What if The Thirteen Colonies lost against the British Empire but the French Revolution still happened the same as in our history?
(Including the execution of king Louis XVI and Napoleon Bonaparte’s rise of power)
How the world would differ from our current history?
America and Canada might be one nation at this point and the balance of power would obviously be skewed even more towards Europe.
When England abolished slavery it’s possible it would have triggered a second revolution in place of the civil war which may have led to American independence as a more vehemently or slavery institution. Or perhaps with the more slave owning colonies would break away with the rest remaining under the crown.
The UK abolished slavery but compensated the slave owners so a rebellion would be unlikely.
Fair for sure. “Compensation” doesn’t really compete with free labor forever so I see the possibility of sporadic rebellion but probably not close enough to rise to the level of a new revolution.
The closest that the United States came to losing the revolution was before the French and Spanish fully entered the war. That might result in a dominion-ish settlement and butterfly away the French Revolution for a decade or two.
Plus, it's important to point out how the American Revolution served as a proof of concept. Even if the French one still happens, the constitutional monarchy supporters might be able to take charge and develop their own twist on the British model. In that case, most of the continent's monarchies might just shrug and look the other way.
Yes but it would be for a constitutional monarchy and removing Barriers between the Nobility and Bourgeoisie
The US was always going to be independent eventually. There is simply no way for a tiny island to maintain such tight control over a resource rich and geographically isolated continent forever. The balance of power would have inevitably shifted west, it is just geography. Part of what caused the Revolution is that the 13 colonies were largely autonomous and had been for over 100 years, and the King was starting to crack down and enforce more centralized control. That's why after the Boston Tea Party, one if the things he did was dissolve local elected bodies...and since the colonists had a century long tradition of independent local government, that really pissed them off.
However, the US may or may not have remained in the Commonwealth much like the rest of England's major colonies...Washington et al could have become martyrs that galvanize a second, bigger revolution a few decades later. Hard to say which way the wind would blow.
If it was so difficult how did they do it for centuries over South Asia, large chunks of MENA, Australia, Canada, etc.? Americentrism bias is really important to avoid, but especially when one is looking at America's history
The same way they did it to the US: the situation became more and more untenable until it became obvious they could no longer hold on to everything and had to decolonize.
It is not "Americentrisim" to say "The same thing would have happened to America that happened to literally the whole planet". It is the exact opposite, in fact. The British Empire lasted a very long time, but it eventually fell. Which is exactly what I said might happen to American: gaining independence in the same way the rest of the empire did.
I only mentioned America because that is what the premise of the question. But it applies to the entire British empire. MENA was always going to get independence as well, it us just a matter of when.
The way this works is we try to posit mechanisms that caused, and will cause, events to happen.
This isn't a mechanism. Actually, no—technically it's a mechanism but it's got no predictive power nor specificity. It's like saying "things happen, until other things happen". Technically correct—but utterly useless.
Why did 13 of Britain's 20+ colonies in the Americas secede and the rest didn't? Let's put some timing to it: why did 13 British colonies secede in late 1700s while others become independent ~2 centuries later?
Ideally you'd get a general enough mechanism that works for (at least) other Western European colonial empires: why did which of Spain's colonies secede when they did? Portugal? France?
What is this general force that is tending the long arc of history towards decolonisation? Why didn't it prevent colonialism in the first place?
The way this works is we try and make our points bereft of obvious condescension.
Firstly, because every place and people are different from one another, so the same force does not have an identical effect in every circumstance.
Secondly, I already listed an example in my original reply, such as dissolving local democratic assemblies that had been around for generations, something Britain's other colonies never developed a strong tradition of during that time. I also said that America could have remained part of the Commonwealth, gaining independence at the same time as Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and the rest of the Anglophere. The revolution failing is enough of a divergence that I think we can only speculate on how and when independence is achieved, but the forces that end colonialism in general still apply even if America loses or never rebels. Thus, independence itself is inevitable. There are many reasons unique to America, but I don't really think that even on this sub, it is my responsibility to just list the entire Declaration of Independence as a starting point and go from there. I don't need to write an entire book on the concept of colonialism to answer a simple question about a specific event.
