I Blame Communism
Banned
I admit, I have never heard of Nappy's adventures in Catalonia. What happened?
As I understand it (this is from a variety of cobbled-together sources: passing mentions in various books, maps, and a friend of mine who is a Catalan nationalist, so I won't vouch for its unbiased truth), Napoleon in 1812 attempted to try and win the Catalans over by annexing the province directly and setting up the Catalan language alongside French as official, appealing to the revolt during the WSS; but because material conditions didn't improve, this only made people angrier.
Is that true of England? Nationalism certainly existed among you all...
True, but whereas I'm not saying Welsh identity didn't exist, Welshnationalism is even less likley to influence the geopolitics of Europe than, say, Czech nationalism.
Anyway, I am not as prepared to call this impossible as others here. But it won't get you anything like OTL's Napoleon, IMO.
Let's see. You start in 1797, when Hoche lands in Ireland. Oh, the hilarity. There's financial panic in Britain, and it takes over a year to subdue the Irish. It is not very pretty. At its extreme, IMO, it approaches the Vendee's messiness. But Britain has naval superiority.
Meanwhile, with the British distracted, Napoleon manages to secure his foothold in Egypt and Syria. (Bonus points if we can somehow get India to go worse for the British).
The place where things really hit the fan is Britain itself, which sees the censorship and police state apparatus of OTL (IBC is probably going to criticize me for calling it that) intensify. Fox and his Whigs blame the uprising in Ireland on British policies, and in response the Crown discovers ties between some leading Whigs and the United Irishmen. The run on the bank brought on by the Irish invasion triggers a nasty economic recession; while confidence is restored as things improve, this still leaves to waves of Luddism a few years earlier than OTL.
So, we've got the stirrings of... something. Any thoughts here?
I thought everyone knew I was vaguely fixated with the possibility of British revolution!
I'm intrigued by this possibility, although you're certainly right that it would take changes in France to kickstart it.
(Although I do actually have to question "police state": secret police, yeah, but the aversion of 18th century Britain to organised law enforcement was somewhat hilarious.)