Without Scotland, could England still form a massive empire?

TFSmith121

Banned
Well, the question was about Scotland, but it speaks to

Independent Wales? The less-than-articulate phrase that springs to mind is "Yer wot, mate?"

That's… an uncharacteristically over-simplistic analysis, given who is supplying it.

It's perfectly easy to imagine Scotland not uniting with England and still being allied and in personal union; indeed, it's much easier for an alternate-historian to make this happen (simple Darien Scheme PoD—make it better-planned or avoid it) than to make an independent Scotland bitterly opposed to England. The latter is possible too of course, though it requires a considerably earlier PoD and it's difficult to avoid Scotland being conquered by England in that case, but it's not sufficient to suggest that just because it's "an era of great power politics in Europe" the answer will necessarily be no.

I'm sorry, but speaking bluntly, suggesting even the existence of Napoleonic France or Imperial Germany when we're talking about a PoD before the existence of the United Kingdom requires butterfly genocide. One certainly can't just presume such things. That's like saying "So, given that Germany is unified in the Revolutions of 1848, is the attack on Pearl Harbour going to be more successful?"

Well, the question was about Scotland, but it speaks to the larger issue of the British Isles as a polity or polities; given the above, offering Ireland and Wales in the mix to be considered hardly seems to be beyond the pale.

As far as Napoleonic France or Imperial Germany go, both were simply examples of continental powers that (one would expect) would be looking for local allies in any confrontation with England/Britain/etc, as they did, historically.

It very well could be Borbonist or Orleanist France, or a Hapsburg "GrossDeutschland," or the Rotarian-Oddfellow Alliance, but the reality is that England/Britain/etc was in frequent conflict with the continental powers in the past couple of centuries (one could say said conflicts actually defined England/Britain/etc, in fact) and so "something" will create a similar dynamic, one would expect, no matter who's on the throne in London (or Edinburgh, or whatever); the geography sort of demands it.

Best,
 
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TFSmith121

Banned
Well, perhaps, but the Stuarts were contesting it as late

Personal union - so that's that. Unless we're going way back and Elizabeth I has children or something?

Well, perhaps, but the Stuarts were contesting it as late as Prestonpans in 1745, after all.

No Act of Union in 1707, and one could expect various ripples.

Best,
 
I'm going to go with "yes, perhaps slightly smaller due to lesser resources but not any significant change". The population imbalance between England and the entire rest of the United Kingdom is… large. England, Wales and Ireland between them would not much miss Scotland.

Actually the population imbalance was not as strong in the 17th or 18th century than it is now. More like 1 to 4/5 than the 1/10 we have now between Scotland and England.
 
Well, the question was about Scotland, but it speaks to the larger issue of the British Isles as a polity or polities; given the above, offering Ireland and Wales in the mix to be considered hardly seems to be beyond the pale.

Oh please don't be silly. Independent Scotland is easy; it was there in OTL for quite a long time and without the Darien Scheme it could have been for longer, perhaps indefinitely. Independent Wales requires an immensely weaker England and far, far greater divergence from OTL, to the point that the effects on the Kingdom of England (which included Wales for the latter little-more-than-half of its history) will be so vast and far-reaching that one cannot possibly ponder the situation of England without a much greater idea of what those effects will be. To do otherwise is like to say "Well, if New Netherland were never conquered, how would the USA resolve the question of slavery?" In other words, it's a ludicrous question; one of the polities you're talking about has been so hugely altered that only a fool would attempt to answer the question without first trying to figure out how it has been altered. To put it into perspective, a PoD allowing an independent Wales is also going to be so far in advance that we don't even get the Treaty of Westphalia; the Reformation, cuius regio eius religio and the Westphalian state order are all long after that PoD, and so dramatically weakening England in that era has huge knock-on effects across Europe, via France if nothing else, that it would be foolish to assert that those events—let alone anything remotely like the American and French Revolutions—will take place in a recognisable way. One can't compare the 18th and 19th centuries of a scenario where Wales is independent from England in such a back-of-the-envelope manner, whereas it can be done by proposing the far lesser change that England (including Wales at the time, as for most of its history as a united state) and Scotland are separate.

