There are a lot of counterfactual histories that treat the question more seriously.
The comment on the site says that if Britain kept America they wouldn't have gotten Australia.
Posted on 06/24/2010 3:59:51 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
With only ten years to go until the much-anticipated 400th-anniversary celebrations of the Pilgrim Fathers, it is no wonder Prime Minister Barack Obama spent much of this week locked in planning meetings with Buckingham Palace.
Whether the Whig-Labour coalition will still be going in 2020 is a moot point. Some even wonder whether the United Kingdom of Great Britain and North America will still exist at all. More and more, it seems, critics look back to the failed rebellion of the late 1770s and wonder what might have been.
That so few schoolchildren today learn the details of those tumultuous years - the American opposition to colonial taxation, the great British victory at Yorktown and the death of the rebel leader General Washington - is a national disgrace. Had the transatlantic empire broken up, Britain would surely have been condemned to obscurity, even if it is hard to imagine the American states remaining united for long. Yorktown should be remembered as one of our pivotal victories, ushering in two centuries of international dominance.
With imperial unity preserved, the American colonies embarked on an extraordinary period of economic growth. And once given representation in parliament under the Treaty of London, they began punching their weight: by the 1860s, American politicians such as Gladstone's Whig deputy Abraham Lincoln were well-known figures on the streets of London. Soon enough the United Kingdom even had its first American prime minister: Theodore Roosevelt succeeded his friend Lord Salisbury in 1902, but then led the Tories to one of the worst defeats in their history against Campbell-Bannerman's Whigs in 1906.
Roosevelt's defeat, however, could not mask the way the centre of gravity had moved westwards. By the 1920s, the royal family was spending more and more time in its North American capital city, Georgetown, and the long reign of Edward VIII and Queen Wallis marked a decisive shift. With California and Texas added to the empire after victory over the Mexicans in the Second World War, British affairs were increasingly forgotten. Few people noticed when Enoch Powell's new Independent Republican Party picked up a few English seats in 1964; most were absorbed by the battle between Richard Nixon's Tories and the Trudeau-Callaghan Whig-Lab Alliance.
But it is becoming increasingly difficult to paper over the cracks. The Republicans played a key role in the last election; their charismatic leader, Iain Duncan Smith, comfortably outshone Barack Obama and Stephen Harper in this year's prime ministerial debates. If support for them keeps growing, Britain might not be commemorating the Pilgrim Fathers in 2020, but celebrating its rebirth as an independent republic.
What if? The Spanish Armada had not been sunk by a storm?
Most likely we’d have gone the way Canada, Australia and New Zealand have .... would be self autonomous but tied to England. Then later would have voted themselves out of the Commonwealth and gone independent ... them’s the feelings down here in Oz after much pub discussion ....
Texas would still have happened but it would have been the Mexican - British war of 1845 and would have eventually resulted in all of Mexico falling to the Empire.
There are a lot of counterfactual histories that treat the question more seriously.
The comment on the site says that if Britain kept America they wouldn't have gotten Australia.
On the bright side: the American-inspired French Revolution wouldn’t have happened, Europe wouldn’t have been wrecked by the Napoleonic wars, the socialist movements of the 1800s wouldn’t have arisen, Karl Marx would have become just another kooky professor, China & India & Arabia would be docile Imperial Commonwealths, and Cricket would be the Empire’s national sport...(ooops)!
>What If ... The US revolt had failed
Well, we wouldn’t have Obama as President.
“What If ... The US revolt had failed?”
I’d bet we’d be right about where we are now.
You live in Australia? What city exactly? My mother was from Brisbane up north.
Well I wouldn't be here because a bunch of my ancestors would of most likely been hung as traitors
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Thansk 2ndDivisionVet. Good for a chuckle, at the very least. :')That so few schoolchildren today learn the details of those tumultuous years - the American opposition to colonial taxation, the great British victory at Yorktown and the death of the rebel leader General Washington - is a national disgrace. Had the transatlantic empire broken up, Britain would surely have been condemned to obscurity, even if it is hard to imagine the American states remaining united for long. Yorktown should be remembered as one of our pivotal victories, ushering in two centuries of international dominance.What if Monty had been killed June 7, 1944 and the Germans defeated six months to a year earlier than turned out to be? Would the US have wound up inflicting such terrible defeats on Japan that the nukes would not have proved necessary? :') Who cares, at least Monty would have been dead in 1944. |
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Kinda glossed over how slavery was abolished and the first and second world wars and the development of the A-Bomb and the cold war.
Fun for some to think about, but I think events turned out right, for all concerned.
Now if we can just keep our damn Republic from all the threats within that are racing to turn us into a socialist welfare and police state, that is the question...
I believe Franklin would have escaped the noose...he was altogether far too charming. More than this, I cannot surmise...
Your Obdt. Svt.
P____y
Hi - I’m currently living in Charleville ... see my profile.
Yorktown was merely the coup de grace. The British and Loyalist Cause was doomed the moment France, Spain and Holland joined the war against Britain... (You’d be speaking, erm... ‘proper’ English if the French hadn’t saved your asses...) ;)
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