A surviving British Empire transofmred into an Imperial Federation, something along the lines of Anaxgoras's Rule Britannia TL , would you guys think it be more or less racist than OTL UK?
Would a surviving British Empire as an Imperial Federation be less racist than the UK today?
- Thread starter Berkeley2017
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If I remember from when I read Rule Britania they limited the power of India by giving them a lower % of seats in the Imperial Parliament I think it was 80 seats to the UKs 100 with other dominions varying between 10 and 50.
I think less rascist due to people in the UK having a more common and positive interactions with other places in the world. Though to describe modern OTL UK as racist may be an over statement.
I think less rascist due to people in the UK having a more common and positive interactions with other places in the world. Though to describe modern OTL UK as racist may be an over statement.
Bumping this because I'm wondering would how much immigration to the UK would there be if a British Empire still survives? I'd assume that no WWII would take place ITTL?
If were looking at the whole empire as a single federal polity, it would need to be less racist in order to stay together. Any form of Proportional representation would lead to India dominating the whole thing, so maybe one nation one seat?
There's a lot to unpack here that makes such an open ended question very difficult.
Firstly, countries aren't, really, individually racist in that way. Beyond specific institutional racism in, say, Apartheid South Africa, its down to people. There is no POD possible that would lead to an entirely non-racist UK population. So you need to think about what you mean by "less racist". What are your parameters?
Second, why have these nations/colonies joined an Imperial Federation? If it was drafted in the 1920s, most colonies wouldn't have had any choice in the matter. So despite now being nominally "democratic" this is still very much the Metropole enforcing its will on the colonized. That will do nothing to inhibit the feeling of racial superiority that fueled racism in Britain.
Third, UK racism is related to, but not entirely about, immigration. Having more frequent interactions with people of other cultures doesn't necessarily reduce racism - you need much more complex ranges of interactions and shared identities. I've never met a racist person in OTL UK who doesn't enjoy eating Indian food, for example - they can dis-aggregate their enjoyment of foreign food from their feelings about foreign people (even when most British Asians OTL are UK-born). A British Imperial Federation might change this, but wouldn't it most likely be like Commonwealth immigration OTL?
Firstly, countries aren't, really, individually racist in that way. Beyond specific institutional racism in, say, Apartheid South Africa, its down to people. There is no POD possible that would lead to an entirely non-racist UK population. So you need to think about what you mean by "less racist". What are your parameters?
Second, why have these nations/colonies joined an Imperial Federation? If it was drafted in the 1920s, most colonies wouldn't have had any choice in the matter. So despite now being nominally "democratic" this is still very much the Metropole enforcing its will on the colonized. That will do nothing to inhibit the feeling of racial superiority that fueled racism in Britain.
Third, UK racism is related to, but not entirely about, immigration. Having more frequent interactions with people of other cultures doesn't necessarily reduce racism - you need much more complex ranges of interactions and shared identities. I've never met a racist person in OTL UK who doesn't enjoy eating Indian food, for example - they can dis-aggregate their enjoyment of foreign food from their feelings about foreign people (even when most British Asians OTL are UK-born). A British Imperial Federation might change this, but wouldn't it most likely be like Commonwealth immigration OTL?
Saphroneth
Banned
I'm headed in a vague direction of Imperial Federation at this point in my TL - it's very vague and might be knocked off course, but I think it's more "could" than "would".
Certainly it could be, at least - I've often thought that the key for Imperial Federation is, basically, some kind of nasty threat to the Empire in the 1880s and 1890s (Russia would do) so there's a strong sense of the Empire needing the mutual protection offered by being in Empire. Think of it as NATO, but with more tea.
Certainly it could be, at least - I've often thought that the key for Imperial Federation is, basically, some kind of nasty threat to the Empire in the 1880s and 1890s (Russia would do) so there's a strong sense of the Empire needing the mutual protection offered by being in Empire. Think of it as NATO, but with more tea.
I'm headed in a vague direction of Imperial Federation at this point in my TL - it's very vague and might be knocked off course, but I think it's more "could" than "would".
Certainly it could be, at least - I've often thought that the key for Imperial Federation is, basically, some kind of nasty threat to the Empire in the 1880s and 1890s (Russia would do) so there's a strong sense of the Empire needing the mutual protection offered by being in Empire. Think of it as NATO, but with more tea.
