Legacy of alternate British Empires

JJohnson

Banned
I'm working a timeline where the British Empire is slightly different than OTL:

They hold (as of 1820 or so):
-Cuba since 1740, due to Admiral Vernon
-Newfoundland Island
-Rupert's Land (sold to the US in the late 19th century)
-New Caledonia
-New Zealand
-Australia
-Patagonia (OTL Argentina, Chile, Uruguay)

And possibly: Vladivostok and a portion of OTL Primorsky.

They lost:
-Province of Quebec
-Bermuda
-The Bahamas

With the above additions, how do you think they'd appear as of 2013? Which of those would remain as 'overseas territories' and which would get 'responsible government' and eventual independence?
 
I'm working a timeline where the British Empire is slightly different than OTL:

They hold (as of 1820 or so):
-Cuba since 1740, due to Admiral Vernon
-Newfoundland Island
-Rupert's Land (sold to the US in the late 19th century)
-New Caledonia
-New Zealand
-Australia
-Patagonia (OTL Argentina, Chile, Uruguay)

And possibly: Vladivostok and a portion of OTL Primorsky.

They lost:
-Province of Quebec
-Bermuda
-The Bahamas

With the above additions, how do you think they'd appear as of 2013? Which of those would remain as 'overseas territories' and which would get 'responsible government' and eventual independence?

Can you give a bit more detail on some bits? For example, how are you envisioning Vladivostok being acquired? Context is everything. If it is stolen off Russia then you have deprived Russia of their warm-water port, and they are going to want to get it back, and if they can't get it back then they will want a new one, possibly by expanding into Manchuria. This, combined with Vladi probably having a fairly low population, means that it could make an early Dominion status but it frankly be a liability to ever give full independence - it would need to be protected by the British armed forces or it would only be a matter of time until Russia captured it back, unless again your TL has Russia turning into a less belligerent power or the world reaching a situation like OTL now, where the world has just gone through a prolongued period where world annihilation was a possibility, and now no-one really has the taste for another global war, so it would be safer to release it. And then there's the other scenario where Russia's control of the Pacific east crumbles entirely, in which case Britain probably owns a far lot more than just "a portion of Primorsky" simply because the power vacuum almost necessitates them taking it over. And even then you need to answer the question "what does Britain gain from taking Vladi anyway?"

Others don't matter so much. Australia and New Zealand are as OTL. Patagonia would likely be large enough to defend itself. Cuba has its island nature to defend itself. Newfoundland - and to a lesser extent Cuba - needs questions answering over the relationship between the UK and the USA to determine whether it's safe to release Newfoundland as a Dominion, but I reckon the population is large enough to let it go.
 
Others don't matter so much. Australia and New Zealand are as OTL. Patagonia would likely be large enough to defend itself. Cuba has its island nature to defend itself. Newfoundland - and to a lesser extent Cuba - needs questions answering over the relationship between the UK and the USA to determine whether it's safe to release Newfoundland as a Dominion, but I reckon the population is large enough to let it go.

Not really, they're somewhat reliant on subsidies from Ottawa, and folded into Canada after the government had gone completely bankrupt and the economy failed during a brief spell as a seperate dominion in the 20s and 30s.
 

katchen

Banned
If you could add Greenland, Iceland, the Faeroes and maybe Baffin Island sometime in the 18th Century, you would have contiguity, so to speak, between the British Isles, Shetland Islands, Faeroes, Iceland, Greenland, Labador, Newfoundland, all in a row across the Atlantic. Then they might all remain together in an expanded definition of the British Isles, rather like the definition of Russia expanding to encompass all of Siberia.
 
Can you give a bit more detail on some bits? For example, how are you envisioning Vladivostok being acquired? Context is everything. If it is stolen off Russia then you have deprived Russia of their warm-water port, and they are going to want to get it back, and if they can't get it back then

...could have been a treaty with China I suppose, Russia didn't get there until 1858.

But everything you said would still apply. The Russians WILL want it and Britain already has HK. Vladivostok offers nothing to them that they already don't have.

I can see the Russians trading all of Russian America for Primosrky Krai without a second thought, for example. The British could honestly take it, I think, unless the very treaty with China prevented that.
 
question is ... how for them to manage grabbing Iceland and Greenland (and Faeroes) which from their first colonization was tied to the Norwegian crown (and only after Vienna moved to the Danish, as they had been connected for some 500years by then) ... that said i could see them as a viable prospective buyer of Danish West Indies, instead of an USA
 
If you could add Greenland, Iceland, the Faeroes and maybe Baffin Island sometime in the 18th Century, you would have contiguity, so to speak, between the British Isles, Shetland Islands, Faeroes, Iceland, Greenland, Labador, Newfoundland, all in a row across the Atlantic. Then they might all remain together in an expanded definition of the British Isles, rather like the definition of Russia expanding to encompass all of Siberia.

I've always loved the idea of British Iceland and Greenland. Not sure how it could happen, however.
 
