Alright, so I was thinking about this earlier and figured I'd post it.
Here's the basic idea;
During the 1700's a somewhat different Napoleon comes to power, he's still bent on expanding France, but has no intention of subjugating
the entirety of Europe.
After focusing North, where ha takes the Wallonia region and sets up a Dutch puppet state, North-East, where he sets the Rhine as the
'Natural Border' between France and the Germanic states and creates the Puppet Rhine Confederation and South-East where he takes
parts of Italia and creates a Unified Puppet Italian Kingdom he goes South, conquering the Iberian peninsula and uniting it with France
in what we'd call a Federal Empire.
Now, lets assume that this Union stays in place and after a few decades their are'nt any real movements to re-gain independence.
So how does the world develop with this new nation, how will colonial growth go, now that this new nation controls not only a huge
chunk of the America's, but small territories in Asia and several territories in Africa?