I haven't been following your timeline, so I can't comment on specifics, but I think you need more than an exterior threat.
Remember when Joseph Chamberlain is kicking around his Imperial "Fair Trade" idea in the 1900s (essentially protectionism for an Imperial free-trade zone, which some saw as a precursor to federation) few of the white settler colonies were more than luke-warm to the idea. This doesn't include, of course, non-white colonies. What do Kenyans, say, care about the external threat of Russia/USA etc? That's the thing I think is hardest with Imperial Federation timelines - people are very good at building them but then forget about whether anyone would want to stay in them. Particularly non-white colonized people who likely had no say in establishing the thing in the first place!
Saphroneth
Banned
Well, one of the things I have pencilled in is actually Britain getting less of Africa (not much in the way of huge land areas, at least) and being rather more focused instead on India.
The image I have of federation is also (as I note) more like NATO than like the USA. Mutual protection being the key concept - basically, Britain provides the navy and the quick reaction force, the various colonies provide local forces, and they share in the economic muscle.
The image I have of federation is also (as I note) more like NATO than like the USA. Mutual protection being the key concept - basically, Britain provides the navy and the quick reaction force, the various colonies provide local forces, and they share in the economic muscle.
As I say, I haven't read your TL so I'm not criticizing.
You might, though, want to look at the early Indian Nationalist movement. Because whilst all the things you are suggesting seem rational, that's in part the rationality of the planner and organizer which isn't the same as the logic of the colonized and nationalistic.
In such a Federation, unless dramatic changes are made that hinder British industry to help foster the economies of other colonies/partners/nations (and why would a London-centric organisation go for these?), people in South Africa, Canada, India etc are going to be very aware that they continue to play second fiddle to London. One OTL example - one of the founding moments of the Tata Steel Company that now owns so much around the globe was in 1911 when the British told their founder JN Tata that he couldn't produce iron or steel railway track in India. That was prohibited, under the colonial regime, to help stimulate the UK steel industry without competition from abroad.
To "share in the economic muscle", as you put it, you'd have to have the Federation relax such restrictions, effectively harming British Industry to support equivalent growth in the colonies. It's not impossible, by any means, but would be a heavily resisted and contested process as British Federations MPs (or whatever you call them) would effectively have to put the greater good of the Federation over that of their own constituents on not just a local but a national level. And, in any TL where the Federation has morphed from Empire there are going to be many in Britain who would reject such a premise - surely, they would argue, the point of a Federation is to work primarily for the UK's benefit as the senior and founding partner?
Saphroneth
Banned
I'm not so sure that that was purely due to that. Tata was trying to get a loan in 1911 - one of forty times the size of the average industrial startup investment (23m Rupees vs. 0.6m Rupees) - and that's the time when the US and Germany are edging even the highly experienced British out of the market. The only reason it succeeded was the massive disruption of (and price increase from) the First World War, something that couldn't really be predicted.
Not much later, the Imperial bank saved Dorab Tata's bacon by giving him a loan to meet payroll in the 1920s. So it's a little hard to argue one way or the other as to whether that's discriminatory protectionism or just trying to avoid throwing away large amounts of money on the (rough) equivalent of starting up a company to produce desk phones today.
It's also not due to a desire to avoid expanding Indian industry per se, either - by 1911 there's more British capital invested in India than the whole of Europe.
(Between 1854 and 1870, the proportion of British investments going to India jumps from 5% to 22%- just under what goes to the Dominions (12%) and Latin America (11%) put together.)
(via Kalki)
1870s Indian subcontinent
GDP: $134,882 million
Pop.:190 million
GDP per-capita: $710
World GDP share- 12.05%
1913 Indian subcontinent
GDP: $204,242 million
Pop.: 257.06 million
GDP per-capita: $794.5
World GDP share- 13.38%
RodentRevolution
Banned
You mean the disgruntled Indian middle class? Because the obvious solution to that is to let them have the kind of government jobs they thought they were going to get and that their education qualified them for. It is a situation we see in an awful lot of countries where the educated are bought off with government work and thus tolerate private enterprise falling into the hands of the regime's cronies.
This falls in line with the idea of external threat, the British are threatened so they look to keep India secure at the expense of the expatriate interests (who have no one else to turn to) and go ahead with moves like the Ilbert Bill.