Can you give a bit more detail on some bits? For example, how are you envisioning Vladivostok being acquired? Context is everything. If it is stolen off Russia then you have deprived Russia of their warm-water port, and they are going to want to get it back, and if they can't get it back then they will want a new one, possibly by expanding into Manchuria. This, combined with Vladi probably having a fairly low population, means that it could make an early Dominion status but it frankly be a liability to ever give full independence - it would need to be protected by the British armed forces or it would only be a matter of time until Russia captured it back, unless again your TL has Russia turning into a less belligerent power or the world reaching a situation like OTL now, where the world has just gone through a prolongued period where world annihilation was a possibility, and now no-one really has the taste for another global war, so it would be safer to release it. And then there's the other scenario where Russia's control of the Pacific east crumbles entirely, in which case Britain probably owns a far lot more than just "a portion of Primorsky" simply because the power vacuum almost necessitates them taking it over. And even then you need to answer the question "what does Britain gain from taking Vladi anyway?"

Prior to 1860, Vladivostok and Primoriya was Qing Dynasty Land. IT is after Second Opium War Russians got it from Qing Dynasty during Treaty of Peking.
So it is not strange to Britain getting Vladivostok and Primorsky Krai and Southern Khabarovsk. So Britain need to more active and need to demand Vladivostok in exchange for stopping Second Opium War..
 
Prior to 1860, Vladivostok and Primoriya was Qing Dynasty Land. IT is after Second Opium War Russians got it from Qing Dynasty during Treaty of Peking.
So it is not strange to Britain getting Vladivostok and Primorsky Krai and Southern Khabarovsk. So Britain need to more active and need to demand Vladivostok in exchange for stopping Second Opium War..


OK granted, I forgot that bit, but my other question still applies. What exactly is there in Vladivostok that the British would want? It's of minimal use as a trading port, even less use as a military base, even further less use as colonisation potential. Much as the British acquired a huge area, they weren't prone to acquiring land which offered nothing to them, save for Africa, but that was different.

Not really, they're somewhat reliant on subsidies from Ottawa, and folded into Canada after the government had gone completely bankrupt and the economy failed during a brief spell as a seperate dominion in the 20s and 30s.

That doesn't necessarily mean anything though. When decolonisation hit OTL, Britain was pretty eager to shed all of its territories regardless of the state they were in. It only kept those that were literally too small to fend for themselves in any way. Newfoundland (the island) to date has a population of nearly 500,000. The largest territory, population-wise, that Britain kept hold of is Bermuda, with almost 1/10th of that at 64,000. Most of the UK's remaining dependent territories have 20-30,000 people. Newfoundland 100% could be jettisoned.
 
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OK granted, I forgot that bit, but my other question still applies. What exactly is there in Vladivostok that the British would want? It's of minimal use as a trading port, even less use as a military base, even further less use as colonisation potential. Much as the British acquired a huge area, they weren't prone to acquiring land which offered nothing to them, save for Africa, but that was different.



That doesn't necessarily mean anything though. When decolonisation hit OTL, Britain was pretty eager to shed all of its territories regardless of the state they were in. It only kept those that were literally too small to fend for themselves in any way. Newfoundland (the island) to date has a population of nearly 500,000. The largest territory, population-wise, that Britain kept hold of is Bermuda, with almost 1/10th of that at 64,000. Most of the UK's remaining dependent territories have 20-30,000 people. Newfoundland 100% could be jettisoned.

The thing is, when you get down to it, no white, English speaking colony was jettisoned though. Malta and Cyprus voted for independence, the Dominions gradually drifted away of their own accord and the rest of the places which gained independence were, in basic terms, too black, Asian or foreign for the government to even consider keeping even if the people wanted them (Hong Kong, of course, having her own set of complications). And that's assuming that the government goes through OTL's phase of 'just get rid of the whole damn thing' with regards to the Empire. If we have a government which decides to operate more on the French model of 'keep as much as possible', Newfoundland's quite easy to imagine as an Overseas Region.
 
The thing is, when you get down to it, no white, English speaking colony was jettisoned though. Malta and Cyprus voted for independence, the Dominions gradually drifted away of their own accord and the rest of the places which gained independence were, in basic terms, too black, Asian or foreign for the government to even consider keeping even if the people wanted them (Hong Kong, of course, having her own set of complications). And that's assuming that the government goes through OTL's phase of 'just get rid of the whole damn thing' with regards to the Empire. If we have a government which decides to operate more on the French model of 'keep as much as possible', Newfoundland's quite easy to imagine as an Overseas Region.

I still disagree, but fair enough. It's my opinion even the white colonies were essentially told "you can have a few years to think about it, but become independent sooner rather than later please". From everything I've heard about the potential union of Malta and the UK, the Maltese were all in favour of it but Westminster was decidedly unimpressed at the thought of the extra expense, and was only supportive of the move in principle because it felt it had no other option. Then when the Defence Minister at the time screwed it all up by closing the RN port which provoked the Maltese into withdrawing the offer of union, the MPs back in London essentially gave a collective shrug and said between each other "well, accidental victory, we got the end point we were after all along". And look at Cyprus - becoming independent in 1960, it was one of the very first colonies to leave the Empire.

Of course, you could speculate that these two cases were largely based on the fact that the native populations of those two were overwhelmingly not-British, and Westminister didn't want to further complicate British politics by having to incorporate the dreams and realities of several other ethnicities into an island state that had gotten where it was by being able to separate itself off from the problems which from time to time swept across the rest of Europe. Newfoundland wouldn't have this issue, so perhaps it would be more acceptable to Westminster. Of course, I am also drifting further and further into anti-butterfly territory here, too, but I'm trying to make a point. Anyway, it could go either way, and I don't disagree that Newfoundland might have been kept on, but I still reckon there's a decent and mention-worthy chance that it wouldn't.
 
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