European colonies survive into the 21st century

Today, the once mighty colonial empires of Europe consist mainly of a bunch of Islands, French Guiana, and some other places. What would have had to happen for large scale colonialism to remain into the 21st century? It would be milder, than its 19th and early to mid 20th century counterparts. I have heard of no major human rights abuses in French Guiana, for example.
 
The first and best thing you can do is avoid World War One. This would do so many things to keep Imperialism alive: prevent a fair amount of European deaths and declining birthrates after the war, for starters. Most of the excess population would still go to the Americas, but some would go to the colonies, and with stronger economies and populations it's much easier for the European Powers to keep their colonies in check.

Besides a change in demographics (the biggest one), preventing World War One provides a lot of other bonuses for Colonial Empires: more robust economies more reliant on international trade, including colonies, which means a European Country's colonies are even more connected to the Mother Country than IOTL, Intact infrastructure at home allowing investment abroad to grow, less focus on self-determination both at home and in the colonies that makes it easier to justify oppression, a lack of shifting Colonial Borders that ensured colonies weren't really loyal to any one European master, and finally more of a commitment towards war and Empire among Europe's populace than IOTL, which IOTL they were dissuaded from thanks to Total War.

Even IOTL, if a European Country was willing to truly commit to keeping its colonies, they often did, particularly in Africa. Look at Portugal, who hung onto their colonies and committed troops to do so quite successfully for a time. More importantly, ITTL there will be no two huge superpowers attacking Imperialism at every turn; the Superpowers of the World, besides the US (which will not be as strong as IOTL thanks to the fact that a lot of the World's Capital that went to America IOTL is staying in Europe), will all pretty much actively encourage Imperialism.

Avoid the World Wars, and Colonial Empires can continue pretty much indefinitely. If European Empires start messing with Eugenics and wholesale Genocide to start making "loyal" White areas in their colonies (another effect of no World Wars is less of an aversion to genocide and White supremacy), things get even easier for them.
 
Today, the once mighty colonial empires of Europe consist mainly of a bunch of Islands, French Guiana, and some other places. What would have had to happen for large scale colonialism to remain into the 21st century?

IMO: The triumph of reactionary authoritarianism over democracy. The eventual demise of colonialism was implicit in the premises of liberal democracy, as it existed in 1900. The rising superpower, the U.S., was deeply unsympathetic to colonial rule. The Versailles settlement in Europe elevated national self-determination to a supreme principle - then restricted it to whites, causing widespread resentment. That contradiction was going to bring down colonialism, eventually - if liberal democracy remained the dominant ideology.

However, liberal democracy might have foundered in the mid-century crisis. I have envisioned an alt-WW II in which a deeper economic crisis spawned outright Red rebellions the U.S. and Britain, leading to quasi-fascist regimes in those countries. The U.S. and UK allied with Germany and Italy to crush Red France, the USSR, and their ally-of-convenience Japan.

After the War, the colonial powers (including France, where the victors installed a reactionary government), ruthlessly suppressed all independence movements, and this world order persisted into the 2000s.

It would be milder, than its 19th and early to mid 20th century counterparts.
I think it has to be harsher than in the early 20th century. For a long time, most colonial peoples submitted quietly to rule by the colonizers, because they had always been governed arbitrarily - by locals, near outsiders, now over-seas strangers, what was the big difference? In the 20th century, they began hearing about self-determination, democracy, and the principles of the American Declaration of Independence. And they realized they didn't have to submit. They demanded autonomy at the least, or formal independence, and liberals (in the classic meaning) agreed.

From that time on, colonial rule could have been sustained beyond 1960 only by harsh repression, backed up by authoritarian (and at least mildly racialist) attitudes in the colonizing countries.

There is a sort of utopian alternative, in which the colonies become fully autonomous but still non-sovereign dependencies. I don't think that is really plausible, because of the example of the "white Dominions".

