Multicultural Imperialism or Culture in 1900s Empires?

Agreed that it requires quite a bit of handwaving, but i'm not sure it's necessarily fiction. It would probably require such a powerful POD that, admittedly, any British Empire we'd end up seeing would look quite different. But as others have made mention towards, they (or any other Empire) could take an Alexander-style approach to empire and seek to draw their own people, and conquered people, together in the name of creating a new culture.

How you get there is beyond me, but it could happen.
I think people are often dismissive of things and the possibilities. I agree there are things that are either more or less likely to happen but given the butterfly effect and the multiple ways things can turn out a lot of things can happen. History is filled with a lot of crazy or unlikely things. As long as you use information to back up your claim and don’t go against what is physically possible a lot of stuff is possible.
 
Which turns the British empire into the Indian one. If Britain does it just for show with no real power it leads to otl or a violent war of Independence
I reckon the only way to pull it off would be really early in the piece. Say early 1800s before racial theories and while Indian nobility still get some respect. By 1900 there is too much "proof" of European "superiority".

Next you would have to look at some kind of property or income qualification for voting rights. This wipes out large numbers of Indians (and any other colonized groups) from having any control. The poor are going to demand the vote through the 1800s but with a bit of care you can find a mid point that lets most British (males) in while keeping all but the very best of the colonized out. That gets you through the 1800s and hopefully the upper classes get exposed and used to some color. There is an incentive for the elites to keep things an exclusive club and that should provide some stability.

The real fun starts in the 1900s. More and more are going to demand the vote and at some point the power balance is going to flip to an Indian Empire. With the Empire set up as a resource base for the factories of Britain that has to get ugly. It is hard to imagine the Brits putting up with the loss of power no matter how much they like and respect the Indians. I have no idea how that would play out.
 
I reckon the only way to pull it off would be really early in the piece. Say early 1800s before racial theories and while Indian nobility still get some respect. By 1900 there is too much "proof" of European "superiority".

Next you would have to look at some kind of property or income qualification for voting rights. This wipes out large numbers of Indians (and any other colonized groups) from having any control. The poor are going to demand the vote through the 1800s but with a bit of care you can find a mid point that lets most British (males) in while keeping all but the very best of the colonized out. That gets you through the 1800s and hopefully the upper classes get exposed and used to some color. There is an incentive for the elites to keep things an exclusive club and that should provide some stability.

The real fun starts in the 1900s. More and more are going to demand the vote and at some point the power balance is going to flip to an Indian Empire. With the Empire set up as a resource base for the factories of Britain that has to get ugly. It is hard to imagine the Brits putting up with the loss of power no matter how much they like and respect the Indians. I have no idea how that would play out.
Couldn’t India be broken into multiple dominions or whatever they would be called in a integrated British Empire? Also could each dominion have a flat set number on seats they get in parliament? If Australia, New Zealand, Canada, British Isles(including all of Ireland), and India are all dominions with two seats in a imperial parliament that balances out Indian population advantage in voting? Furthermore, if the British integrated the Indian nobility into there’s could the nobility retain a lot more power in India while they still lose power and influence in the Isles? Could that keep more control over India?
 
When the question of surviving colonial empires comes up, the suggested solutions almost always include stuff like ‚assimilation‘, or ‚Imperial Federations‘, or representation in some kind of imperial parliament. But if we take the British example, such solutions wouldn‘t really work in the long term, considering the massive population differences we are talking about.

Bringing ‚western values‘ to India, Africa or somewhere else has historically always led to anticolonial sentiments, not because Indians and Africans hated western values so much, but because they claimed the rights derived from those very values for themselves. The ‚white man‘s burden‘ is what has paradoxically led to the emancipation of colonial populations from their imperial overlords, because they adopted western ideas like liberalism, nationalism, self-determination etc.

I think the only way for colonial powers to retain their colonies (other than permanent, brutal, Belgian-Congo-style repression) is to do the opposite of what they did IOTL, and adopt a more hands-off approach, which means no uplifting, no building of schools, hospitals or universities, no missionary work, no imposition of enlightenment values (like the British ban on widow burning in India, for example), no creation of local, westernized elites, no colonial subjects invited to study in western universities, no infrastructure for the local population etc.

Basically, make sure those colonies remain underdeveloped and their populations uneducated, and (other than trading outposts, naval and military bases) build only those facilities and infrastructure that is needed for resource extraction, nothing else. I think it would be much easier for the British to retain India for example if it still looked more or less like it did two hundred years ago, or as some remote corners of the subcontinent still do to this day (unless India ‚pulls a Meiji‘ on its own).

In summary, i think the colonial powers would paradoxically have an easier time retaining their empires in the long term if they behaved less ‚imperial‘, though this would probably also mean most of those colonies will remain much poorer compared to OTL.
 