Other examples which pertain to America include, but are not limited to: punitive measures designed to more tightly enforce compliance, such as things collectively referred to as the Intolerable Acts which backfired and further escalated the situation, the American colonist's over-reliance on militia, giving hostility to concept of a standing army which was only exacerbated by a crackdown, that the other colonies didn't have and which persisted for decades after independence, and the ideals of the enlightenment clashing with colonial policy towards the colonies who were full of, theoretically, Englishmen who took those ideals very seriously.
In the interest of not exceeding the maximum word count I'll stop there for now and move on.
Colonization.
It is an inherently unstable relationship. It causes conflict between the colony and mother country which requires active measures to suppress. Eventually, one of two things happens: either keeping the colonies in line becomes more trouble than it's worth due to increasing escalation of conflict requiring more and more resources, or the colony is subdued to the extent that such tight control becomes an unnessecary expenditure of resources, which leads to the colony become more autonomous over time until it culminates in independence.
Maybe just don't throw out hostile accusations of bias like an asshole if you find an answer insufficient, and instead just ask for more detail, like a normal, sane person?
Good points! You're right—I'm being a redditor instead of a person. I'm sorry.
I've got two (more respectful) challenges to your arguments:
For one thing, historically, nationalism has been the most common force that's ended the various empires. A given empire may be unstable but empire as a political system has been incredibly stable and common throughout human history, with just the modern form lasting for nearly half a millennium down to today, so I don't agree with the idea of some kind of both defect in every empire. IMO you need an alternative ideology to replace it; it doesn't collapse on its own.
America was an early adopter—and innovator—of nationalism and over the ensuing centuries the ideology of the nation-state became so commonplace that it's assumed to be the default and sole morally legitimate form of political organisation—but that's a surprisingly recent phenomenon for the vast majority of the world. This is the Americentrism I'm talking about—the ideology of the nation-state is something I agree with, but still recognise as nowhere near as long-settled an issue as Americans do.
America and USSR spearheaded the dismemberment of the last great empires post-WW2 due to their respective ideologies that both happened to be anti-imperialist (with big asterisks). So, if America isn't around that may not happen and maybe post-WW2 more empires survive than in OU. Perhaps the British plans for retooling the empire into a globe-spanning federation encompassing the big settler-colonial states comes to fruition.
In general, my point is if the 13 colonies fail to secede, America is not a thing or, at least, in any way that resembles the America we know. My stab in the dark is the failed secession is remembered in AU-2025 as internal strife somewhere in between your civil war and Louis Riel's rebellion. This is the Americentrism I'm talking about—British North America may still be renamed to Canada at some point and just stretch down to Florida, without any more special status to the 13 secessionary colonies than Manitoba in Canada today
All good brother, glad we can chill out. I myself was probably a tad more venomous than was nessecary so my bad as well.
I feel like I was kind of factoring that in, but not consciously. But that is a good point: am willing to entertain the idea that empires are not inherently unstable, but due to the emergence of nationalism and other factors at the time, I do think the British empire was doomed in the long term, and the largely peaceful decolonization was the best case scenario for it. America certainly pushed them to decolonize, but I am not prepared to say that the other forces at play like nationalism, distance, and even violent anti-colonial revolts wouldn't have been enough. I think because there were other forces at play than just US influence, Britain still decolonizes at (roughly) the same time. Ironically for Americancantrisim, I was actually almost entirely ignoring the influence the US had in pushing for decolonization.
I also wasn't really thinking of empires outside of the 1700's colonial context, and that's on me for not making that clear. Rome was around for 2000 years, but the world was so radically different then I didn't think to specify I didn't mean empires in previous eras.
All the forces that led to the 1770's revolt are still around in the event of a military defeat, which is another reason I am so confident that the American colonies still get independence...eventually. I am skeptical that all the things gradually increasing..."tension" with GB can be contained by shooting and imprisoning enough rabble-rousers. All the other methods of cracking down GB tried just escalated the situation instead of pacifying it. And while GB was able to keep that up in other places, most places either became more autonomous or got more materially expensive to maintain. Perhaps the British Empire can persist longer than irl, but I think that would require them to make reforms unrelated to the scope of OP's question.
