How did each home nation contribute to the British Empire?

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RMcD94

RMcD94

I'm curious.

For whatever reason, Scotland does not join in a nation with England, Wales (and later Ireland). What fares the Empire of lesser Britannia? How much did Scotland contribute?

Let's say now, that Scotland conquers Ireland, so it's just England and Wales. What did Ireland contribute to the British Empire? (A different scenario I suppose would be one where it's just Ireland lost, not Scotland as well, but I'm not sure how realistic that is).

And finally, let's imagine there was just an English empire, how did Wales contribute to it?

On it's own, can England conquer the same mass, and reach the same dominance as it did as part of the UK. Will the English culture permeate as well as the British did?
 
SavoyTruffle

SavoyTruffle

Scotland's biggest contribution was its intellectual capital - there's a reason why the Scottish Enlightenment gets a special mention.
 
MrP

MrP

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With Scotland and Ireland out of the picture, the military will look very different. I remember that Scotland provided a disproportionate number of officers (and perhaps men?). The figure may have been 40% of the army's officers in the late 1800s, but don't quote me. Ireland also provided a fair whack of recruits for the services, since the pay was attractive. I'm not sure that one can posit that there'd even be a drive/capability to acquire an empire with Wales and Scotland sharing the island with the English. This might be a question better posed in the ASB forum, since there authorial fiat removes the need to explain away the problems.
 

Uriel

Once read a "world history" by a british guy from the 60s. He was of the opinion that people confronted with a challenging but beatable enviroment (like Scots, ulstermen, israeli) make more of themselfs (his example were Scots providing a dispropotinaly high number of british prime ministers).

So i agree with the Truffle.

(Boah, its hard to type, when you are drunk)
 

Typo

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The Scottish were disproportionately represented in all fields of British Imperialists, military or otherwise
 

Sior

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The Welsh played a key role in the founding of the modern United States. Eighteen of the 56 co-signatories of the Declaration of Independence were of Welsh origin, and Welsh-Americans count Thomas Jefferson, Bob Hope and Frank Lloyd Wright among the distinguished Americas who trace their heritage back to the homeland.

http://www.famouswelsh.com/index.php

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Welsh_people

Unlike the scots or the irish the Welsh don't bang their own drum.
 

I Blame Communism

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MrP said:
With Scotland and Ireland out of the picture, the military will look very different. I remember that Scotland provided a disproportionate number of officers (and perhaps men?). The figure may have been 40% of the army's officers in the late 1800s, but don't quote me. Ireland also provided a fair whack of recruits for the services, since the pay was attractive. I'm not sure that one can posit that there'd even be a drive/capability to acquire an empire with Wales and Scotland sharing the island with the English. This might be a question better posed in the ASB forum, since there authorial fiat removes the need to explain away the problems.
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This.

Besides the military, there's also the Clyde shipyards. England had plenty of its own shipbuilding, of course; but still, at one point a fifth of all hulls in the big blue wet thing had been built along the Clyde.

IIRC, though, it used to be common (in Marlborough's time) for Scots to enlist in the English army, a bit like the Irish do now. I may well be wrong on that.
 

archaeogeek

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I Blame Communism said:
This.

Besides the military, there's also the Clyde shipyards. England had plenty of its own shipbuilding, of course; but still, at one point a fifth of all hulls in the big blue wet thing had been built along the Clyde.

IIRC, though, it used to be common (in Marlborough's time) for Scots to enlist in the English army, a bit like the Irish do now. I may well be wrong on that.
Click to expand...

There are estimates of up to 40% of the army being Irish at some point through the 18th century, even in the english regiments.
 

Susano

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Eh, I dont think lacking "contributions" are the primary matter. And such psychological profiling of entire peoples like Uriel did is quasi-esoterical nonsense. I think the main problem with divided British islands is that England would have a potential enemy at its flank. It would need sufficient ground forces to deal with that, and couldnt rely on the sea to defend it, thus making it potentially more difficult to employ forces oversea.
 

I Blame Communism

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archaeogeek said:
There are estimates of up to 40% of the army being Irish at some point through the 18th century, even in the english regiments.
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Now that I certainly do remember reading, and as late as the Napoleonic Wars or later. Coming to think about it, I may have just read what Tom Devine said (England was concerned about Scots grumbling during the WSS because, among other things, Scotland was an important reservoire of manpower) and this fact and assumed this was the case for Scotland as well.

Which it isn't to say it wasn't true - our native army was pathetic in 1707, and I think Lord Orkney served in the English army, at least. I should look this up.
 

I Blame Communism

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Susano said:
Eh, I dont think lacking "contributions" are the primary matter. And such psychological profiling of entire peoples like Uriel did is quasi-esoterical nonsense. I think the main problem with divided British islands is that England would have a potential enemy at its flank. It would need sufficient ground forces to deal with that, and couldnt rely on the sea to defend it, thus making it potentially more difficult to employ forces oversea.
Click to expand...

Oh, the idea that Scotland could threaten England after 1660 is just not true, I'm afraid. Half our military was bound up with Covenanters and Highlanders and you couldn't get them all on-side at once (there was only one point at which they nearly co-operated: during anti-Union hysteria, when there was in fact a possibility that England, already at war on the continent, should intervene to prop up the Scottish government!), our navy didn't exist, and we were massively dependant on English markets in the linen, cattle, and coal trades.

By the time Union came along, we were only really as independent as Ireland was in the late 18th C; but if Scotland were to somehow remain a dependency rather than an integral part of the state, that would have butterflies.
 

Susano

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I Blame Communism said:
Oh, the idea that Scotland could threaten England after 1660 is just not true, I'm afraid.
[...]
By the time Union came along, we were only really as independent as Ireland was in the late 18th C; but if Scotland were to somehow remain a dependency rather than an integral part of the state, that would have butterflies.
Click to expand...

Well, I think the OP meant for there to be no personal union, either, seeing as it posits Scotland as an independent actor conquering Ireland...
 

Urban fox

My own personal experience on this is that even today Scotland still provides a disproportionate amount of manpower to the British Army. At least when you consider the overall population of the each of the home nations. Hell you can break things down further, the north of England seems to provide more recruits than the south...
 

I Blame Communism

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Susano said:
Well, I think the OP meant for there to be no personal union, either, seeing as it posits Scotland as an independent actor conquering Ireland...
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True. I assumed he meant parliamentary union because he said "later Ireland" and Scotland and Ireland came into personal union with England in the same year.

Still, between Flodden, the Rough Wooing, and the Reformation, we were pretty firmly in the English sphere before 1603.
 
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