How Do We Prevent The Worst Of England's Actions With Scotland, Ireland, and Wales?

[AltoRegnant]

The english naturally have a pretty nasty reputation, and of course it all started in Ireland and Scotland (and wales but i think they got to them a bit later). Despite this they historically would often try to say Britain is a nation of equals. Your goal is to make this true- at least in the isles. how they treat the overseas territory isn't the topic here. No highland clearances or ulster plantaions, the potato famine is genuine incompetence not probably malice, etc.
Rules

1. POD after the start of the hundred years war
2. England has to go protestant; the others are optional
3. they must remain a monarchy

 

[pandizzy]

for scotland? no union of the crowns

 

[CaptainShadow]

and wales but i think they got to them a bit later

Not sure how you're pairing that with Wales being the first conquered by old Longshanks.

Post Longshanks the Welsh are hella pissed, and the Scots are hella pissed. A fuckload of Anglo-Irish infrastructure was destroyed due to the Bruce invasion, in effect hardening relations.

So IMO, you want a union of equals? Start with a Longshanks PoD, and keep Maggie of Norway around.

But to fulfill rules you've set, best I can see is Richard II keeping the throne and continuing his progressive policies with the Welsh, "conquering" Ireland by sheer resources and having similar policies there. In time, the crowns are unified, and we have a mass rebuilding or some such.

 

[RedKing]

Have Scotland avoid the Union of the Crowns.

Have Henry VII give Welshmen equal rights to that of Englishmen. Or butterfly the Glyndwr rebellion so that they keep them.

Have the Irish go Protestant alongside the English, making relations between the two less hostile.

 

[pompejus]

for scotland? no union of the crowns

I believe that the worst things England did to Scotland were before the union of the crowns. Actualy Scotland profited a lot from the union. Most actions "England"did to Scotland during the union were instigated by other Scots, not by the English.

 

[Dr Dee]

Wales was indeed first on the receiving end of English imperialism - the Ring of Iron...the pseudo-apartheid of the English settlements in Wales - although the semantics seem to be quite slippery. It was Norman imperialism more than anything although my understanding is Longshanks did see himself as a specifically English king.

Before the advent of the Normans, the 'Welsh' and the 'English' seemed to ally with each other as much as fight each other. Happy to be corrected on that, though. If we go really far back, it's been interesting reading Max Adams's 'The First Kingdom' which valiantly attempts to illuminate the British Dark Ages by collating much recent archaeological work to undermine simplistic notions of some sort of post Roman/Arthurian Anglo-Welsh race war.

To get rid of English nastiness, I guess you have to get rid of England itself as the dominant geographical and population centre of the Isles. If the Heptarchy hadn't coalesced into a single English kingdom (which happened unusually early for England as I understand it), then you can imagine a separate 'Northumbria' and 'England' (Wessex-Mercia) so that the 'Anglo-Celtic' equation might be a little more balanced rather than being so lopsided in England's favour.

More recently, if you butterfly away a lot of English nastiness (and God knows, there's been plenty), I guess Scotland, Ireland and Wales become quite different places in that elements of their national identity are defined in terms of resistance to the English. Then again, elements of English identity seem to be based on the same kind of psychology (anti-French, anti-continental...etc etc), so they're hardly unique in that.

And now I've just read the rules of the OP properly, so ignore most of that. Sorry!

 

[Dr Dee]

To get rid of English nastiness, I guess you have to get rid of England itself as the dominant geographical and population centre of the Isles. If the Heptarchy hadn't coalesced into a single English kingdom (which happened unusually early for England as I understand it), then you can imagine a separate 'Northumbria' and 'England' (Wessex-Mercia) so that the 'Anglo-Celtic' equation might be a little more balanced rather than being so lopsided in England's favour.

I'll try again now that I've learned to read.

The Glyndwr Rebellion comes after the start of the 100 Years' War. So a successful Tripartite Indenture creates a Welsh polity that can draw on the resources of the Marches (perhaps with the Severn Valley eventually acting as its equivalent of Scotland's Central Belt) and also splits England into North and South, undermining 'English' domination. An eventual ATL 'United Kingdom' that develops around this arrangement would be very interesting...

 

[pjmidd]

The english naturally have a pretty nasty reputation, and of course it all started in Ireland and Scotland (and wales but i think they got to them a bit later). Despite this they historically would often try to say Britain is a nation of equals. Your goal is to make this true- at least in the isles. how they treat the overseas territory isn't the topic here. No highland clearances or ulster plantaions, the potato famine is genuine incompetence not probably malice, etc.
Rules

1. POD after the start of the hundred years war
2. England has to go protestant; the others are optional
3. they must remain a monarchy

The English are the nasty ones? Read up on history , they all were equally nasty , its just the English won, eventually. Strathclyde for instance was a British ie pseudo Welsh kingdom till it was annexed by Scotland around 1018. One of the drivers for the Normans attacking Ireland ( at least officially ) were the slave raids and piracy, the Welsh themselves were no saints, raiding whenever they got the chance.

