Re: What if the United States was a commonwealth of the the UK?
- From: Sean Daugherty <seancdaug@xxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 31 Mar 2006 12:47:06 -0500
Big De wrote:
Would it even be CALLED "the United States"? I could see either New
England or Britainia as an alternate name...
New England seems unlikely, as it's very much associated with a specific region of the country. "Britannia" also suggests a geographic region that isn't even North America, so I doubt that, as well. I don't see that "United States" is particularly implausible, really, and I can't really think of a more likely alternative. Maybe some variation of "Columbia"?
The bigger questions is whether or not there's going to be a *united* country at all. Historically speaking, the biggest thing uniting the thirteen colonies was a shared annoyance with Britain. With a better relationship between colonizer and colonized, that unifying force might not exist. It's equally likely that regional states emerge: New England is an obvious example, and the slave-holding south might unite in the shared interest of maintaining their economic model. The middle Atlantic states could form their own bloc, or, more likely, fall into either of these regional states. For the sake of an argument, I would suggest the emergence of two major powers: New England would consist of New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, and possibly New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. Virginia would consist of Virginia (obviously), Maryland, both Carolinas, Georgia, and Delaware. If a third country doesn't emerge, it's likely to form around New York, New Jersey, and/or Pennsylvania, but I'm not convinced that this is especially likely.
Ultimately, New England is going to find a fair amount of common cause with what will become Canada, and may well include Nova Scotia, Newfoundland, and Quebec/Ontario from the beginning. Likewise, Virginia is probably going to wind up with both East and West Florida, and is liable to find itself in the same orbit as Britain's Caribbean colonies. In dealing with future westward expansion, everything north of Kentucky is most likely to wind up in the New England camp, with everything south joining Virginia. I'm assuming here that the two countries remain cordial and friendly, because any sort of territorial aggression is going to muddy the waters (even assuming that the UK manages to prevent open conflict): I'd expect a relationship roughly akin to the modern relationship between the U.S. and Canada.
Most likely, westward expansion would not have happened the way it did,
so California could have remained in Mexican hands. And the Native
Americans/Amerinds could have had a lot more territory to deal with.
Maybe, maybe not. Britain was no stranger to empire-building in the same way that the ocean was no stranger to water. The independence of the American colonies made further territorial expansion on mainland North America slightly dicey, but this is obviously less of an issue if those colonies remain a happy part of the empire. The drive for westward expansion on the part of the Americans is likely to remain more or less the same as it was in our history. The biggest change here is that the political situation is probably gone to be different: America isn't likely to buy Louisiana from France in 1803, given the cool relations between Britain and France during the period, but, on the other hand, it's probably not all that likely that France is going to be able to keep hold of the territory for very long, either, given the outcome of the Napoleonic Wars (which aren't likely to change very much).
The major change is going to be ideological, I think: with the US a part of the British commonwealth, there's not likely to be any analogue to the Monroe Doctrine, which means that western expansionism is liable to couched in slightly different terms. But given that US western expansion largely coincided with the relative decline of France and Spain's American colonies, as well as the rise of the British Empire elsewhere in the world, I think we're ultimately still going to see expansion all the way to the Pacific, even if it means the emergence of a few more regional states. This will ultimately lead to a very different Commonwealth, actually, since depending on the time frame, some of the increasingly Anglophone western states are going to fall into that orbit without ever having been formal colonies.
Civil War might not have happened. In fact, the Brits ended the slave
trade earlier than the Americans.
The problem being that one of the reasons that Britain was able to end the slave trade when it did was because a comparatively smaller percent of its economy was tied up in it. If the American colonies had remained a part of the British empire, it's unlikely that things would have happened in the same way: the southern states, after all, were willing to go to war when a U.S. President was elected who they feared *might* consider abolishing slavery. Even if the British government had attempted to abolish slavery, it would very likely have sparked the southern states/colonies/whatever-they're-called-here to attempt to declare their independence. And while they may not succeed (almost certainly not without the support of the largely non-slave holding northern regions, IMO), that doesn't mean they're not going to try.
Honestly, I see a situation developing roughly similar to the one that evolved in the real United States: an increasingly educated and industrialized urban population, mainly located in England and New England, begins to agitate against slavery by the late eighteenth / early nineteenth centuries, while agriculture centers in the southern states (possibly finding some common cause with the British holdings in the West Indies?) respond by entrenching themselves even deeper. It's possible the time table might move up slightly if Britain remains a going concern, but unless they seek to abolish slavery even earlier than they actually did and manage to do so before the resurgence of slavery with the rise of cotton, I suspect that we're going to see roughly the same result. By the middle of the nineteenth century, the southern states are probably going to be seeking to break free from the commonwealth, and they're likely to get smacked down even more decisively.
So, the American Revolution, the War of 1812, Mexican-American War,
Civil War and Spanish-American Wars might not have occured. WWI would
have occurred, but WW2 might not have (American non-involvement in the
League of Nations pretty much set the stage for the rise of Hitler
reign),
On the other hand, the League of Nations was in many respects the brain child of U.S. President Woodrow Wilson. It may not emerge at all given the changes to what would otherwise have been the United States. Actually, I suspect Britain itself may not be all that amenable to the idea in this revised world: their empire is even larger, and probably more powerful, than it really was, and the League of Nations might be seen as a less desirable arrangement. Then again, the Empire/Commonwealth might wind up taking on a more international bent itself in the aftermath of the war: this far down the line, the changes to established history get more difficult to anticipate.
I'm actually more interested in the situation in Russia: assuming that the Entente still exists, the involvement of America in the war from the beginning might vastly change the nature of the conflict. It may not destabilize Tsarist Russia so significantly, which heads off the Russian Revolution, at least for a while. Without that, it seems probable that Russia would continue along with its relatively slow pace of reforms, eventually morphing into a recognizable constitutional monarchy, without the major economic and social disasters of the early Stalin years, but ultimately remaining economically behind the other western powers. And if you eliminate the USSR, you've got a twentieth century so wildly different as to be almost completely unrecognizable.
The Cold War era would still occur, as would the Korean War.
*A* Cold War might occur, possibly between the Commonwealth world and Germany. Even without the rise of Nazism, there's likely to be significant rivalries between the two powers. But I'm not convinced that we're going to see a direct analogue to the US/USSR-led Cold War. This alternate twentieth century is going to be even more marked by regional uprisings against western colonialism, like in Korea, but I don't think we're going to see Soviet-style communism as the major unifying factor.
The Vietnam War probably would not have happened.
I disagree, actually. It may not be anywhere near as drawn out as the real Vietnam War, but I think there's going to be some attempt to prop up a Western-friendly regime in Indochina after the French begin to withdraw. Assuming that there is a UK-German Cold War going on in the background, this could be an interesting avenue to explore....
In terms of politics, George W. Bush would not be president, since
(among other reasons), it's likely that America would have had a
parliamentary system.
Almost certain, I'd think. In our world, the Commonwealth didn't even allow republican-style governments until India in 1948.
And it would be more likely that America would
not have the same level of "hard power" that it has now, especially if
WW2 never took place.
America might not. But they're going to be part of a substantially more robust and powerful Commonwealth system that, depending on how the twentieth century unfolds, may even begin to take on more and more aspects of a political union.
.
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