Isn't this quite fair, old chap?
Representatives:
England 30
Scotland 30
Wales 30
Ireland 30
City of London 30
Canada 30
Caribbean 30
South Africa 30
India 30
Australia 30
New Zealand 30
Kenya 30
Rhodesia 30
Nigeria 30
Burma 10
Malaya 10
Gold Coast 1
Sierra Leone 1
Gambia 1
Hong Kong 1
Singapore 1
Malta 1
Gibraltar 1
Falklands 1
Channel Islands 1
Indian Ocean Islands 1
Pacific Ocean Islands 1
Total: 450
Held 100% by white people: 243
Like much of the British empire's history, if it were to have happened, it would probably have happened by accident.
My guess would be that rather than reform of the Commons in London, it's more likely that colonial politicians would have been co-opted via the Lords. This not only gets around the numbers problem with India but also does away with the tricky issue of elections in the non-white countries. The odd colonial peerage was awarded IOTL so it's not too much of a stretch to expand that to some organic process where all the big Indian princes ended up with viscountcies and earldoms, for example.
As others have mentioned, more practical problems would have come from how the empire developed its industrial and administrative policies. Ultimately, what would have been needed was a change in mindset on the parts of both the British and colonials to be genuinely 'imperially minded', as Joe Chamberlain put it. The centre would have needed to trust the dominions and colonies; they in turn would have needed to buy in to the concept of what would have amounted to a voluntary empire.
Edit - to answer the racism question, as others have said, it wouldn't work unless there was a considerable degree of racial tolerance. How would that work? The answer probably lies in reinforcing division by class: in effect, to make the Indian and African aristocracy and royalty honorary whites, while not worrying so much about (or at all) about the non-white poor. The working class British could probably accept that. In as far as they came into contact with non-whites (principally via the forces), they'd still feel and in reality be superior to the vast majority of them, and Britain itself was a sufficiently class-ridden country that applying the same principles to phenomenally wealthy Indians (for example), wouldn't be much of a leap. Within their own spheres, it's likely that the British and colonial elites would have grown up together at the top public schools and Oxbridge, be on relatively easy terms and share similar tastes and expectations (as was often the case IOTL).
Marriage would be an interesting question. To be a genuinely ruling aristocratic caste, there'd have to be acceptance of mixed marriages, at least in as far as between co-religionists (which would be a good excuse not for it not to be practiced widely). I suspect that society would be quite hostile to the idea but perhaps not so overwhelmingly that money and status couldn't override the objections.
My guess would be that rather than reform of the Commons in London, it's more likely that colonial politicians would have been co-opted via the Lords. This not only gets around the numbers problem with India but also does away with the tricky issue of elections in the non-white countries. The odd colonial peerage was awarded IOTL so it's not too much of a stretch to expand that to some organic process where all the big Indian princes ended up with viscountcies and earldoms, for example.
As others have mentioned, more practical problems would have come from how the empire developed its industrial and administrative policies. Ultimately, what would have been needed was a change in mindset on the parts of both the British and colonials to be genuinely 'imperially minded', as Joe Chamberlain put it. The centre would have needed to trust the dominions and colonies; they in turn would have needed to buy in to the concept of what would have amounted to a voluntary empire.
Edit - to answer the racism question, as others have said, it wouldn't work unless there was a considerable degree of racial tolerance. How would that work? The answer probably lies in reinforcing division by class: in effect, to make the Indian and African aristocracy and royalty honorary whites, while not worrying so much about (or at all) about the non-white poor. The working class British could probably accept that. In as far as they came into contact with non-whites (principally via the forces), they'd still feel and in reality be superior to the vast majority of them, and Britain itself was a sufficiently class-ridden country that applying the same principles to phenomenally wealthy Indians (for example), wouldn't be much of a leap. Within their own spheres, it's likely that the British and colonial elites would have grown up together at the top public schools and Oxbridge, be on relatively easy terms and share similar tastes and expectations (as was often the case IOTL).
Marriage would be an interesting question. To be a genuinely ruling aristocratic caste, there'd have to be acceptance of mixed marriages, at least in as far as between co-religionists (which would be a good excuse not for it not to be practiced widely). I suspect that society would be quite hostile to the idea but perhaps not so overwhelmingly that money and status couldn't override the objections.
