecois would accept being part of an Anglophone-dominated union, so we'd see an Ireland-style partition and independence of Quebec.
Now, what I'm wondering is... if history proceeds mostly as in OTL up to and past WW2, other than minor changes inevitable in this scenario... (one major inevitable change other than the immediate side-effects of this scenario would be that this bigger and multicontinental UK probably wouldn't join the EU)...
What sort of demographics/population distribution would we see in this UK, especially by the present day?
Looking at the OTL 2019 population...
Great Britain and Northern Ireland: 67.5 million people
Canada, minus most of Quebec's population: 32 million people
Australia: 25.5 million people
New Zealand: 5 million people
Total: 130 million people.
There is a pretty dramatic thing that you can see. More than half of this population is in the UK!
And the UK is a tiny island, in comparison to Canada and Australia.
So what I'm thinking is... in this world, especially following the implementation of Green Belt laws in Britain if that still happens... and also especially following the arrival of the jet plane... I think we would see a LOT of emigration from the island of Great Britain, to Australia and Canada. This trend would probably start in the 1960s and continue to the present day.
We might end up looking at a TTL population more like this:
Great Britain and Northern Ireland: 43 million people
Canada, minus most of Quebec's population: 47 million people
Australia: 33 million people
New Zealand: 7 million people
That's just my guess, but it seems fairly possible.
In OTL, there's a controversy about building on green belt land in the UK... building on already-crowded countryside... but ITTL I think we might see a situation where new building in Great Britain at least is just almost stopped altogether, with a declining population due to emigration.
It's interesting to think how development would be different in this world.
Centralized government might be tricky, given the distances... but if everywhere has representation in Parliament, this sort of setup should probably work. You might have to give a bit of autonomy though, make this country more federal akin to OTL Australia and Canada.
The UK's official name, by the present day, would be the "United Kingdom of Great Britain, Northern Ireland, Canada, and Australia". (with Canada and Australia considered equal constituent kingdoms just like Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and Newfoundland counted as part of Canada and New Zealand counted as part of Australia for these purposes). By land area, it would be the world's largest country: bigger than Russia!
In that map, I removed the most populous and francophone parts of Quebec from Canada, because in such a world I highly doubt the Quebecois would accept being part of an Anglophone-dominated union, so we'd see an Ireland-style partition and independence of Quebec.
Now, what I'm wondering is... if history proceeds mostly as in OTL up to and past WW2, other than minor changes inevitable in this scenario... (one major inevitable change other than the immediate side-effects of this scenario would be that this bigger and multicontinental UK probably wouldn't join the EU)...
What sort of demographics/population distribution would we see in this UK, especially by the present day?
Looking at the OTL 2019 population...
Great Britain and Northern Ireland: 67.5 million people
Canada, minus most of Quebec's population: 32 million people
Australia: 25.5 million people
New Zealand: 5 million people
Total: 130 million people.
There is a pretty dramatic thing that you can see. More than half of this population is in the UK!
And the UK is a tiny island, in comparison to Canada and Australia.
So what I'm thinking is... in this world, especially following the implementation of Green Belt laws in Britain if that still happens... and also especially following the arrival of the jet plane... I think we would see a LOT of emigration from the island of Great Britain, to Australia and Canada. This trend would probably start in the 1960s and continue to the present day.
We might end up looking at a TTL population more like this:
Great Britain and Northern Ireland: 43 million people
Canada, minus most of Quebec's population: 47 million people
Australia: 33 million people
New Zealand: 7 million people
That's just my guess, but it seems fairly possible.
In OTL, there's a controversy about building on green belt land in the UK... building on already-crowded countryside... but ITTL I think we might see a situation where new building in Great Britain at least is just almost stopped altogether, with a declining population due to emigration.
It's interesting to think how development would be different in this world.