French India

So, in conclusion. It is possible for France to control India, but it is hard for them to do, just like it was hard for the British and the british were lucky. If France wants to control India, it won't be able to control all of it directly, but must use something like the princely states. Britain (or another rival power) must not be present in india, or else the Indian states will be able to use both European powers against each other and remain independent*. If France wants to control India it must reform both economically and militarily, focus more on its navy than it did OTL, and possibly even politically.


* I am not entirely sure if this would work or not:

Britain limited in India to just the Bay of Bengal (and Asia east of it, like Birma and possibly Indochina), while France concentrates on India, but with an Siameselike bufferstate between both European powers.
 
Britain (or another rival power) must not be present in india, or else the Indian states will be able to use both European powers against each other and remain independent*.

I'd say disregard this part; history has shown us it's not true and/or depends on the powers involved, region and time period.
 
I'd say disregard this part; history has shown us it's not true and/or depends on the powers involved, region and time period.

Um, no. It is very true, and having any other power with any sort of major influence comparable to the French will sew the seeds for Indian countries to play off one power against the other.

The Marathas, for example, we're considered to have poor leadership, but excellent soldiers. And their sizable presence in Central and North India would give the French ample reason to train their leaders. At the same time, Hyderabad could very well benefit from British funding to regain their domination of the Circars.
 
This depends on what you mean by accommodating. Monarchies, even strong monarchies, didn't prevent industrialization in 19th century Europe. If you are going to list the factors behind industrialization, government type isn't one I'd put high among them.

You can have strong monarchies but they need to be ones that have firmly comnitted to property rights and investor protection. I.e the complete opposite from how the ancien regime in our timeline behaved. Its pretty hard for a regime to do this if theyre the first ones industrialising as there isn't anything they can look to in order to see the benefits of not taking free goodies.
 
Your statement is theoretically interesting and right. But the basis of your analysis are, I think, wrong.

The Valois and then Habsburg Netherlands (and also northern Italy) were the core of european innovation, industry, trade and finance in Europe. And they had no such legal or political security as the one you believe to be necessary.

Every country, even England, regularly sent bankrupt until the very end of the 17th century.

The tax level was not higher in France than in England. In the 18th century it was rather weaker. France used debt and the sale of public offices to finance a big part of its budget, instead of building a modern tax system.
 

katchen

Banned
The need for Britain to lose a war

Whatever the superiority of the british bond market - on which role you are perfectly right - this bond market is going to krach if the british army and navy face important defeats.

In the war of austrian succession, if my memory is right, the french were very close to landing successfully an army in England.

If so, there would have been no escape. The defeat would have been most certainly decisive and unrepairable.

The royal navy would have been quickly asphyxiated since it would have lost its home harbours. The bonds woud then have been worth nothing since their value was based on the ability of the british military and commercial navies to ensure Britain the number one share in world trade

The virtuous circle navy domination-trade domination-financial superiority-financing research and innovation would be broken.

And since Britain's per capita GDP would be smaller - more equal to other west european countries - there would be much more civil strife.
Yes, it would have taken Britain losing a war and having a French army landing on it's shores to cut it down to size and make it an ordinary European power. Since the last time anyone had had been able to do that was Henry II Plantagenet, Great Britain was quite special in Europe that way.
And France would have to stop losing wars. I don't see how France could hang onto India after something like the fall of Napoleon. no matter how much of an empire in India Dupleix built. The British would simply take it over after Trafalgar.
 
And France would have to stop losing wars. I don't see how France could hang onto India after something like the fall of Napoleon. no matter how much of an empire in India Dupleix built. The British would simply take it over after Trafalgar.
But that is simple. Butterfly away Napoleon and the revolutionairy wars. With a POD early enough that should be quite simple.
 
Yes, it would have taken Britain losing a war and having a French army landing on it's shores to cut it down to size and make it an ordinary European power. Since the last time anyone had had been able to do that was Henry II Plantagenet, Great Britain was quite special in Europe that way.
...

And what was the "glorious revolution" if not the successfull landing in England and conquest of power in England by a dutch-german army ?

France lost many wars. You are right about this. But it did not lose all. The war of austrian succession, for example, was not a french defeat on the battlefield, though it ended with a diplomatic defeat because of the incompetence of Louis XV.
 
Your statement is theoretically interesting and right. But the basis of your analysis are, I think, wrong.

The Valois and then Habsburg Netherlands (and also northern Italy) were the core of european innovation, industry, trade and finance in Europe. And they had no such legal or political security as the one you believe to be necessary.

Every country, even England, regularly sent bankrupt until the very end of the 17th century.

The tax level was not higher in France than in England. In the 18th century it was rather weaker. France used debt and the sale of public offices to finance a big part of its budget, instead of building a modern tax system.

They also used enforced monetary "gifts" when the Treasury was in short supply or required huge spending on hospitality if the King turned up at your place. And, of course, you need to compare the taxation burden on the capitalist class, rather than on the population overall. In France, the national rates are lowered by the nobility being largely exempt.

As for North Italy and the Netherlands, they got rich on the mercantile trade abroad. That's a different thing from building factories for industrialising domestically, where your capital is far more exposed.
 
Flocculencio, when you have a coup backed by a foreign army of 21000 foreign soldiers landing from continental Europe, can it be called something else than a foreign conquest ?

The coup would never have succeeded if this army of 21000 soldiers had not backed it on the british soil. These soldiers were not british. They were german, dutch, and french huguenots. They were the army of William III of Orange, stadtholder of the United Provinces.

Socrates, the nobility was a very small part of the french population. And most of the nobility were not rich. So this changes only marginally the tax level on non-noble frenchmen. And besides, the taxation in France was entrusted to tax farmers (called "general farmer") who were among the leaders of the business class and who certainly took care not to overtax businessmen but would rather tax the common people.

France in the 18th century, though not as much advanced as Britain, was developing very quickly too.
 
Flocculencio, when you have a coup backed by a foreign army of 21000 foreign soldiers landing from continental Europe, can it be called something else than a foreign conquest ?

The coup would never have succeeded if this army of 21000 soldiers had not backed it on the british soil. These soldiers were not british. They were german, dutch, and french huguenots. They were the army of William III of Orange, stadtholder of the United Provinces.

Yes, but when said army is resisted by, at most, a half-hearted effort from the incumbent regime, is welcomed by a large segment of the ruling elites, and is led by a commander with a highly shady but from some perspective justifiable claim to head a new legitimate government of the targeted state, I'd call it a coup backed by foreign intervention.

I think we're arguing semantics- I'm really not trying to be one of the rose-coloured-glasses-wearing whiggish English nostalgists who think that England was some sort of special snowflake destined for great things.

I'm merely saying that when you consider the idea of conquest (especially in the case of the scenario posited earlier in this thread of a French invasion of Britain) the connotations are that the target state suffers a setback in terms of political capital, wealth, military power and position and so forth. William of Oranje pretty much stepped neatly into a slot in a friendly regime change he and the English parliamentarians had engineered. The fact that William found it necessary to conduct bloody and punitive campaigns to enforce acceptance of his coup in Ireland and Scotland does show up the fact that his legitimacy was a nice legal fig leaf at best and, naturally, had to be backed by violence and naked force, but even these peripheral campaigns didn't hurt Britain's standing as a power.

That's why I don't think William's regime change carries the same connotations that we usually think of when we think of a foreign invasion.
 
Have to agree with Flocculencio here. It was an indigenous parliamentary coup with foreign military support. That's clearly a very different animal than a national invasion.
 
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