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Well, firstly yes and no. Because whilst the US and Germany are edging the British out of the steel market more generally, that isn't the case for railway track which was what Tata was originally proposing to produce. The desk phones analogy doesn't work in the case of railway track - the UK was producing, by the 1910s, track that was somehow outdated. You're right about the global steel industry more generally, but I was talking about something very specific. Secondly, the closed nature of the Indian Railway market meant that this was less about fending off international competition and more about securing a monopolized market for British companies in India.
But generally, whilst I don't dispute your figures, we're talking at cross-purposes. You are talking about cold, hard, economic fact. I'm talking about political feelings - that often aren't rooted in economic reality. What Tata took away from that 1911 story, regardless of what happened later, was that the British had prevented them from expanding. That was why, even though they had cordial relations with the rulers of the Raj, the Tata Group were also softly supportive of independence.
Well maybe, but that only works for the short term. OTL's British Empire is chock-full of examples of middle-class opponents (by no means the only ones skeptical of Imperial rule) who were won over with Government work who then went on, or who's children went on, to become the leaders of the independence movement later down the line.
Saphroneth
Banned
I want to make sure there's a citation for that one - why was it a good bet in the 1910s? (And remember, even if it's a closed market it still means Tata would be competing with British factories - factories with experience, and which (sans WW1) would have been producing steel for the subcontinental market.)
But that argument is also the one which means a Northwest Frontier war (i.e. Russia seriously trying to take India) would strongly cause pro-Imperial sentiment.
I'm not quite sure we're talking on the same line, but let me try and re-explain what I mean with a citation.
Daniel Headrick, The Tentacles of Progress: Technology Transfer in the Age of Imperialism 1850-1940, Oxford University Press: Oxford, 1999.
279 Before 1914 96% of iron and steel for railways in India was imported. By 1889 "India" was Britain's best iron and steel customer - 10% of the Raj's imports were British iron and steel (mainly for railway expansion) in 1913.
280-285 Individual British colonial operators sometimes tried to foster local iron industry (but never steel) but these either failed financially when unable to compete with British imports or were broken up by the wider Imperial authorities in the region.
286 Tata travels to Britain but fails to secure a contract from the Secretary of State for India to buy his steel, made in India, for Indian railways in 1902. British interests made clear - India is essentially a closed market for British steel manufacturers.
My point is that any Imperial Federation would see trade policies like this continue, favouring British home-producers over colonial ones within the "closed market" of Empire (and its highly unlikely that an Imperial Federation would be protectionist given the UK's love affair with Free Trade in this period), and that this would inevitably chafe with people like Tata who would see opportunities being closed off for them, increasing their support for independence movements.
I hope this makes sense and helps. I'm afraid I'm not sure what you mean by "why was it a good bet"? If this doesn't make it clear, could you explain?
Again, I'm afraid I don't quite follow this logic...
A bi-chamerial legislator might be helpful then. A sentate with 2 per state, or something and a House that's Proportional to the all of the people which then would be lead by pan-imperial parties, which would inevitably be dominated by the British members for a few decades
It all depends on what parts of the Empire. If it's the old Dominions (Canada, South Africa, New Zealand, Australia, Newfoundland*) and the other Commonwealth Realms**, then it's a 50-50 shot of being either less racist or more racist. If it's all parts of the British Empire, then it's not the British Empire but the Indian Empire unless there are safeguards for the White dominions to hold off India's domination
* You can debate whether it gets merged into Canada, it most likely will
** Including also some of the smaller British colonies - Malta, Hong Kong, Singapore, Gibraltar, British Overseas Territories
* You can debate whether it gets merged into Canada, it most likely will
** Including also some of the smaller British colonies - Malta, Hong Kong, Singapore, Gibraltar, British Overseas Territories
Saphroneth
Banned
What I mean by "a good bet" is that Tata was asking for a really big start up loan by the standards of other start up loans, and as your source notes attempts to build up the iron industry often failed. Tata doesn't have a background in the field either - he's essentially an unknown - so the British motive may well have been "this would be a waste of money to invest in a product unlikely to succeed" rather than - or in addition to - "crush all competition".
That, because sentiment is important to whether someone's pro or anti independence, then a major Russo-British war where the British are instrumental in defending India against Russian attack (or a major Sino-British War with the same risk going on) will tend to drive people to support Empire rather than independence.