Let's also not ignore your statement that there will be hostility between England and an independent Scotland ("the answer is going to be no"), with the latter supposedly aligned with France, Germany or whatever European power opposes England. This is particularly absurd because not only is it contradicted by a very easily-imaginable and perfectly reasonable counterfactual, it's even contradicted by OTL! The Acts of Union were not enforced by England against the will of a hostile Scotland; they'd spent most of their time fighting together against France since the Reformation, let alone the personal union. Removing the Acts of Union is nowhere near enough to make England and Scotland enemies; even removing the personal union a century earlier is insufficient. You need to get rid of the fact that there are two kingdoms of one religion which between them rule an island and which both oppose a large, intimidating kingdom of another religion on the nearby larger landmass (counting the interests of the Scottish royal Maries as opposed to, rather than synonymous with, the interests of the Scottish aristocratic establishment). It is possible to imagine a scenario where Scotland and England are staunch enemies in the period we're talking about, but it's much easier to imagine a scenario where they're not, so to suggest that they must be opposed because of a ridiculously over-generalised statement (I mean, seriously? Because it's the era of great power politics, bordering nations must automatically be enemies? Anyone with even a passing interest in the era could bring forward plenty of examples to refute that) borders on the farcical.

As far as Napoleonic France or Imperial Germany go, both were simply examples of continental powers that (one would expect) would be looking for local allies in any confrontation with England/Britain/etc, as they did, historically.

It very well could be Bourbonist or Orleanist France, or a Hapsburg "GrossDeutschland," or the Rotarian-Oddfellow Alliance, but the reality is that England/Britain/etc was in frequent conflict with the continental powers in the past couple of centuries (one could say said conflicts actually defined England/Britain/etc, in fact) and so "something" will create a similar dynamic, one would expect, no matter who's on the throne in London (or Edinburgh, or whatever); the geography sort of demands it.

Nice save. Now let's look at what you actually said.

TFSmith121 said:
The obvious question is spin it forward a few decades, to the period of the Anglo-French wars; the possibility of a French landing in Ireland was taken seriously, despite Ireland's relative poverty. A Scottish alliance with Royalist or Napoleonic France would have been a real threat.

Spin it evem further forward to the era of Anglo-German rivalry. Not a good strategic situation for the English.

That's not a reasoned comment suggesting the hostility of England and any, unspecified Continental great power enemy. You talk about 'the period of the Anglo-French wars' and 'the era of Anglo-German rivalry' if one is to 'spin it [the time conflict occurs] forward'.

Determinism heavily shaped by retrospect and the self-serving memoirs of certain politicians aside, one can prevent the existence of a unified Germany with a carefully chosen PoD in 1866. A PoD before 1706? Germany will be unrecognisable. To imply that there will be an 'era of Anglo-German rivalry' (a rather superficial way of analysing the 1871-1914 period anyway) is deeply questionable.