To honour the question it comes down to three things, peaceful union via marriage rather than conquest , everyone becoming CoE ( the early Presbyterians were massively intolerant of every other denomination ) and a lack of absentee landlords.

 

[Dr Dee]

The English are the nasty ones? Read up on history , they all were equally nasty , its just the English won, eventually. Strathclyde for instance was a British ie pseudo Welsh kingdom till it was annexed by Scotland around 1018. One of the drivers for the Normans attacking Ireland ( at least officially ) were the slave raids and piracy, the Welsh themselves were no saints, raiding whenever they got the chance.

To honour the question it comes down to three things, peaceful union via marriage rather than conquest , everyone becoming CoE ( the early Presbyterians were massively intolerant of every other denomination ) and a lack of absentee landlords.

All perfectly true. I guess you need money and population to really be the top nasty dogs - so that’s England.

From a Welsh perspective, I seem to remember the initial ‘English’ invasion of Ireland was actually mounted by Welsh based Normans - the ‘Cambro-Norman swarm’. Whoops…apologies to our Celtic soul brothers there. But maybe fitting retribution for Irish raids and conquests in Wales and the Old North…🤷🏻‍♂️

 

[BELFAST]

You could start with no Norman conquest of England.

 

[Socrates]

England's treatment of Scotland and Wales was by no means bad for the time period.

 

[Dr Dee]

England's treatment of Scotland and Wales was by no means bad for the time period.

Perhaps we can say it was appalling - but not uniquely so.

 

[Socrates]

Perhaps we can say it was appalling - but not uniquely so.

What do you think were the worse abuses?

 

[Dupplin Muir]

It wasn't appalling at all. If you look at the Anglo-Scottish wars, they were pretty well all caused by the Scots, and - like the Irish attacks - usually occurred when England was either engaged in a life-and-death struggle with a more powerful opponent, or having a civil war. When the Scots stayed at home, the border was peaceful, but sooner or later greed got the better of them and/or they succumbed to French blandishments and began raiding.

 

[AltoRegnant]

It wasn't appalling at all. If you look at the Anglo-Scottish wars, they were pretty well all caused by the Scots, and - like the Irish attacks - usually occurred when England was either engaged in a life-and-death struggle with a more powerful opponent, or having a civil war. When the Scots stayed at home, the border was peaceful, but sooner or later greed got the better of them and/or they succumbed to French blandishments and began raiding.

given that i specifically said the potato blight or the highland clearances, i think i can call them horrid

 

[Gloss]

given that i specifically said the potato blight or the highland clearances, i think i can call them horrid

The highland clearances weren't done by the English to the Scots, it was done to the Highlands by landowners that were Lowlander Scots too.

 

[Jimbo808]

I would go withe previous posts, try to stop the Norman invasion. Without a norman-french ruling class England would probably be more inward looking, not insular, but less likely to start wars in France and waging preventative wars towards its neighbours.

 

[The Professor]

given that i specifically said the potato blight or the highland clearances, i think i can call them horrid

The highland clearances weren't done by the English to the Scots, it was done to the Highlands by landowners that were Lowlander Scots too.

Worth noting also that the Ulster plantations wasn't solely an English thing either but occurred under a Scottish king and additionally reflected said king's previous practices against the Highlands.
But that doesn't count since it's not part of the narrative of the Horrid English.

However the OP question outside that narrative is to have the Isles as a nation of equals.
To answer that I think we need to know what is meant by equal. Is it each inhabitant having equal political power? The individual nations having equal power in parliament (and thus the lesser populated ones having more political power per inhabitant)? Or something else?

 

[Dr Dee]

This thread seems to be tossing around the ‘downtrodden angelic Celts vs the evil demonic English narrative’ and the ‘sly, conniving Celts vs the absent mindedly benevolent English narrative’’. Both are obviously bollocks.

 

[Dr Dee]

What do you think were the worse abuses?

None that were particularly worse - that’s why I said not uniquely so. And if I’m wrong and English atrocities in the Celtic lands were uniquely awful, that’s surely down to them having more money and manpower than anyone else - historical accident rather than innate evil! Because you can be sure the Welsh for one would’ve been delighted to be appalling to the English to the same degree if the situation was reversed😉