Imperial Federation?

[NthBelisarius]

One of the ideas for saving the British Empire was the idea of Imperial Federation, sharing the costs of defence and such and having an Imperial Parliament. When was the last time such an idea was realistically possible? Is such an idea even feasible ?

NB: I'm not sure whether this should go in pre-1900 or post-1900 ? Could a moderator kindly move it to the correct forum please ?

 

[Beedok]

If they held off the creation of Dominions a bit longer proper telegraph networking could have gotten Canada united with Britain I guess as you could have MPs in communication with their ridings properly.

 

[LSCatilina]

An OTL equivalent would be the Communauté Française. It went as well it can be envisioned : former colonies wanted a full independence and not being part of a federation within they wouldn't have a great weight.

For British Empire, it would be even harder as the colonial integration within metropolitan institutions wasn't really a goal to begin with and inter-colonial relations being quite loose.

I don't think it would have been compatible with the revendications of independent rule, self-development...And, realistically, sharing costs or other common projects within a federation would have meant really quickly at the benefit of former colonial power and its interests.

 

[LSCatilina]

NB: I'm not sure whether this should go in pre-1900 or post-1900 ?

Personally, I would say that such an idea before 1900 would be completly ASB : colonised and metropolitan population as equals...
Still, for the sake of discussion, pre-1900 is fine for me.

 

[Flocculencio]

Personally, I would say that such an idea before 1900 would be completly ASB : colonised and metropolitan population as equals...

See the problem here is that even post 1900, if you treat the colonised populations and the metropolitan ones as equals, it ceases to become the British Empire and becomes the Indian federation. The figure I always like to quote is that in 1924 the population of the entire British Empire was 500 million. Out of this 300 million were Indian.

There's no way you can get the whites to accept equal standing with an Indian majority and there's no way Indians will accept a lower status for long by the early 20th C.

 

[eliphas8]

The biggest problem I see with this is that it would quickly stop being the British Empire and would become The Indian Empire. Demographically India is just too overwhelming to be on an equal footing to the British, it would dominate the federation in a way that the British would not be able to stand and in a way for the British upperclass it's worse than Independence for India, more than just being independent India utterly dominates Britain in this situation.

 

[mrmandias]

The biggest problem I see with this is that it would quickly stop being the British Empire and would become The Indian Empire. Demographically India is just too overwhelming to be on an equal footing to the British, it would dominate the federation in a way that the British would not be able to stand and in a way for the British upperclass it's worse than Independence for India, more than just being independent India utterly dominates Britain in this situation.

There is no rule that an Imperial Federation must include India on an equal basis, or that if it includes India on an equal basis, it must include all the native Indians on an equal basis.

There are serious obstacles to an Imperial Federation, but this is a spurious one.

 

[Socrates]

There is no rule that an Imperial Federation must include India on an equal basis, or that if it includes India on an equal basis, it must include all the native Indians on an equal basis.

There are serious obstacles to an Imperial Federation, but this is a spurious one.

Right. If it happened, it would be the white dominions, at least for the first 50 years.

 

[Alex Richards]

There is no rule that an Imperial Federation must include India on an equal basis, or that if it includes India on an equal basis, it must include all the native Indians on an equal basis.

There are serious obstacles to an Imperial Federation, but this is a spurious one.

Or at the very least, there's no rule that it must do so initially. Or that it even include India at all.

You could have an Imperial Federation of the UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa, together with the places such as the West Indies, Pacific Islands, Malta, Cyprus, possibly Singapore and Hong Kong, and perhaps some sort of large scale apartheid system in places like Rhodesia and East Africa, with the rest of the Empire remaining colonies of the new federal government.

Now, this obviously isn't going to be stable, and will eventually have to reform or is going to see some parts go independent, but I would think it perfectly possible that what comes out the other end is a state that includes a much large part of the Empire than just Britain.

 

[Flocculencio]

There is no rule that an Imperial Federation must include India on an equal basis, or that if it includes India on an equal basis, it must include all the native Indians on an equal basis.

There are serious obstacles to an Imperial Federation, but this is a spurious one.

Right. If it happened, it would be the white dominions, at least for the first 50 years.

The OP mentioned 'saving the Empire'. If India isn't given equal rights it will gain independence one way or the other by the mid 20th C and most of the other nonwhite colonies will follow sooner or later.

 

[Faeelin]

The OP mentioned 'saving the Empire'. If India isn't given equal rights it will gain independence one way or the other by the mid 20th C and most of the other nonwhite colonies will follow sooner or later.