Moreover, I would question yet another of your premises here. Not only is it far from guaranteed (indeed, the opposite is more achievable) that England and Scotland will be enemies, I do not see why history must necessarily feature England as the main antagonist to a Continental great power much stronger than any of its enemies on the Continent. Why should this be so? There have been periods of OTL history where that was so, and there have also been periods when it was not so. Contrary to the crude and inaccurate stereotype that English/British foreign policy was a simple case of picking the strongest power on the Continent and shouting "DON'T LIKE YOU" out of slavish and inflexible adherence to the principle of the balance of power (amusingly, making use of one particular quotation of Disraeli carefully stripped from the context in which its implication is actually the opposite), in truth it was far more complicated than that (I've spoken of this at greater length elsewhere). At times the government in London even allied with powers it thought greater than their Continental opponents. Looking at the likes of the Crimean War it's difficult to see where the Continental great power that's allegedly so inevitable was. If it were not Imperial France, it's rather awkward that it would be less able to harm the United Kingdom, as a function of power and proximity, than Imperial France; and if it were, it's rather awkward that it and the United Kingdom were generally friendly. It's perfectly possible for there to be multiple major Continental powers which generally dislike each other more than they do the United Kingdom (an island-based state which lacks land borders with major European powers); though it's obviously more complicated than that, one could characterise Franco-German antagonism (in the era which you characterise as the era of Anglo-German rivalry) like this in OTL. One could even argue, from your own favoured viewpoint of geographically based determinism, that with the size of Europe as opposed to the British Isles and the natural tendency of European powers to oppose any power that grew too strong right next to them (sudden developments such as the French Revolution and the unification of Germany being exceptions rather than a general norm) this is more likely than the situation of England vs Continental Great Power That Hates England #819652.

This has been a rather rambling post… but at least it's stayed something approximately akin to on-topic.
 
Of course, one of the motivations behind the Act of Union was the fear that the Scottish Parliament might invite the Stuarts back and become a French satellite, although I'm not sure how reasonable such a fear was. As others have said, the population and wealth disparity was considerable, and the RN would have made it difficult for France to use Scotland as a staging-ground for an invasion.

But if England has to maintain a standing army to subdue/defend itself from Scotland, the tradeoff may be a smaller naval budget. Now, it would probably still be logistically difficult for France or any other nation to successfully invade England, but an England with a smaller navy will have a harder time projecting
its power across the globe.
 

Saphroneth

Banned
Given how tightly integrated the realms were by that point (and how personal unions have lasted a long time historically) it might just manifest as more acerbic disagreements and more complex politics. I could see Scots contingents in armies and fleets...

As for the Jacobites, that's not likely to say the least. The highlanders might have been pro-Jacobite, but the lowlanders had numbers and industry. Hence Culloden. (Scots v Scots, Lowlanders won.)
 
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Given how tightly integrated the realms were by that point (and how personal unions have lasted a long time historically) it might just manifest as more acerbic disagreements and more complex politics. I could see Scots contingents in armies and fleets...

As for the Jacobites, that's not likely to say the least. The highlanders might have been pro-Jacobite, but the lowlanders had numbers and industry. Hence Culloden. (Scots v Scots, Lowlanders won.)
"Damn Scots. They ruined Scotland.":p

But I don't think Scotland being independent after the Union of Crowns changes Britain's ability to form an empire. After all England had the navy and the financial power even without Scotland.
 
Well, the question was about Scotland, but it speaks to the larger issue of the British Isles as a polity or polities; given the above, offering Ireland and Wales in the mix to be considered hardly seems to be beyond the pale.

As far as Napoleonic France or Imperial Germany go, both were simply examples of continental powers that (one would expect) would be looking for local allies in any confrontation with England/Britain/etc, as they did, historically.

It very well could be Borbonist or Orleanist France, or a Hapsburg "GrossDeutschland," or the Rotarian-Oddfellow Alliance, but the reality is that England/Britain/etc was in frequent conflict with the continental powers in the past couple of centuries (one could say said conflicts actually defined England/Britain/etc, in fact) and so "something" will create a similar dynamic, one would expect, no matter who's on the throne in London (or Edinburgh, or whatever); the geography sort of demands it.

Best,

A hostile Scotland would not last beyond 1650-1700. By this time war was a conflict determined by the big battalions - demographics and logistics were king and Scotland has no allies against England which is six or seven times it size.

A hostile Scotland in the Cromwell era was squashed. A hostile Scotland in 1715 was squashed and a hostile Scotland in 1745 was squashed.

If you want a "continental" comparison think of Scotland as Brittany to the French. Occasionally irritating but not really a serious threat. A bit like Ireland until the union as well.
 
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