As of say 1850, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand were colonies. By 1950, they were sovereign countries. In 1914, Britain's declaration of war on Germany automatically applied to them, as much as to India or the African colonies or the West Indies. In 1939, they were just as loyal to Britain, but they issued their own declarations of war. So did India, actually - though there was great resentment on the part of the Indian Congress that it was done unilaterally by the Viceroy.

(It would be interesting to know when the Dominions began establishing their own diplomatic relations with, for instance, the U.S. - or say Italy.)

By 2000, all colonies except the smallest would insist on being sovereign.

A PoD to establish more permanent colonial rule would have to be long before 1900, IMO.
 
Avoiding World War One is pretty much impossible without an ASB giving everyone nuclear weapons in the early 1900s. Instead, a CP victory which results in the German colonial empire being maintained is probably the easiest way to have colonial holdings survive.
 

King Thomas

Banned
You have to have no WW1 and have the Imperial powers be ready to be extremely brutal. One thing that might help is for them to let the colony go that most wants to be free, cut off it's trade so it ends up in poverty and chaos, and say to the other colonies that they too could be freed, but that is how they will end up like if they do.
 
Avoiding World War One is pretty much impossible without an ASB giving everyone nuclear weapons in the early 1900s. Instead, a CP victory which results in the German colonial empire being maintained is probably the easiest way to have colonial holdings survive.

That's not true at all. For such a really strong response, you're gonna need to provide evidence.

Avoiding Wilhelm being such an arse would be an excellent start, which would reduce tensions between Germany and Britain and generally make Germany less Aggressive. But you don't even need to do that; crisises can be averted, and there was no reason things had to explode into a Great War IOTL.
 
That's not true at all. For such a really strong response, you're gonna need to provide evidence.

Avoiding Wilhelm being such an arse would be an excellent start, which would reduce tensions between Germany and Britain and generally make Germany less Aggressive. But you don't even need to do that; crisises can be averted, and there was no reason things had to explode into a Great War IOTL.

It's hard to prove a negative, but everything I have read about German decision-making in the early-mid 1910s emphasizes their feeling that they needed to push for war in the immediate future, before Russia's post-1905 reforms could proceed any further. As for reducing tensions between Germany and Britain, I'm not saying that it was destined that the British take sides against Germany, it was possible it could have ended up being neutral. As a matter of fact, a TL which can be found on my sig features an alt-WW1 in which Britain is neutral, although it does end up fighting the Germans later on...
 
It's hard to prove a negative, but everything I have read about German decision-making in the early-mid 1910s emphasizes their feeling that they needed to push for war in the immediate future, before Russia's post-1905 reforms could proceed any further. As for reducing tensions between Germany and Britain, I'm not saying that it was destined that the British take sides against Germany, it was possible it could have ended up being neutral. As a matter of fact, a TL which can be found on my sig features an alt-WW1 in which Britain is neutral, although it does end up fighting the Germans later on...

Again, like I said, changing Wilhelm from being such a frustrated guy would have gone a long way in helping this. And even so, you'll notice that Europe wasn't exactly a powderkeg; there had been numerous war scares several times before, and yet the end of the world didn't come.
 
Again, like I said, changing Wilhelm from being such a frustrated guy would have gone a long way in helping this.

That would have to involve a pre-1900 POD. In any case, he wasn't an all-powerful dictator, and I find it likely that even had his own views been different, those of other senior leaders, particularly those of the armed forces, would have have been similar to what they were OTL.

And even so, you'll notice that Europe wasn't exactly a powderkeg; there had been numerous war scares several times before, and yet the end of the world didn't come.

Those previous war scares involved a fundamentally different situation from the 1914 one. Prior to the early-mid 1910s, Germany's situation was growing more, not less, favorable. In such a circumstance, it had no incentive to push for war when things are going its way anyway. By that time, however, it was clear that Russia's post-1905 growth meant the window of opportunity for the Heer to quickly defeat France was closing, and the overwhelming consensus was that it was essential to act before that happened.