Honestly, there needs to be a name for these type of threads. They remind me of those "Notsis" threads. Just like how people want Nazi Germanys without the Nazism in those threads, it seems here, people want the colonial empires , without all the nasty parts that being a colonial empire entails.
Coloanial (the idea that colonial empires would ever be willing to give back to the colonies in a meaningful way at a cost to the metropole), Colornial (self-explanatory), Colonihil, Quelonial (what colonial rule?)...

Something like that?

Couldn’t India be broken into multiple dominions or whatever they would be called in a integrated British Empire? Also could each dominion have a flat set number on seats they get in parliament? If Australia, New Zealand, Canada, British Isles(including all of Ireland), and India are all dominions with two seats in a imperial parliament that balances out Indian population advantage in voting? Furthermore, if the British integrated the Indian nobility into there’s could the nobility retain a lot more power in India while they still lose power and influence in the Isles? Could that keep more control over India?
So either the British lose pretty much all their authority over the empire by handing it over to the colonies and putting colonial interests ahead of that of the metropole (which would be unacceptable to the people of the metropole) or the British give barely token representation to the colonies, which will inevitably push for greater autonomy or even independence in order to put their individual interests ahead of Britain's interests for the region.

The Indians aren't going to be satisfied with having equal say as countries with barely a percent of their own and the metropole isn't going to like having power shift over to the colonies. Why would the Indian nobility willingly remain second-class to the British when they could become the dominant powers in such a federation or even their own nations?

As mentioned before, colonial rule revolved around enriching the metropole with the resources of the colonies. Even if you get past the whole racial issues causing discontent, why would the people of the colonies stay willing to let wealth flow from their lands to an island thousands of kilometres away? Why would the British willingly stop the flow of wealth? It's just antithetical to the whole idea of colonial rule.
 
Look up the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI).

Look for news articles about how much control they have over the game. That's a microcosm of how things would play out.
 
Coloanial (the idea that colonial empires would ever be willing to give back to the colonies in a meaningful way at a cost to the metropole), Colornial (self-explanatory), Colonihil, Quelonial (what colonial rule?)...

Something like that?


So either the British lose pretty much all their authority over the empire by handing it over to the colonies and putting colonial interests ahead of that of the metropole (which would be unacceptable to the people of the metropole) or the British give barely token representation to the colonies, which will inevitably push for greater autonomy or even independence in order to put their individual interests ahead of Britain's interests for the region.

The Indians aren't going to be satisfied with having equal say as countries with barely a percent of their own and the metropole isn't going to like having power shift over to the colonies. Why would the Indian nobility willingly remain second-class to the British when they could become the dominant powers in such a federation or even their own nations?

As mentioned before, colonial rule revolved around enriching the metropole with the resources of the colonies. Even if you get past the whole racial issues causing discontent, why would the people of the colonies stay willing to let wealth flow from their lands to an island thousands of kilometres away? Why would the British willingly stop the flow of wealth? It's just antithetical to the whole idea of colonial rule.
Empires have developed and invested in colonies on multiple occasions especially Britain. The point of doing this is hoping to get something better back. It is an investment. Building up the area and people in it can help make you more profit and wealth for the homeland. It also helps make more local people more complacent which means less money spent of dealing with resistance and you increase your local support base. You have to make these empires and it’s people feel like it’s in their best interest to stay together. Or at least a good number of these people since at least some groups will always get the short stick.

They aren’t doing this stuff out of kindness or like for each other but because both see it as the most pragmatic or best choose for themselves. The only question is how you create this. Some British people could see the continuation of the empire as security of their prosperity and dominance of the world. Colonial or dominion elites could see it as a way of maintaining power and wealth for themselves. Some people in the colonies could see it as a way of maintaining order and increased wealth. There will be people who oppose this and still resist but you just got to get enough local support to counter that. A bunch of Christian minorities might not support nationalist movement made up of a Muslim majority. The independent movement is republican or communist the local king doesn’t like that. Half your ethnic people will be in a foreign nation if independence happens and might face attacks from the ethnic majority for helping the colonial government. This can all be points for support of the empire. Colonial policy isn’t set in stone it can change and develop over time to something different. Imagine a centralized EU or a successful Co prosperity sphere or a mix of the two.

Imperialism is an ideology just like communism and capitalism. The world wars and the events around it discredited imperialism to many within the empires of post ww2 that still existed. Look at a picture of soldiers before ww1 getting ready for it. They are smiling and looking forward to it. They saw maintaining the empire the same way Americans saw their actions in ww2 as a noble cause. There were people who supported keeping the colonies at any cost. A 1900s full of proxy war and regional small scale conflicts will see many of these ideas about imperialism and empires linger on much much longer. It took the destruction of multiple empires, genocides, radical revolutions, and the horrors of the world wars to destroy that way of thinking and belief. Empires without all this have a lot more time and focus on maintaining themselves and domestic issues. The impact of colonies being ruled over for a extra 20 to 50 years would be very big. That could have a big impact on people mindsets and views.
 
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