What if George had accommodated American colonists' demands & allowed them a handful of MP's at....

[Soph0571]

Parliament?



A rather spiffing line from a book I am currently reading. The character goes on to say:
‘Well, there’d have been no bloody War of Independence for a start, and the US would have developed along Canadian and Australian lines. The hamburger would never have been invented, there’d be no chewing gum dotting the pavements, and the world would never have heard of high school massacres. Can you credit it? America, lost for the sake of an extra dozen members in the House of Commons. AMERICA! The richest prize on the bloody planet. Gone, for want of a few paltry seats on the cross benches. George the bloody Third wasn’t just mad, he was completely tonto! Bugger him, say I! Who cares if he did a bit of farming and was nice to children? He lost us America and he was an arse!’ Ben Elton: Time and Time Again

Heh, marvelous stuff

Just think about it for a second.

Slavery would have been abolished much earlier than it was, and there would never have been the need for the American revolution.
You would not have taken so bloody long to join world war one, potentially saving hundreds of thousands of lives.

It is highly unlikely that there would ever have been the rise of Prosperity Gospel - religion all in all would be a much calmer affair, not the hell, fire and brimstone model a fair percentage of your chaps like to go for. No snakes in any church. Ever. The Southern Baptists would not exist.

Although, you would now be a sovereign state you would be members of the commonwealth. You could have the Queen on your money, much better than some crusty old blokes.

You would almost certainly have some type of universal health care free at the point of use. I know, I know, you would be much more socialist than you are now..... Damn pesky European influence hehehe

Frankly you would be much more likely to demonstrate a stiff upper lip, one would have thought, none of the over sharing Americans are famous for

I know what you are all thinking. Damn, we could have had it all. Bugger that George III - if he had only had more sense we could have been drinking proper tea, playing rugger and saluting the Queen.

And just think – NO TRUMP!!!

[Ilsa]

1. Wow. Never thought of it this way.

Someone who appears frequently on the MSNBC shows wrote a book of alternate histories.

The TV show Timeless deals with time travelers hell-bent on altering the US's past to create an authoritarian government favoring certain white men and one family in particular.

[BSdetect]

2. Canada, Australia and New Zealand have done pretty well.

[former9thward]

6. Because they have been defended by the U.S. for 70 years.

It is pretty easy to to well when you don't have to have a military of any size. Australia and New Zealand would have been easily taken by Japan if the U.S. hadn't defended them at the cost of tens of thousands of American lives.

[whathehell]

9. Bingo!

Thanks -- Some do need that reminder.

[BSdetect]

13. The Japanese had no actual plan to invade Australia as far as I know.

But I'm sure they would have got around to it eventually.

They do appreciate the US coming to assist us after two years of fighting the Axis.

You might not know about the Kokoda Trail fighting. The Japanese advance thru New Guinea was halted by a small Australian army.

And I think Great Britain tried to help too.

[tazkcmo]

26. They were going to

The battles of the Coral Sea and Midway would have allowed Japan to seal off both countries from American assistance had Japan won those battles. Thankfully for the world the Japanese suffered defeat and their Navy wouldn't be able to recover from the losses they were dealt.

[Aristus]

14. Sounds like someone has never heard of the ANZACS.

Shame.

It's an interesting bit of history.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_and_New_Zealand_Army_Corps

[NickB79]

27. Was it's navy a force equal to the Japanese Navy?

Did it even have a single aircraft carrier?

[Soph0571]

16. Sooooo America would not have had a military anyway?

Of course they would!!!!!

[former9thward]

18. Should the U.S. have expended blood to defend Australia and New Zealand?

Maybe we should have let them go and let's see how well they would have done.

[Soph0571]

19. Should NATO exist?? Should anyone defend rights for anyone ever??

They would have done OK, I think America has a distorted version of WW2 - afterall you would not have been involved in the East without Pearl Harbour and the price we all had to pay was huge.

[former9thward]

20. Read a history book.

The United States and Japan were confronting each other for years in the Pacific. The U.S. had moved to cut off oil to Japan. The two countries were going to war. It was a matter of when. I am very sorry even a drop of blood was shed to defend countries in that area. Let them do it next time. Of course that will never happen.