Edit: Perhaps "pretty much impossible" is too strong. The outbreak of WW1 was not dictated by the laws of physics. But it was very likely given the circumstances outlined above.
 
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Today, the once mighty colonial empires of Europe consist mainly of a bunch of Islands, French Guiana, and some other places. What would have had to happen for large scale colonialism to remain into the 21st century? It would be milder, than its 19th and early to mid 20th century counterparts. I have heard of no major human rights abuses in French Guiana, for example.

It needs to be profitable. The colonial middle class shouldn't raise much of a fuss over the empire-colony relationship. Maybe a religion-based nationalism that ties the elites between colony and empire together?
 
I honestly don't think it's realistic. Explanations:

1. Colonialism had an economic logic: in the level of development of the 19c, the European core needed to export manufactured goods to the periphery. A handful of small states could export to other core states, like Switzerland, but the big ones - Britain, France, Germany - all built large colonial empires with captive markets. In the level of development of the second half of the 20c, and arguably even the early 20c, this was no longer necessary - nowadays economic specialization is such that first-world countries mostly trade with other first-world countries, and aren't as reliant on third-world raw materials. The result is that the economic benefits of colonialism are greatly reduced.

2. Colonialism in most cases manufactured the rope with which it hanged itself. It needed an educated native middle class to staff administrative jobs - even in Dutch colonialism, which was much less reliant on natives than British colonialism. This led to the formation of pan-Indian nationalism, pan-Africanism plus nationalisms of individual African countries, Vietnamese nationalism, and so on.

It's fortunate that WW1 and WW2 raised the cost of keeping empires around, leading to midcentury decolonization, but if it hadn't happened then, it would have happened a few decades later. Of note, Portugal stayed neutral in WW2 and pretended to be a pluricontinental state, but eventually had to decolonize in the 1970s anyway.
 
If you want colonial empires to survive - wave away WW2.

WW2 saw massive change to global economics, starting with the Lend-Lease and continuing with Russian support for the Assad family in Syria.

OTL in return for Lend-Lease, the USA gained access to trade wth most of Britain's colonies. By the end of WW2, Britain was economically exhausted and USA merchants cheerfully moved in to fill the gap.

Secondly, LL encouraged the Russian Army to continue fighting. LL allowed Russian industry to neglect motorcycle manufacturing, 1/2 track manufacturing, truck manufacturing, etc. to concentrate on SMG, tank and fighter plane factories. During WW2, the Russian Army started with LL weapons, but developed their own war-winning arms industry. After WW2, the Soviet Union financed a variety of "Wars of Independence" in Asia, Africa, South America, etc. Many times the USSR merely supplied old tribal feuds - under the facade of supporting local communists (Angola, Bolivia, Cuba, Eritria, Namibia, Viet Nam, Zimbabwe, etc.).

Later, Communist China continued the Soviet tradition of supporting local communist insurrections.
Both Communist China and the USSR cheerfully sold weapons to anyone who could pay .... especially oil-rich Arabs.

Canadian soldiers were mightily annoyed when they captured Bren Guns and Bren Gun Carriers during the Korean War!
 
The first and best thing you can do is avoid World War One. This would do so many things to keep Imperialism alive: prevent a fair amount of European deaths and declining birthrates after the war, for starters. Most of the excess population would still go to the Americas, but some would go to the colonies, and with stronger economies and populations it's much easier for the European Powers to keep their colonies in check.

Even if you prevent WWI, there's still agitation around at the colonies for independence, or at least autonomy, particularly in India and Indonesia...
And once these colonies become independent in the future, then there's a precedent sent...

The only real way colonies can survive is if they're treated as equal members with respect to the colonizers...
That's why the remaining territories are still part of the metropole, like with the French DOM-TOM, where the people there are legally the same as the people in mainland France...
But it's ASB, because of the nature of colonialism itself...
And the fact that if they do so, then the centre of power would shift to the larger colonies, like India and Indonesia...

