WI: Robert Clive, Commander-in-cheif of British NA

According to Wikipedia (via biographer Robert Harvey) British officer Robert Clive was offered the position of commander-in-cheif of British forces in North America shortly before his death. The cause of his death is sketchy according to the wiki page on him and may have been suicide.

So lets say that Clive accepts the offer in an ATL and lives at least a little longer. What butterflies may there be. Could he do a better job than Thomas Gage did at the start of the ARW?

PS: I honestly don't know to much about this ear so I am interested in what others have to say.
 
He was ill and frequently took opium to deal with the pain. He was in no fit state to take the field, nor to control the conduct of the British Forces. A younger fitter Clive may have achieved greater success for the British forces in the Colonies but the old and ill drug addicted Clive would not.
 
According to 'The Pursuit of Oblivion: A Social History of Drugs' Clive dealt with gallstones from 1752 until his death in 1774 when, after taking a purge for constipation, his illness returned with such fury that he killed himself out of misery. It also states that he often dealt with nervous depression after a gallstone attack, and took opium to deal with the pain, but did not seam to habitually increase his dose of opium like an addict.

To avoid this outcome in an ATL I think I've worked out a reasonable POD to keep him in fit enough shape to take the job. According to this site:

Jean-Louis Petit, the founder of gall bladder surgery in 1733 suggested removal of gallstone and drainage of the gall bladder, thus creating fistula in patients with empyema, which he successfully performed in 1743.2 Petit's rigid criteria of surgical intervention was modified over the years. It included skin stimulants to provoke adhesion of the gall bladder to the abdominal wall and subsequent introduction of indwelling trocar to remove stones and bile from the adhered gallbladder to minimize peritonitis.

So lets say that in an ATL Clive elects to have this surgery done to deal with his gallstones, for the most part it works for him, and by 1774 he is fit and willing to accept command in NA.
 
Top