[Soph0571]

21. Maybe you could read a history book that was not written in Texas????

[former9thward]

22. When a poster has to use insults instead of facts they have lost and know it.

[whathehell]

32. Maybe you could base your argument on facts

rather than on lazy anti- American stereotypes?

[Sherman A1]

3. Interesting CounterFactual, but

there are simply too many variables and the UK has had it's share of problems along the way.

[BlueJac]

4. Food for thought!

[shanny]

5. We can still fix this.

Canada could invade.

[whathehell]

11. Lol..Not now

that Trump has imposed tarrifs on Canadian steel.

[bucolic_frolic]

7. We can bring snakes to church?

Trump is those dozen back benchers. He has the power to end American democracy, the American Republic. It's not that people in power don't recognize it, it's they are powerless to do anything about it so far. The world is being separated by Trump into those who oppose him and love freedom, and autocrats. In November we either grab and go, or we are in for a dark 15 year period.

[cab67]

8. I agree with most of your points, but not all

It’s unlikely we’d have gone to war with Mexico and annexed half of it. Whether we’d have gained the Louisiana territory is also an open question. This would have limited our population and resource base, thereby weakening our impact on the First World War.

This would have impacted immigration patterns as well. People from Catholic countries (esp. Ireland and Italy), as well as European Jews, immigrated to the US at a higher rate than to the British settler colonies partly because of perceived higher religious tolerance - no state religion. (I’m not saying this perception matched reality.) this, too, would have kept our population smaller.

My tuppence, anyway.

[cannabis_flower]

10. I was thinking the other day...

what if Hitler had gotten into art school like he originally wanted to. Would he still have invaded half of Europe and ordered millions of people killed?

[Amimnoch]

12. There are a lot of additonal factors to be considered, just a few:

The American revolution was a major part of the fodder to support the French revolution. France may still be a Monarchy. This would mean no Napoleon or Napoleonic wars.

Speaking of France, would England have been interested in, or even offered the Louisiana purchase by a French monarch? Probably not. Especially since the French Revolution may not have even occurred, 1803 France may not have been in the same need of the money.

Without the Napoleonic wars, "Germany" wouldn't have split with the Austrian empire to form the confederation of the Rhine and join with France (Napoleon). Without the results from that, it's possible that WW1/WW2 would have never happened, and if it did happen, would have likely had very different results and players.

Alaska would likely still be Russian territory.

Hawaii would likely be an independent nation.

The English colonies wouldn't have had the same drive as the US 13 states to expand westward, so the industrialization and growth that resulted wouldn't have been nearly as great.

[GulfCoast66]

15. Without the US as an example,

There is no certainty that the concept of a Democratic Republic would be more than a theory.

And surely the expansion of democratic ideals in the UK was driven in some way by not only the US secession by by the French Revolution which it helped stir up. I doubt the monarchies in so many European countries would be strictly ceremonial today if old George had held on to the American colonies.

Interesting and fun ideals to think about though.

[karynnj]

17. My take - a better concession would have been to have allowed the colonies to nominate the governor

Last edited Wed Jun 13, 2018, 09:09 AM - Edit history (1)

The colonies had legislative bodies, but the royal governors were named by the king and came to America. To my knowledge, none were already residents of the colonies, but were members of the English aristocracy who were born, bred and had lived their lives in England. Even if the king, based on almost no information, had the right to either accept or reject the nomination, it would have been a bigger gain than having some people from the colonies sit in Parliament. They wanted say locally - not on all English issues.

There is a very good film shown in Williamsburg that was concentrated on the VA legislature. One observation from the film is that, as the colony developed and had their own leaders - many of whom became the founding fathers, the idea that the man at the pinnacle of their governance was a person they had no say in and who - at least when he arrived - had little or no knowledge of their own culture and their own political leaders. The same was even more obvious in Massachusetts.

As to speculation as to what then would have happened, you never know the "path not taken". Some of the things are silly - the hamburger is not all that different than many ground meat patties made in many cultures. Food would develop based on what was available. (The hamburger history here is interesting - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_hamburger ) I can think of almost no place in the world where people did not create an interesting cuisine based on the foodstuffs available.