And it's key for the equality to be a thing, because a lot of the agitation for independence came from the Western-educated colonized who saw the dichotomy between ideas of equality and the reality of subjugation, and were like "How come even though I can get that education, we're still considered as inferior?"
 
The only real way colonies can survive is if they're treated as equal members with respect to the colonizers...
That's why the remaining territories are still part of the metropole, like with the French DOM-TOM, where the people there are legally the same as the people in mainland France...

[...]

And it's key for the equality to be a thing, because a lot of the agitation for independence came from the Western-educated colonized who saw the dichotomy between ideas of equality and the reality of subjugation, and were like "How come even though I can get that education, we're still considered as inferior?"

It can be argued Algeria could have stayed French, had the metropole reined the pied-noir establishment and accepted to give more rights to the Arab and Berber natives.
On the other hand, the greater population of Algeria relative to the mainland would have caused an imbalance for the deciders, and it could have caused an excessive entanglement in the political situation of the neighbors - Mali, Libya, Niger and others.
So Algeria could have a status equivalent to what has New Caledonia and French Polynesia.

Could the Belgian Congo remained in links paterned to those existing between the Netherlands and Aruba?
 
It can be argued Algeria could have stayed French, had the metropole reined the pied-noir establishment and accepted to give more rights to the Arab and Berber natives.
On the other hand, the greater population of Algeria relative to the mainland would have caused an imbalance for the deciders, and it could have caused an excessive entanglement in the political situation of the neighbors - Mali, Libya, Niger and others.
So Algeria could have a status equivalent to what has New Caledonia and French Polynesia.

Could the Belgian Congo remained in links paterned to those existing between the Netherlands and Aruba?

The problem is once you give equal rights to 1 colony, others would want too...
And they outnumber the colonizers overall...
 
It would help if the model the French currently use for their remaining colonies were to be widespread. French Guiana is an overseas department of France, and has the same rights as the metropolitan departments.

For Britain, perhaps instead of their colonies drifting away, the British create an Imperial Parliament, with representatives from Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, India, and so on. I will point out that in this particular case, we might end up with Gandhi as PM of the British Empire.
 
The problem with this challenge with regard to the British Empire is India - they'd run it via indirect rule with the Princely States or even when directly with a large body of Indian lawyers, doctors, civil servants, administrators etc. but these educated locals then found that once they reached the mid-level positions that their advancement was generally barred. These were the people that first started agitating for better conditions for themselves and the opportunity to move up the ladder and then later full independence. Once India goes, and unless you want to be incredibly draconian and repressive it will eventually go, that removes the reason for retaining a lot of the other colonies. You saw a similar progression in the African colonies as well, once local elites started becoming more educated they started pushing for more rights and eventually independence.
 
France could be dealt with relatively easily on principle.

Go for an early political solution in Indochina instead of a big fight (which was essentially reconquest since the administration had been ousted by the japanese).
This leads to not showing the weakness of French forces. Then you need a political solution for veterans and some kind of equal rights for Muslims in Algeria. Keeping Algeria is possible, if you're willing to make arabs citizen (or at least the veterans).

The other African colonies? They'd go at some point. There was a huge push from the metropole for letting them go (Cartierisme), they were simply too expensive and not worth enough. Better to let them be autonomous/independant and transform them into glorified protectorates. And would you know it, that's exactly what happened.

I think it has to be harsher than in the early 20th century. For a long time, most colonial peoples submitted quietly to rule by the colonizers, because they had always been governed arbitrarily - by locals, near outsiders, now over-seas strangers, what was the big difference? In the 20th century, they began hearing about self-determination, democracy, and the principles of the American Declaration of Independence. And they realized they didn't have to submit. They demanded autonomy at the least, or formal independence, and liberals (in the classic meaning) agreed.

That's not correct, there were plenty of revolts of one kind or another. Lots of political unrest but also actual revolts, like in the 30's in Indochine. Even Algeria wasn't pacified until the late XIXth century, with regular riots after that, and it was conquered in 1830!
 
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