WI: British relations with former colonies more like Russia-Baltic relations

Abdominalz

Here's an interesting thought experiment. What if the post-colonial relations between Britain and former colonies in Africa and Asia were more like post-Soviet relations between Russia and the Baltic States. By that I mean:
  • No Commonwealth or any 'post-colonial' organisation uniting the former colonised with the colonial countries
  • Virtually no migration of the colonised peoples from former Colonies to the 'Mother Country'
  • No kind of post-colonial relationship in anyway between the two sides - no aid from the former coloniser to the former colonised or students from the colonised countries studying in Britain
  • The complete abandonment of English as an official language, as Russian has been abandoned in Eastern Europe - eg: Kenya merely uses Swahili, Botswana merely uses Setswana, Malaysia only uses Malay.
  • In some cases, colonial-drawn borders disappear entirely, so that the Hausas of Nigeria and the Hausas of Niger become one country, and the Yoruba of Nigeria and the Yoruba of Benin become one country, further reducing any post-colonial influence from Britain and France.
The obvious question is how would this all affect Britain's 'place in the world' in 2018? How would the West's view of Africa, and itself, change?
 

jerseyguy

I think it was easier for the British to leave Africa compared to Russia and the Baltic States because countries like Nigeria and Ghana never had substantial white settler populations, or were intended to become an integral part of the UK the way Scotland or Wales is. A better comparison to Russia-Baltic relations is the UK-Ireland mess where the countries still share a common border and somewhat messy post-independence relations.

The end of contiguous multiethnic empires is in some ways more brutal and borders more fiercely contested because there is often no obvious line where the former imperial metropole's territory ends and the "new" country should begin.

France granting Madagascar independence and France granting Brittany independence are two very different propositions.
 
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