Agreed. I just think that by the time of open revolt, it is too late to prevent independence even if the America that results is radically different than today, at least for the Americas. The die is cast, so to speak. In order to prevent American succession I think Parliament needs to make some reforms that codify a lot of the autonomy the colonies already enjoyed in practice. If they truly need more tax income to pay back their war debts, I think the only way they get it is by pairing it with significant political concessions. The colonists got it into their heads that they handle thier own bussiness, and the king (or rather, parliament) handles theirs. Respecting that attitude instead of treating them like rebellious children (a reputation not wholly unearned, tbf) is key to placating the colonies enough to prevent a war, imo.
I think these reforms would eventually lead to a peaceful succession as the continent gets richer and more populated.
I keep forgetting how badly the US education system teaches the revolution. King George 3 had very limited power partly due to his own illness and partly due to the shift to parliamentary power. Basically parliament set tax and trade policy, they had this strange idea that the American colonies should pay for their own defence.
An extremely over-simplified take that ignores what the colonists themselves said about thier reasons.
Like most colonizing powers, GB viewed the purpose of it's colonies as wealth generators for the mother country. This meant GB felt it was well within their rights to squeeze every last coin out of them they could. While very beneficial for London, this tended to completely screw the local economy. See how the British textiles industry affected India for an example. So you have an incredibly resource rich continent sized colony whose local merchants are being undercut by a trade policy that benefits the capital and harms them.
Surely no one else in the British empire ever had this problem, it was obviously just about taxes. Surely people who considered themselves to be Englishmen with the full rights and privileges that come with it would not take offense to being shaken down for their lunch money to finance a war that started on a different continent they never asked to be involved in /s
The war of 1812 would be the revolution instead and would have been started by the children of the founding fathers.
So, for this timeline, we're still going to need a lot of the literature about the revolution to be pushed. So, they ideals that helped create the ideas of the French Revolution.
So this takes away the war of 1812 and allows Britan to keep focusing on Napoleon. This might allow the Napoleonic wars to end a little sooner but that negligible.
The main difference would be the peace that Britian can still get away with the peace as in taking the Cape and cylon from the Dutch. The peace in Europe is the same, though, but dose Britan still take these lands possibly or if anything less, the Cape is a must as a station between Europe and India. Though some places may be left alone out of fears or over extending the empire.
Or we have the complete oposit and Britan on the account Britan has a few million more subjects dozens more war ships and hundreds more merchant ships. They may think to secure their position in Asia by taking the Dutch East Indies. Possibly offering guarantees making the Dutch into Belgium of this timeline.
Going forward here, Britan is beyond powerful and is completely insurmountable. Britan is still going to ban the slave trade. Likely causing a second revolution, though it's likely going to fail slavery isn't much of grand unifilyer like the ideals of the revolution our timeline.
People with more time and skill have done videos on this topic
Possible History
https://youtu.be/g2e_esSrC0A?si=NvmfN-DdN4W_edHi
Stakuyi
https://youtu.be/ouq9maQeiAs?si=j2q5Tp7jsNOhe7Qc
Haitian army led by Toussaint L'Ouverture burning the planter class to cinders, snowballing as they take territory instead of the war of 1812.
So, I guess I'd still be living in California, but my country's leader would be Mark Carney instead of Donald Trump? Where do I sign?
The Americans would all be certainly try again, and Canada (or at least French Canada) might join.
This is an interesting question, I've not thought about this much.
I can see a scenario where Napolean still sells the Louisiana Territory or offers some sort of other major deal, but also offers his services instead of him making waves across Europe.
The War of 1812 might have been the second attempt at a revolution, and I wonder if Napolean would have been in North America and so not ended up in exile. If so, that would have made for a very different set of circumstances in Europe.
I think that the overall picture would have ended the same way eventually, but on a delayed timeline. But how that interim played out between the actual and the what-if ? That's a solid what-if question.
edit: the War of 1812 (the one in the US) was a re-match in many ways, not for independence but regarding the relationship / power-dynamic between the US and UK. The UK at that point still considered Americans and related politics to be under their control, not unlike how Russia views Ukraine today. The difference, of course, is that the UK has evolved and Russia has not -- but I digress.
Napolean managing a massive victory in the Americas instead of experiencing Russian winters might make for some interesting thought experiments. Again, I don't think it would change the ultimate shape of things, but the sequence of events would have been quite different.