I'm not sure why the white colonies wouldn't either, to be honest. Take Canada: Why would it restructure its economy to trade more with Australia as opposed to the nation right to its south?

 

[BlondieBC]

There is no rule that an Imperial Federation must include India on an equal basis, or that if it includes India on an equal basis, it must include all the native Indians on an equal basis.

There are serious obstacles to an Imperial Federation, but this is a spurious one.

No, it is a back breaker. By the early 1900's, you are seeing both armed revolts and passive resistance on a regular scale. You can't keep 300,000 thousand Indians down with 100 thousand white brits. Or even 1,000 thousand brits. And even 1,000K Brit soldiers is a back breaker for the budget. You would need both the world largest navy and an army bigger than Imperial Germany. Keeping India down by the mid-1900 was a problem with no solution.

Or put another way, Canada does not have the population to occupy by force the USA for decades on end, even if the USA had no military. Same scale of problem.

And if you are looking at limited franchisement, even a 10% rate of representation in India (30 million voting population) will be a huge block that will tend to vote as a block, and will be unacceptable to the English voters. Sure the white dominions plus the UK have more votes, and the British Isle proper may have more votes, but he Indians will cause havoc in parliament. As soon as the Indians have access to the purse strings. They will want there share of the budget. And to make it worse, there ideas will often be cheaper. Having trouble with the expense of the RN, why not crew the ships with cheaper Indian personnel or station them in India where support services are cheaper. Doing a subsidy for industry X, locate in India where cheaper.

When India was just a region of the globe with many different people, the UK could play one group off another. Once UK colonialism had created an Indian national identity, the UK loses the lever it used to control India.

 

[Devvy]

I'm not sure why the white colonies wouldn't either, to be honest. Take Canada: Why would it restructure its economy to trade more with Australia as opposed to the nation right to its south?

I'm not saying this is likely.

But bear in mind that Canada didn't have wide-ranging free trade with the US until the 1960s or so I think. What's to stop Canada being part of the "Imperial Federation" and having completely free trade with the Empire, and continuing to trade under tariffs with the US? Or perhaps using the Empire using the weight of the Empire Market negotiating a better free trade deal with the US then Canada could manage on it's own?

 

[Julius Vogel]

There is also the big fish/small pond attitude at play here as well

Unless you have a very early POD, all of the British settled colonies, as opposed to non white colonies, will have responsible government, which means that the government and associated voters/elites have to be on board with a wider federal project. Now while many people in these colonies will be pro Imperial federation, it will still take some time and effort to work out what this federation will be and do, sort of akin to OTL Canada or Australia. Although the difference being that London in this case will be far richer and powerful than any of the colonies.

Many of the people in the colonies will be quite happy with how things are without federation and may be quite happy with the current status quo in the local parliament, that being that they largely get to do what they want. With a federation this all goes out the window. Now unlike say the Australasia-NZ situation, where the latter would have been an important part of *Australia, roughly equal to NSW or Victoria, in a federation a NZ, Victoria or NSW will very much not be, at least in economic terms.

Those three examples will be like a Kent or Yorkshire, but without the advantage of being a train/horse ride from London. There will also be no established Lords in the former either, so without fundamental and perhaps ASB reform, their influence will be even less, as the House of Lords will continue to reflect the interest of the landed elites based largely in England.

Now most people will know this at the time of federation, because many of these people, especially in say NZ's case will know England, London or the UK well having either grown up there or visitied there later. Certainly at least one of our PM's was a Londoner, although he was pretty pro federation (although I forgot quite what flavour he liked). They will know that a close knit federation with an Imperial parliament will offer more risk than reward to them personally.

I can't imagine that a British settler voter in say Dunedin or Melbourne would long remain happy with such an arrangement if the London based federation became an effective centre of federal government, which invetiably would be a centralising force, just like most other capitals in the 20th century.

Now if it were some sort of much looser federation, more along the lines of an Imperial Council arrangement, which leaves local people to muddle about, that could be attractive.

 

[mrmandias]

Or at the very least, there's no rule that it must do so initially. Or that it even include India at all.

You could have an Imperial Federation of the UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa, together with the places such as the West Indies, Pacific Islands, Malta, Cyprus, possibly Singapore and Hong Kong, and perhaps some sort of large scale apartheid system in places like Rhodesia and East Africa, with the rest of the Empire remaining colonies of the new federal government.

Now, this obviously isn't going to be stable, and will eventually have to reform or is going to see some parts go independent, but I would think it perfectly possible that what comes out the other end is a state that includes a much large part of the Empire than just Britain.

That's it in a nutshell.

My guess is that a United Canada and British Isles might be long term stable (along with assorted small dependencies from around the world).

