[Maceman]

We did lose the Revolutionary War.

It’s just that we didn’t completely surrender until 2008.

[cripplecreek]

Should have know Harry Turtledove would be involved somewhere. The Road Not taken completely screwed my sci fi think meat.

The Road Not Taken

[skeeter]

We’d be Canada.

[driftless2]

This is sort of a stupid article, but the subject has come up many times before. So the revolutionary army gets defeated by the British, and Washington, Jefferson, Adams, etal get hanged. Britain keeps its colony and exacts more onerous taxes or something. At some point there would be another revolution until the country was independent. The difference in the way Americans look at things and the Brits look at things would demand another revolt.

Would everything still be the same as far as the constitution and what not? Maybe not. But we'd still have an independent country.

[Chainmail]

Alternative history ping.

[MUDDOG]

We’d probably have less blacks. England was a lot more serious against the slave trade than the US was, even though both countries banned the transatlantic slave trade at about the same time (around 1807).

[Zhang Fei]

Not worth the kind of actioners Turtledove tends to write. The US would have remained, along with Canada, part of Mother England. English sovereigns defeated all kinds of armed revolts, and things trundled along.

[Reaganez]

We would have tried again and again until victorious.

We may not have had the collective genius of our actual Founding Fathers, we may have had a victorious General who did accept the American Crown and may have had sons.

[KarlInOhio]

I've wondered what it would be like if England had paid more attention to its North American colonies and integrated them into the motherland more. Imagine if in the early 1700s the English had started putting noble families in charge of areas so you would have Earls of Massachusetts and Virginia. Maybe Georgia would have only gotten a baron in charge. Then what if various of our Founding Fathers had been elected to Parliament. "No taxation even with representation" just doesn't have the bite the original did.

[fieldmarshaldj]

One thing is clear. We’re long overdue for another one.

[Nowhere Man]

There is also a book about this subject by Robert Sobel in 1971 called “For Want of a Nail” where the American Revolution was lost and a lot of the Founding Fathers escaped to the Texas/Mexico area and started the “United States of Mexico” which is an analogy of the current United States with a heavier Latino component. I also liked the Richard Dreyfuss/Harry Turtledove work of the “Two Georges” too.

[yarddog]

Around 15 years ago, I was doing some research concerning Revolutionary War Veterans and their claims for pensions.

In their claims they would list all of the battles they participated in. Of course there were the ones everyone knows but a large number of the vets had listed “The Florida Campaign”. I mean maybe a third of them.

I have never heard of it yet it must have been a large operation.

[Tennessee Nana]

My Loyalist ancestors would have gotten their lands in PA and NY back...

[robowombat]

A Brit friend only half jokingly wrote me that the success of the American Revolution was an unmitigated disaster for the western world. No Revolution then Great Britain would really have been great encompassing the British Isles, Canada and at least 3/4’s of the current US. A true superpower it would have been able to effectively control Europe and after 1870 the new German Empire would have been fully aware of the power of great Britain and there would have been non German Naval Acts and probably no First World War and if it had happened it would have meant a German defeat in a couple years. More likely there would have been a lot of tension and maybe war between Germany, Austria and Russia but no global catastrophe let alone any Nazi Germany or Soviet Union. The only bigger disasters he can think of was allowing the British Army to start real contingency planning with the French after 1904 or even engaging in an entente with France. better to let Germany reinforce the verdict of 1870-71 on France and then let Britain act as some sort of mediator to patch up a diplomatic settlement. The other disaster according to his lights, was the entry of the US into the World War , which doomed any chances of the combatants putting together a compromise peace which might have preserved some sort of European great power regime. After Russia collapsed, he imagines the other status quo powers would have been frantic to end the war and try and contain the chaos spilling out of Russia. He is an interestingly fellow. Very nationalistic and he loathes multicultural Britain to the tips of his fingers.

[PAR35]

It’s my recollection that ‘Disunited States’ is one of a series aimed at the youth market. ‘Two Georges’ is aimed at adults.

[dangerdoc]

No French Revolution, no Napoleon. That would have to have huge effects on Europe, not even considering what was going on here. Great Briton would likely still be the empire on which the sun never sets.

Would WW I have occurred?

[hoagy62]

I read “The Two Georges”. It follows a colonel in the ‘Royal American Mounted Police’ after the painting of ‘The Two Georges” is stolen while on a tour of the ‘North American Union’.

The Governor-General of the NAU is ‘Sir Martin Luther King’.

One of the characters is a used-steamcar salesman known as “Honest” Dick Nixon.

All in all, it’s a fascinating book.

Turtledove also wrote another alt-history book called “The Guns Of The South”. It chronicles how some white separatists from South Africa use a time-machine to go back to 1861 and offer help to the Confederacy in their upcoming conflict with the North. They bring with them a weapon from the future...a gun that’s easy and cheap to mass-produce (with the separatist’s help)...the AK-47. With the help of the strangers and their “repeating rifle”, the South wins their war, capturing President Lincoln, who capitulates to the Confederacy’s demands.

[ExCTCitizen]

If we lost, we would probably be a member of the Commonwealth playing cricket and having a Marxist dictator rule us in a one party state. Er...we do, the one party is the democrats and republicans and the dictator is Obama.

[Impy]

Not possible, once the redcoats started raping women left and right as a show of force, their defeat was sealed, Americans weren’t about to stand for that.