Politically, it is not clear how the colonies would have progressed. Note that if they were separate colonies, there likely would have been no Louisiana Purchase. The colonies may never have fought Mexico - meaning most of the west might be a Spanish speaking country or part of a more powerful Mexico. There still would have been migration to the west - just because it was there. However, it is entirely possible that there would have been no compelling reason for all these colonies to unite as one country.

Fun fact, in the days before Vermont joined the union, Ira Allen, brother of Ethan, who owned a lot of what is now Burlington donated a large piece of land to UVM (now called University of VT, but then the acronym was for the Latin name for university of the green mountains). His dream was that Quebec would leave Canada and join with Vermont - with a capital on Lake Champlain in what is now downtown Burlington ... with UVM on a hill overlooking the city and the lake. Ira Allen lost his fortune after twice getting caught buying arms that he intended for the Quebecois to fight the British for their freedom. (To me, the strangest part is that Montreal was far better situated to be the capital had this "country" come to pass.)

Three take aways - what is now the US could have become multiple colonies, they could have impacted the world, separately or together in an infinite number of possible ways. One impact might have been that there would be no country the size of the US to enter WWI or WWII. However, if the parts that were former colonies were aligned with Britain as colonies or more likely former colonies in the commonwealth, part of what is now the US could have entered the wars with the UK. However, an interesting point is that a Mexico, that included Texas, California, Arizona and New Mexico might have been very powerful. They could have made Spain a player in the wars. They might have changed the war which led to Franco.

[Jim Lane]

25. Thanks for this contribution!

I'd also been under the impression that the colonists were more focused on self-governance.

Their grievance was that their "rights as Englishmen" were not being respected. As a practical matter, though, that era's transportation and communication limitations meant that trying to turn a distant colony into an integral part of the mother country would have been difficult.

The leader of the pro-independence forces in the Continental Congress was John Adams. IIRC, he later observed that, if the Crown had offered some comparatively minor concessions, along the lines of what you mention, then the undecided members of the Congress could have been won over to the Loyalist side. Adams thought that he and his allies would have been unable to muster the votes for independence.

[TeamPooka]

23. There's a novel called the two George's by Richard Dreyfuss

There’s a novel called the two George’s by Richard Dreyfuss And Harry turtledove?
And it features in America that never broke off from Britain because George Washington and King Georges signed a peace treaty

[Yupster]

29. I read a short story

May have been from Harry Turtledove.

Anyway, the concept was that the charge of the Light Brigade was done differently and succeeded ending the Crimea War earlier.

The British commander was from a long serving family of the King's service, Lord Robert E Lee, and the brilliant young cavalry commander was JEB Stuart.

[MountCleaners]

24. Hellfire and brimstone pre-dates the American Revolution

No thanks.

[LiberalFighter]

28. Would the Louisiana Purchase and Alaska happened?

[whathehell]

35. I think you mean

"Would the Louisiana Purchase and Alaska have happened"?

[Yupster]

30. A few problems

1. It would be hard to represent a colony in parliament as it took weeks for news to cross the ocean. That would make the give and take of legislation a very difficult proposal.

2. If you combined the populations of Britain and the colonies, by 1800 the colonies had 1/3 of the total population. By 1840 the ratio was about 50/50. The colonies could unite and get laws passed with a small minority of British PM's. Or would it become the British PM's versus the colonial P's and then you're going to have the revolution anyway. Would the people of Britain allow themselves to be subject to laws made by majorities of colonials a continent away?

3. The colonies were taxed way lower than the home island British. The last thing the colonials wanted was to be treated like ordinary British citizens paying the same taxes as everyone else.

[roamer65]

31. The South would have revolted anyway, probably much earlier.

They would not have gone along with Parliament’s banning of slavery.

The North would have went along and stayed loyal to the Crown.

[whathehell]

33. The North

would never have "stayed loyal to the crown"...Most of the Revolution's energy came out of New England and Pennsylvania.

[VOX]

34. Precisely. Giving up one's "property"?

The planters' line would be something like =, "Do you expect us to simply dispose of our property (slaves, of course), let our crops go to waste in the fields, and be deprived of our livelihood?"

As depraved, immoral and inhuman as it was, slavery made the South prosperous for a particular class of plantation owners -- a would-be aristocracy that was already behind the times.

And you're dead on, the South would have departed the union the moment their "peculiar institution" became a broader issue.