 

[Alex Richards]

There is also the big fish/small pond attitude at play here as well

Unless you have a very early POD, all of the British settled colonies, as opposed to non white colonies, will have responsible government, which means that the government and associated voters/elites have to be on board with a wider federal project. Now while many people in these colonies will be pro Imperial federation, it will still take some time and effort to work out what this federation will be and do, sort of akin to OTL Canada or Australia. Although the difference being that London in this case will be far richer and powerful than any of the colonies.

Many of the people in the colonies will be quite happy with how things are without federation and may be quite happy with the current status quo in the local parliament, that being that they largely get to do what they want. With a federation this all goes out the window. Now unlike say the Australasia-NZ situation, where the latter would have been an important part of *Australia, roughly equal to NSW or Victoria, in a federation a NZ, Victoria or NSW will very much not be, at least in economic terms.

Those three examples will be like a Kent or Yorkshire, but without the advantage of being a train/horse ride from London. There will also be no established Lords in the former either, so without fundamental and perhaps ASB reform, their influence will be even less, as the House of Lords will continue to reflect the interest of the landed elites based largely in England.

Now most people will know this at the time of federation, because many of these people, especially in say NZ's case will know England, London or the UK well having either grown up there or visitied there later. Certainly at least one of our PM's was a Londoner, although he was pretty pro federation (although I forgot quite what flavour he liked). They will know that a close knit federation with an Imperial parliament will offer more risk than reward to them personally.

I can't imagine that a British settler voter in say Dunedin or Melbourne would long remain happy with such an arrangement if the London based federation became an effective centre of federal government, which invetiably would be a centralising force, just like most other capitals in the 20th century.

Now if it were some sort of much looser federation, more along the lines of an Imperial Council arrangement, which leaves local people to muddle about, that could be attractive.

There was the Baronetcy of Nova Scotia which would be a useful precedent.

 

[Flocculencio]

I'm not sure why the white colonies wouldn't either, to be honest. Take Canada: Why would it restructure its economy to trade more with Australia as opposed to the nation right to its south?

Also a very good point- very few people actually consider the fact that the White dominions have their own concerns apart from being a part of Glorious Mother England.

 

[The Gunslinger]

Also a very good point- very few people actually consider the fact that the White dominions have their own concerns apart from being a part of Glorious Mother England.

Until reciprocity in 1911, this was basically Canada. This was THE debate. Even in the 50s, Diefenbaker tried to make official policy that a huge chunk of Canadian trade occurred with the UK geography be damned.

 

[Tripwire]

See the problem here is that even post 1900, if you treat the colonised populations and the metropolitan ones as equals, it ceases to become the British Empire and becomes the Indian federation. The figure I always like to quote is that in 1924 the population of the entire British Empire was 500 million. Out of this 300 million were Indian.

There's no way you can get the whites to accept equal standing with an Indian majority and there's no way Indians will accept a lower status for long by the early 20th C.

I posted something similar in the last thread that brought up this subject:

The only way Imperial Federation could have worked is if it hinged on the idea of White Supremacy. Otherwise it's not the British Imperial Federation, it's the Indian Imperial Federation, and that would have never been on the table. Even if the federation was started before Indians were given any voting rights, the India issue would eventually rip it apart. There's no way they would have allowed even the possibility of a future Indian voting majority, and by being entirely excluded from the central government, Indians would be driven to revolt faster. (As opposed to OTL in the late 19th century where many educated Indian leaders just hoped for more and more native Indian participation in an autonomous Raj government, and those who wanted full independence weren't yet prominent. If Indians were explicitly excluded from any and all future voting in the Imperial Parliament, there would have been no hope for improvement and a much sooner revolt)

 

[Captain Jack]

I posted something similar in the last thread that brought up this subject:

The only way Imperial Federation could have worked is if it hinged on the idea of White Supremacy. Otherwise it's not the British Imperial Federation, it's the Indian Imperial Federation, and that would have never been on the table. Even if the federation was started before Indians were given any voting rights, the India issue would eventually rip it apart. There's no way they would have allowed even the possibility of a future Indian voting majority, and by being entirely excluded from the central government, Indians would be driven to revolt faster. (As opposed to OTL in the late 19th century where many educated Indian leaders just hoped for more and more native Indian participation in an autonomous Raj government, and those who wanted full independence weren't yet prominent. If Indians were explicitly excluded from any and all future voting in the Imperial Parliament, there would have been no hope for improvement and a much sooner revolt)

This might be a stupid question but why does Indian exclusion from the Imperial Parliament mean they can't still try for more participation in the Raj?